Tales of Twilight and the Unseen

by Arthur Conan Doyle

The only edition in print of this collection of Doyle's ghost stories, presented here fully annotated

A master of many literary genres, Arthur Conan Doyle excelled particularly in the short-story form, and was acclaimed in his day as much for his detective stories as for his thrilling tales of mystery and the supernatural. While the adventures of Sherlock Holmes have become part of our collective imagination, these stories, concerned with ghosts, obscure scientific experiments, and other unexplained phenomena, are now unjustly neglected. First published in 1922 and here presented in a fully annotated edition—the only currently available to English readers—this collection will offer the opportunity to discover a lesser-known side of this master storyteller's ability to surprise and enthrall.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Mystery, Classics, Fantasy, Ebooks, Fiction

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1919

About the author

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was a Scottish writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are milestones in the field of crime fiction.

Doyle was a prolific writer. In addition to the Holmes stories, his works include fantasy and science fiction stories about Professor Challenger, and humorous stories about the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels. One of Doyle's early short stories, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (1884), helped to popularise the mystery of the brigantine Mary Celeste, found drifting at sea with no crew member aboard.

Reviews

[Federico DN · Rating 3 out of 5]

Non-Sherlock Doyle.

A genre-assorted collection of 12 short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the forever renowned author and creator of the Sherlock Holmes series.

It’s a shame Conan Doyle is hardly recognized for anything else than his all-time famous SH series, because I do think the man’s other works deserve some more mention and credit. Although mostly gothic/horror, this collection also provides some stories of science fiction, mystery and fiction, but most of them with a slight touch of the unseen/supernatural, the overarching theme of this book.

Overall it’s good, most of it. Conan Doyle definitely knows his business, and even if I enjoyed some more than others, I truly appreciated almost every one of his ideas. Above all, I especially enjoyed “Lot No. 249”, “The Brown Hand” and “The Ring of Thoth”, though the “Good” ones are also very good, and even the “Meh” too, ok and enjoyable in their own way. The only one I truly disliked is "Cyprian Overbeck Wells", which was for me a regretful waste of time; but it could be a me issue, and I didn’t abhor the idea.

Go for the Best, consider the Good, whatever the Meh.

The Best :
★★★★☆ “Lot No. 249.”
★★★★☆ "The Brown Hand." [3.5]

The Good :
★★★☆☆ “The Ring of Thoth.” [3.5]
★★★☆☆ "B. 24."
★★★☆☆ "The Usher of Lea House School."
★★★☆☆ "Playing with Fire." [2.5]
★★★☆☆ "The Los Amigos Fiasco." [2.5]
★★★☆☆ "The Great Keinplatz Experiment." [2.5]

The Meh :
★★☆☆☆ "How It Happened." [2.5]
★★☆☆☆ "De Profundis." [2.5]
★★☆☆☆ "The Lift."
★☆☆☆☆ "Cyprian Overbeck Wells." [1.5]

It’s public domain. You can find it HERE.

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PERSONAL NOTE :
[1919] [237p] [Collection] [Conditional Recommendable]
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★★★☆☆ 10. The Complete Sherlock Holmes
★★★☆☆ The Great Keinplatz Experiment and Other Tales of Twilight and the Unseen

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Un Doyle No-Sherlock.

Una colección de 12 cuentos cortos de distintos géneros por Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, el siempre reconocido autor y creador de la serie Sherlock Holmes.

Es una pena que a Conan Doyle apenas se le reconozca por nada más que su famosa serie de todos los tiempos SH, porque verdaderamente creo que los otros escritos del hombre merecen más mención y crédito. Si bien en su mayoría gótico y de terror, esta colección también ofrece algunas historias de ciencia ficción, misterio y ficción, aunque la mayoría de ellas con un ligero toque de lo invisible/sobrenatural, el tema sobre-abarcador de este libro.

