Classic Short Horror Stories You Can Read for Free

Edgar Allan Poe. A narrator insists on how carefully the old man was watched before the murder. The sound heard through the floor afterward makes that carefulness feel worse. This is a quick read if you want a scare that depends almost entirely on a voice. Read it in Short Fiction from Standard Ebooks.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman. A woman prescribed rest studies the wallpaper in the upstairs room where she spends her time. The more she tries to understand the pattern, the more the room feels like the whole world. This brief story uses a room you can picture clearly to make it hard to trust what you see. Read The Yellow Wallpaper on Project Gutenberg.

W. W. Jacobs. A visitor brings a strange object into the Whites’ family home and tells them why they should leave it alone. A small wish has enormous consequences. Read this short story when you want the sound of a knock to do more work than the thing you’re afraid might be making it. Find The Monkey’s Paw on Project Gutenberg.

M. R. James. A professor finds a metal whistle near the coast and tries it out. Give this story a little longer than the quickest pieces here. Its jokes and ordinary holiday arrangements make the room feel all the more exposed by the time you start taking a spare bed seriously. Read it in Short Fiction from Standard Ebooks.

Charles Dickens. A railway worker tells a visitor about a figure he has seen beside a tunnel and a warning he can’t interpret. It’s a compact ghost story that makes the work of watching for danger feel dangerous in itself. Read The Signal-Man from the original magazine in Brigham Young University’s Victorian Short Fiction Project.

Washington Irving. Schoolteacher Ichabod Crane rides home from a feast in a valley full of ghost stories. The Headless Horseman gives the tale its fright, but Irving spends much of the story showing why Crane is so ready to believe what he hears. Choose this for a slower evening and a streak of comedy. Read the complete story on Project Gutenberg.

Edgar Allan Poe. A guest arrives at an old house to help a friend whose illness seems tied to the place. Give it a little more time than Poe’s quickest pieces. A crack in the building and sounds coming from elsewhere in the house carry as much weight as the characters’ fears. Read it in Short Fiction from Standard Ebooks.

Oscar Wilde. An American family moves into an English house where the ghost has spent centuries perfecting his entrances. He finds that practical advice is a worse reception than screaming. Try it for a longer, funny haunt with a tender final turn. Read the Wallace Goldsmith illustrated edition on Project Gutenberg.

Edgar Allan Poe. A condemned narrator tells you how an animal he loved became the focus of his cruelty, then brings a second cat into the story. It’s a quick, nasty read if you want to listen to somebody explain away his own actions. The violence toward animals is part of what makes his story disturbing. Read it in Short Fiction from Standard Ebooks.

Edgar Allan Poe. A promise of tasting wine draws a man away from carnival and down into a family’s vaults. In only a few pages, politeness becomes a tool you can hear just as clearly as the footsteps. Pick this when you want a story whose menace is already there in the invitation. Read it in Short Fiction from Standard Ebooks.

Edgar Allan Poe. A prince shuts his guests inside an abbey while a plague rages outside. Follow the colors of the party rooms and the sound of the clock. You can read it quickly, and it does as much with the way a place is laid out as most stories do with a conversation. Read it in Short Fiction from Standard Ebooks.

Edgar Allan Poe. A wounded traveler stops in a room filled with paintings and is struck by one portrait. The account of how it was made takes only a few pages. Read it for a quiet horror story about the price somebody else pays for an artist’s attention. Find it in Short Fiction from Standard Ebooks.

John William Polidori. A young man travels with the magnetic Lord Ruthven and makes a promise that becomes difficult to keep. Give it a little time if you want an early vampire story in which manners and a person’s word can be as dangerous as anything lurking at night. Read it on Project Gutenberg.

Ambrose Bierce. A condemned man at a Civil War bridge notices the sound of his watch while he waits. Try this brief story for the way a stretch of time can feel very different to somebody who has only moments left. Read it in In the Midst of Life from Standard Ebooks.

Ambrose Bierce. An inquest examines a death that a witness can describe but cannot make sense of. The testimony and a diary make this a short horror story with the feel of examining a piece of evidence that still gives you no ordinary answer. Read it in Can Such Things Be? from Project Gutenberg.

Ambrose Bierce. A lonely frontiersman thinks his wife has died and prepares her body in a cabin with a boarded window. In a few pages, one detail on the edge of the room changes the story you thought he was in. Read it in The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 2, from Project Gutenberg.

Ambrose Bierce. Three accounts of one haunting offer different amounts of knowledge about the same family’s tragedy. This is a quick read, and it pays to stop between accounts and see whose explanation you still trust. Find it in Can Such Things Be? on Project Gutenberg.

M. R. James. A man considers buying a print of a country house and then notices that its details change between viewings. Pick this short, patient story if you want the scare to develop in still images. The most important movement occurs when nobody is looking at the picture. Read it in Short Fiction from Standard Ebooks.

M. R. James. A scholar gets on the wrong side of a man whose work has been rejected. Soon an apparently ordinary paper becomes something he’d do well to keep track of. Give it a longer sitting if you like finding out how the rules of a curse work alongside the person caught in it. Read it in Short Fiction from Standard Ebooks.

J. Sheridan Le Fanu. A doctor recounts what happened to a clergyman who begins to see a small black monkey. The story takes time to let a sequence of ordinary habits turn strange. Read it in the first volume of In a Glass Darkly on Project Gutenberg.

M. R. James. A curious visitor to an English coastal town searches for a buried crown and discovers that the seabanks have a guardian. The story is longer than the quickest picks here. You get time to learn why finding the object is only the first mistake. Read it in Short Fiction from Standard Ebooks.