The horror stories are as old as man himself.

Written on cheap pamphlets in London or in elaborate books in Germany, told around the fireplace of a farmhouse in the Italian countryside or at a market in Damascus, heard in an inn in old imperial China, in a narrow street of Mexico City, or in a Cycladic tavern, the stories in this book create a kaleidoscope through which the modern reader can look through small, temporary windows into other times, other cultures, and other ways of confronting life and death.