Considerando el todo es bueno, la mayor parte. Definitivamente Conan Doyle conoce su oficio y, aunque disfruté algunas más que otras, realmente aprecié casi todas sus ideas. Por sobre todo, especialmente disfruté de “Lote N° 249”, “La Mano Marrón” y “El Anillo de Thoth”, aunque los “Buenos” también son bastante buenos, e incluso lo “Meh” también, regulares pero disfrutables, a su manera. El único que realmente no me gustó es "Cipriano Overbeck Wells", el cual fue para mí una lamentable pérdida de tiempo; aunque podría ser un problema personal, y no detesté la idea.

Ir por lo Mejor, considerar lo Bueno, loquesea lo Meh.

Lo Mejor :
★★★★☆ "Lote N° 249."
★★★★☆ "La Mano Marrón." [3.5]

Lo Bueno :
★★★☆☆ "El Anillo de Thoth." [3.5]
★★★☆☆ "B. 24."
★★★☆☆ "El Ujier de la Escuela Lea House."
★★★☆☆ "Jugando con Fuego." [2.5]
★★★☆☆ "El Fiasco de Los Amigos." [2.5]
★★★☆☆ "El Gran Experimento de Keinplatz." [2.5]

Lo Meh :
★★☆☆☆ "Cómo Sucedió." [2.5]
★★☆☆☆ "De Profundis." [2.5]
★★☆☆☆ "El Ascensor."
★☆☆☆☆ "Cipriano Overbeck Wells." [1.5]

Es dominio público, lo pueden encontrar ACA.

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NOTA PERSONAL :
[1919] [237p] [Colección] [Recomendable Condicional]
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[MihaElla · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am truly delighted to find Tales of Twilight and the Unseen so pleasing, which eventually means that I hold Arthur C Doyle in very high regard. There never was a time when a good tale of twilight and unseen was more wanted, or had a better opening for it. I have read the several stories of this collection with great attention, interest and amusement. And I need not say that the art of it -- the fine construction -- the exquisite nicety of the touches, with which it's wrought out, have been a study to me in the pursuit of which I have had extraordinary relish. I have nothing whatever to add but just to say that I need to read other works of this writer ;)

The Brown Hand
The Usher of Lea House School
B.24
The Great Keinplatz Experiment
Cyprian Overbeck Wells
Playing with Fire
The Ring of Thoth
The Los Amigos Fiasco
How it Happened
Lot No.249
'De Profundis'
The Lift

[Justin Pickett · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories in this collection cover a diverse set of dark topics (e.g., ghosts, mummies, seances, executions, and murder). Almost all of them are enjoyable, but many suffer from being too short and too underdeveloped. Below is a summary and rating of each story.

The Brown Hand (Four Stars)

A story about a haunting in which the obsessed ghost wants a body part: “In the case of earth-bound spirits … some one dominant idea obsessing them at the hour of death is sufficient to hold them in this material world” (p. 17).

The Usher of Lea House School (Three Stars)

This one is about a horrible colleague working at a school and about why the bad employee is permitted to retain his position: “When you see a man in his own house allowing his business to be ruined, his comfort destroyed, and his authority defied by another man in a subordinate position, and calmly submitting to it without so much as a word of protest, what conclusion do you come to?” (p. 28).

B. 24 (Four Stars)

Here, an unfaithful wife leverages a burglary to deal with the husband she hates. Or, does she? “A man with a previous conviction never gets a really fair trial” (p. 44).

The Great Keinplatz Experiment (Four Stars)

In this story, a professor who is interested in whether the mind/soul can be separated from the body, finds an exploitable participant for his research: “By this means he frequently was asked to the old man’s house, where he willingly submitted to be experimented upon in any way as long as there was a chance of his receiving one bright glance from the eyes of Elise or one touch of her little hand” (p. 65).

Cyprian Overbeck Wells (Four Stars)

The word “unique” best describes this short story. In it a struggling writer is visited by some of history’s most famous authors, who then collaborate on writing a story for him. Each writes part of the story but does so in their own style, which is super cool: “The greatest masters of fiction in every age of English letters had apparently made a rendezvous beneath my roof, in order to assist me in my difficulties” (p. 91).

