Best Horror Novels

Prologue

PrologueUpon a paper attached to the Narrative which follows, Doctor

Hesselius has written a rather elaborate note, which he accompanies

with a reference to his Essay on the strange subject which the MS.

illuminates.

This mysterious subject he treats, in that Essay, with his

usual learning and acumen, and with remarkable directness and

condensation. It will form but one volume of the series of that

extraordinary man's collected papers.

As I publish the case, in this volume, simply to interest

the "laity," I shall forestall the intelligent lady, who relates

it, in nothing; and after due consideration, I have determined,

therefore, to abstain from presenting any précis of the learned

Doctor's reasoning, or extract from his statement on a subject

which he describes as "involving, not improbably, some of the

profoundest arcana of our dual existence, and its

intermediates."

I was anxious on discovering this paper, to reopen the

correspondence commenced by Doctor Hesselius, so many years before,

with a person so clever and careful as his informant seems to have

been. Much to my regret, however, I found that she had died in the

interval.

She, probably, could have added little to the Narrative

which she communicates in the following pages, with, so far as I

can pronounce, such conscientious particularity.