This original compilation presents chilling tales of terror by an unjustly neglected author. Inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe as well as his own vivid nightmares, Edward Lucas White (1866–1934) weaves a tapestry of weird stories populated by ghouls, monsters, a witch doctor, and creatures of ancient myths. The collection features White's most famous story, "Lukundoo," a gripping fable of an American explorer who incurs the wrath of an African sorcerer. Other tales include "Sorcery Island," an uncanny foreshadowing of television's The Prisoner, "The Flambeau Bracket," "The House of the Nightmare," "The Song of the Sirens," and five other stories. Additional selections include the haunting poems "Azrael" and "The Ghoula" and an essay in which the author reflects on the influence of dreams in his fiction. Editor S. T. Joshi provides an informative Introduction to White's life and work. **

By no means absurd, it seems to me, but altogether reasonable, is the impulse which urges me to write out a detailed narrative of my years of adversity and of the vicissitudes which befell me during that wretched period of my life. My adventures, in themselves, were worthy of record and my memories of them and of the men and women encountered in them are clear and vivid. It is natural that I should wish to set them down for the edification of my posterity and of any who may chance to read them. For my experience has been, I believe, unique. Since the establishment of the Principate in our Republic many men, even an uncountable horde of men, have incurred Imperial displeasure. Of these not a few, after banishment from Italy or relegation to guarded islands or to some distant frontier outpost, have survived the Prince who exiled them and have, by the favor of his successors, been permitted to return to Rome and to the enjoyment of their property. But I believe that no Roman nobleman implicated, justly or unjustly, in any conspiracy against the life of his Sovereign, ever escaped the extreme penalty of death. Some, by their own hands, forestalled the arrival of the Imperial emissaries, others perished by the weapons or implements of those designated to abolish the enemies of the Prince. Except myself not one ever survived to regain Imperial favor in a later reign; except myself not one ever recovered his patrimony and enjoyed, to a green old age, the income, position and privileges to which he had been born. If such a thing ever occurred, certainly there is no record of any other nobleman domiciled in Italy, except myself, having grasped at the slender chance of escape afforded by the device of arranging that he be supposed dead, of disguising himself, of vanishing among the populace, of passing himself off for a man of the people. I not only was led, by my clever slave, to attempt this histrionic feat, but I succeeded in the face of unimaginable difficulties. An experience so notably without a parallel seems peculiarly deserving of such a record as follows.

One of the most distinctive volumes of American weird fiction, all of which were based on nightmares of the author, a classics teacher in the Baltimore area and a longtime sufferer from migraine ("sick headaches," as he called them) who killed himself after the death of his beloved wife.   White wrote fiction in the summer to supplement his income, his most successful work being the solid but now rather dull works of historical fiction. Another motive, for the stories, was to get them out of his system. All of the stories in this collection have an unforced strangeness to them that is emblematic of their origins. The title story, anthologized twenty-three times according to Ashley and Contento, is fairly well known, but all of the others are worth reading as well. There is nothing else quite like this stuff. It is doubly unusual for its period, when American fiction underwent a divorce between the slicks and the pulps. White's nightmare stories were too grotesque for the slicks, and too "literary" for the pulps. Like the work of many another genius they turned out to be better suited for posterity than for his own time.