Horror Historia Violet - Arthur Machen

She appeared to have wings, which hummed in their furious movement; she was red in the face, her eyes burned; she grinned at me and ground her little teeth together. A curious shrill noise came from her, like the screaming of a gnat or hoverfly; but no words, never any words.

Gothic grotesqueries, penny dreadfuls, pulp magazines, and other darkly inventive publications have produced a dread allure across the world, infiltrating culture and influencing language, becoming the source for multiple adaptations across all forms of media. Curated and edited by C.S.R. Calloway, Horror Historia Violet brings together thirty-one of the most horrifying and heartbreaking stories of ethereal spirits. Fairies, elves, goblins, kelpies, nymphs, dryads, sirens, banshees, sprites, and even Pan himself are presented here from an assortment of writers.

Calloway has captured the following tales: "Ancient Lights" and "May Day Eve" by Algernon Blackwood, "Beckwith's Case" by Maurice Hewlett, "Bells of Oceana" by Arthur J. Burks, "The Brownie of the Black Haggs" by James Hogg, "The Bottle Imp" by Robert Louis Stevenson, "By the Yellow Moonrock" and "The Washer of the Ford" by Fiona Macleod, "Carnaby's Fish" by Carl Jacobi, "The Child That Went With the Fairies" and "Laura Silver Bell" by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, "The Devil of the Marsh" by H. B. Marriott Watson, "Frank Martin and the Fairies" by William Carleton, "The Kelpie" by Manly Wade Wellman, "The Man Who Went Too Far" by E. F. Benson, "The Moon-Slave" by Barry Pain, "The Moorland Stream" by Arthur L. Salmon, "The Music on the Hill" by Saki, "A Night on the Enchanted Mountains" by Charles Fenno Hoffman, "Norah and the Fairies" by Hume Nisbet, "The Nymph of the Fountain" by Johann Karl August Musäus, "Seppi, the Goatherd" by C. B. Burckhardt, "The Shining Pyramid" and "The White People" by Arthur Machen, "The Story of a Panic" by E. M. Forster, "The Transformation" by Mary Shelley, "The Wife of Kong Tolv" by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, "The Women of the Wood" by Abraham Merritt, and the anonymously published "The Enchanted Lake," "The Nymph of the Waters," and "The Water Lady." Poems included are "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti, "La Belle Dame sans Merci" by John Keats, "The Sorceress of the Sea" by W., and "The Stolen Child" by William Butler Yeats.

For the truly fair, collect each Horror Historia volume and complete the ultimate nightmare pantheon.