The Deserted House: A Short Story, Horror, Ghost Stories Classic By E.T.A. Hoffmann! AAA+++

Hoffman's The Deserted House is a fin de siècle gothic tale that may be a difficult story for modern readers to truly understand. Victorian sensibilities are considered quaint and archaic by today's standards and the early horror writers told their tales disguising the horror in innuendo. In this case, the narrator becomes involved through coincidence in the lives of a family that centers around a deserted city house. Though tame by today's standards, if the reader can grasp the true lineage of the Countess Edwina and the Victorian mores that were broken and how they viewed those poor unfortunates struck by mental illness, only then can you understand just how shocking this tale of psychic lust and desire would have been to the reader when this tale was first published.