A large collection of mystical stories in one volume (with illustrations) The book presents a rich collection of mystical, mysterious and creepy stories created by Western European and American writers of the 18th-20th centuries. Famous authors (E.T.A. Hoffman, W. Irving, N. Hawthorne, P. Merimee, E. A. Poe, G. Melville, C. Dickens, R. L. Stevenson, R. Kipling, B. Stoker, G. Meyrink, H. P. Lovecraft), and comparatively little-known creators of scary stories (I.K.A. Museus, W.G. Simms, E. Northcote, J.H. Nisbet, E.G. Swain, W.F. Harvey, etc.). Characters echoing each other , situations and meanings, the gothic plots of the book reveal to the reader, behind the veil of everyday reality, an irrational and terrible world, overturning the self-confident claims to omniscience characteristic of modern man.