Some people will think it so trifling that it should not be recorded here. The first occurrence in my existence, which produced a terrible impression upon my mind, which, in fact, never has been effaced, was one of the very earliest incidents of my life which I can recollect.

The story follows the relationship between two young girls, and modern readers are likely to figure out the so-called 'twist' long before it's revealed - but Le Fanu's prose is reliably gorgeous, and the story's lesbian undertones are surprisingly overt for a story of its era. To the uttermost regions of the globe have not the indignant winds bruited its unparalleled infamy? Oh, outcast of all outcasts most abandoned! To the earth art thou not forever dead? to its honors, to its flowers, to its golden aspirations? and a cloud, dense, dismal, and limitless, does it not hang eternally between thy hopes and heaven?īram Stoker gets a lot of credit for kicking off vampire literature with Dracula, but Sheridan Le Fanu beat him to the punch a full 25 years earlier with the gothic tale Carmilla. This has been already too much an object for the scorn, for the horror, for the detestation of my race. The fair page now lying before me need not be sullied with my real appellation. Let me call myself, for the present, William Wilson. The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions: stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole nine fold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols. They are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs are subject to trances and visions and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. Some say that the place was bewitched by a high German doctor, during the early days of the settlement others, that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his powwows there before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson. A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. This sequestered glen has long been known by the name of Sleepy Hollow, and its rustic lads are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the neighboring country.

The Striding Place by Gertrude Atherton