{"code":"gothic","header_2":"The foreboding, the frightful and the freakish","header_1":"The Best Gothic Short Stories of History","description":"The best gothic short stories of history. The Signal Man by Charles Dickens, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe.","stories":[{"story":"the-birthmark","description":"A man of science marries a beautiful woman, but he becomes obsessed over a birthmark on her face which he sees as a blemish on what could be perfect. Nathaniel Hawthorne gives us an eloquently written, impactful, and memorable fable on the pursuit of perfection."},{"story":"the-signal-man","description":"A rail signal man has visions of a ghost trying to tell him something through cryptic, silent gestures. *The Signal* Man is a beautifully eerie tale from the king of ghosts himself, Charles Dickens."},{"story":"the-masque-of-the-red-death","description":"When a plague ravages a city, a rich prince invites all the well-to-dos to take sanctuary in his castle where they party and revel as though nothing ever changed. This dramatic fable appears at first glance to be an incredibly prophetic prediction of recent circumstances. But perhaps it is simply a repeating tale of greed as old as time."},{"story":"the-yellow-wallpaper","description":"A woman, restrained to her house by her husband and sister-in-law, begins obsessing over wallpaper she finds disturbing. Charlotte Perkins Gilman gives us one of the hallmark pieces of early feminist literature, based on her own experiences with depression and childbirth.*, "},{"story":"in-the-vault","description":"An undertaker grows lax in his care for the burial process. Then one day he accidentally locks himself in a vault with several yet-to-be buried coffins and learns to regret having ever disrespected the dead. Although still filled with fear, this Lovecraft story is stripped of the typical terrifying monstrosities and psychic dread to reveal a purely gothic Lovecraft story."},{"story":"the-cask-of-amontillado","description":"A man, scorned by another and vowing to get revenge, invites the guilty party down into a cellar under the pretense of helping him verify the authenticity of an expensive cask of amontillado. It is believed that Poe wrote *The Cask of Amontillado* as a quasi-threat to a fellow author who scorned him and his works in a satirical piece."}],"title":"Best of Gothic","subroute":"gothic","authors":["edgarallanpoe","hplovecraft","charlesdickens","ambrosebierce","nathanielhawthorne"],"has_text":true,"quote":{"quote":"“I believe his eye-for-an-eye fury could beat old Father Death himself.” * In the Vault","code":"in-the-vault"},"image_code":"in-the-vault","image_alt":"Drawing of a man with his upper body hanging over a door and reaching out.","collection_type":"genre"}