The Room of Horrors

A collection of mystical stories by Arthur Conan Doyle — a little-known side of the writer's creativity, who during the years of working on the Holmes cycle was seriously interested in spiritualism and occult studies. The atmosphere in them is far from "gothic with creaking floorboards" — they scare with everyday objects and situations that subtly turn into nightmares. The book includes the stories "The Room of Horrors," "The Silver Mirror," "The Leather Funnel," "Captain 'Polar Star'" and others.

A mysterious figure hides in a dark corner, a harmless (but mysterious) object evokes dreams of torture, a ship lost in the ice becomes a battlefield for the captain's mind, and an ancient trophy holds within it someone else's madness. In these stories, Arthur Conan Doyle changes the role of the author of detective stories to that of a mystic, who almost seriously believes in the supernatural and introduces the reader to this strange world. His stories are free from the creaking of floorboards and the clanking of chains, but they scare more than the foggy Highgate burials — for the source of fear in them are everyday things (and the human mind confronted with the inexplicable).