Every people and every culture has its own way of expressing awe and fear in the face of death and the unknown. The stories in this book take us on a journey from the poor neighborhoods of Mexico to the Slavic villages of the 18th century, from the Great Plains of North America to the marketplaces of Africa, from the damp castles of England to the arid deserts of Arabia and the steppes of China.
…written either by the most renowned authors or by anonymous folk creators, they all share a common element: supernatural horror concealed behind a variety of masks.
C O N T E N T S
• Athenodorus and the Ghost, Pliny the Younger (Ancient Rome)
• The Market of the Dead, folk tale (West Africa, Dahomey)
• The Man Who Brought His Wife Back from the Land of Spirits, Winnebago tribal narrative (North America, Nebraska)
• The Painted Skin, Pu Songling (China)
• The Story of the Second Beggar King, tale from One Thousand and One Nights (Arabia)
• The Curse of Fire and Shadows, W. B. Yeats (Ireland)
• The Widower and His Wife, folk tale (Mexico)
• The Vampire, Aristotelis Valaoritis (Greece)
• The Family of the Vurdulak, Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (Eastern Europe)
• The Canterville Ghost, Oscar Wilde (England)
