The Wooden Guest is an odd little tale by Prince Vladimir Odoyevsky. It starts off as a kind of fairy tale for grownups and develops into a brief lesson in philosophy, with frightening implications when it comes to human nature.

While making rounds in an old palace, a devout, dyed-in-the-wool supporter of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution meets an unexpected visitor and gets to hear his thoughts on the latest events and allocation of power.

Ivan Turgenev's "Ghosts" is a rare venture into the supernatural for this writer, and all the more precious for it. The story has all the beauty of Turgenev's language, all the power of his description, and a decidedly chilling feel of a true ghost story.

One day, a courier who deems himself quite the romantic hero, decides to follow a beautiful stranger... only to be plunged into a nightmare vortex in space and time.

The Queen of Spades is decidedly one of Pushkin's gloomier tales, which inspired several movie adaptations and a magnificent opera by Tchaikovsky. Its determined but misguided protagonist stakes his life on a very old secret that might or might not even exist - with dire consequences.

Not all vampires walk the land alone - sometimes they bring their relatives. So discovers a lonely traveler when he carelessly visits a haunted village.

A prominent scholar and narrator of Russian history, Count Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy was also heavily influenced by German Romanticism and old Gothic tales. Here is his own foray into the macabre story genre - a novel as complex and tangled as any palace intrigue.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov is considered a very "real life" writer, his feet solidly on the ground at all times. The Black Monk is his foray into madness and mysticism to rival the likes of Dostoyevsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin, and Kuprin.

Best known for his poetry and historic novels in the style of Sir Walter Scott, Alexender Bestuzhev-Marlinsky takes a turn down a different path with A Terrible Prophecy and delivers classic spooky tale on the dangers of having one's wishes fulfilled to the letter.

While somewhat outdated and steeped in the prejudice of the day, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin fable "The lost conscience" is nevertheless a worthy tale to ponder and a great study of a mind seeking to discard its inhibitions (not in a good way).

Another strange and frightening tale by Nikolai Gogol with roots in Ukrainian lore. When a poor peasant falls in love with the daughter of a wealthy farmer, a dark power interferes, promising him the fulfillment of his wishes but neglecting to mention the terrible price.

The Engineering Castle is a real building that still exists. It remains one of the most sought-after landmarks in St. Petersburg, and it is steeped in legend, ghost stories, and lore every bit as much as Nikolai Leskov makes it sound.