Tales of terror

Metadata

Gutenberg ID

76261

Title

Tales of terror

Language

en

Book source

Project Gutenberg

Description max 80 words

A collection of chilling supernatural tales featuring a surgeon's harrowing voyage on the cursed ship 'Ariadne,' a mother's descent into madness after her daughter's resurrection, and a rational man's terrifying encounter with a ghost at Bleak Hill Castle.

Summary up to 500 words

Dick Donovan's *Tales of Terror* is a collection of atmospheric horror stories that blend maritime adventure, domestic tragedy, and supernatural dread. The volume opens with a narrative aboard the East Indiaman *Ariadne*, where a newly qualified surgeon finds himself trapped under the command of Captain Mahone, a tyrannical and superstitious Irishman. The crew is haunted by rumors of a curse stemming from a previous murder committed by the captain, who killed a young sailor, Bill Burnet, during a voyage four years prior. This guilt manifests as a recurring vision of a bleeding spectre. During a violent storm, the captain's obsession with speed leads him to murder the ship's steersman, James Gemmel, who attempted to save a wrecked Spanish vessel. Consumed by visions of the dead sailor and the spectre, the captain eventually leaps from the ship into the churning sea, ending his life in a fit of madness. The second story presents a harrowing domestic tragedy involving Ruth Tudor and her epileptic daughter, Rachel. After a storm seemingly kills the child, Ruth discovers that her daughter has risen from the dead. In a fit of frenzied despair and believing the child to be possessed by a fiend, Ruth murders her resurrected daughter with an axe before taking her own life. The tale fulfills a dark prophecy, illustrating the destructive power of grief and the supernatural. The final narrative follows the pragmatic narrator, a skeptic, who visits his friend Dick Dirckman at the haunted Bleak Hill Castle in Wales. Despite the narrator's rational nature and his friend's dismissal of ghosts as mere superstition, the castle's history weighs heavily on them. The estate was once the home of a family that vanished mysteriously, leading to rumors of haunting that kept the property empty for years. Even as a skeptical guest, the narrator is drawn into the eerie reality of the castle's past, experiencing the unsettling atmosphere that permeates its walls. Through these tales, Donovan explores themes of guilt, the fragility of the human mind, the persistence of the supernatural, and the conflict between reason and fear.

LLM editorial rating

4.2/5

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Categories

• Short Stories
• Horror