Playing With Fire (Two Stars)

Despite being about research into the nature of death (infernal experiments), this story is boring and the ending is a disappointment. “Don’t you think we are going too far? Should we not break up this seance?” (p. 118). No, Mr. Arthur Conan Doyle, I think you should have gone further.

The Ring of Thoth (Five Stars)

And this is the best story in the collection. Taking place in the Louvre and centering on an Egyptologist, it’s a mummy story with heart! “When, however, the last roll had been removed from the four-thousand-year-old head, it was all that he could do to stifle an outcry of amazement” (pp. 134-135).

The Los Amigos Fiasco (Three Stars)

A tale about a botched execution that begins with electrocution and moves on from there: “Do you not clearly see that the smaller dose is the more deadly?” (p. 153).

How it Happened (Two Stars)

This is the worst story in the collection, partly because it is way too short. It is about someone trying to figure out what occurred in a car crash they were in: “I heard the crash. I was conscious of flying through the air, and then—and then!” (p. 163).

Lot No. 249 (Four Stars)

Another mummy story, this one taking place at a college and being more traditional in its focus on horror rather than heart: “Beside him, among his litter of strange possessions, towered the mummy case, with its sale number 249 still stuck upon its front, and its hideous occupant stiff and stark within it” (p. 206).

“De Profundis” (Three Stars)

And here we have a tale about a guy who is ill taking a ride on a ship and going missing at sea: “Your ship’s out there, depend upon it, away out in the Atlantic, and you’ll hear of it time enough, for the weather is breaking” (p. 218). There is a substantive undercurrent in this story, but I couldn’t connect the dots to figure out its meaning: “As the beast of old must have one young human life as a tribute every year, so to our Empire we throw from day to day the pick and flower of our youth” (p. 210).

Lift (Three Stars)

Herein, a guy goes on a date with the woman he loves and has a premonition that something bad may be about to happen: “But when imminent danger is threatening me I got these strange forebodings” (p. 224).

[Tristram Shandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of Spectres, Mummies, and Other Dubious Fellows

Ah, Arthur Conan Doyle, one of the literary beacons of my adolescent years! I have always enjoyed him for the strangely soothing influence his Sherlock Holmes stories would invariably exert over me for all the thrills they contained. Putting every incident in life down to neat cause-and-effect relationships and making logical deduction and inference the one leading principle of looking at things, and even succeeding with it all. What a hero Holmes was to me! And what a hero Doyle himself was – for writing all those stories without ever getting boring and using a rather small vocabulary, thus obligingly considering my needs as a non-native English speaker.

Later I found out that there was also another Doyle, one that wallowed in spiritualism and that came up with tales of mystery and the unknown, and this one struck an altogether different tone from the Doyle who lent his voice to the chronicler of the master sleuth Sherlock Holmes. The Great Keinplatz Experiment is a collection of short stories mainly, though not exclusively, focusing on the supernatural and varying in quality. In the following I am going to give a short overview on the stories united in this compilation.

The Brown Hand: This is a story of a ghost haunting a doctor who owes him big. I cannot say that I found it very gripping in tone and atmosphere, and I have to confess that I found the denouement unintentionally comical. Maybe this story inspired the ludicrous TV show The Ghost Whisperer, not that there would be an awful lot of inspiration needed to come up with such a load of poppycock.

The Usher of Lea House School: A very uninspired story about the owner of a school who allows himself to be bullied by an especially crotchety and uncouth teacher. The surprise you are supposed to feel at the end will be, at best, mild.

B.24: Another crime story, this time about a burglar who is involuntarily made accessory, or rather: witness, to murder most foul. Cherchez la femme, and all that. This was the first decent story in the book, if you ask me.

The Great Keinplatz Experiment: Here we have Doyle dealing with his penchant for spiritualism. A very funny story, though, which takes its topic lightly. It is also quite entertaining to experience Doyle revel in certain German expressions like “Donner und Blitzen!”, and I wonder if my countrymen ever spoke like that.

Cyprian Overbeck Wells. A Literary Mosaic: The comedy in this story, which can be called a tongue-in-cheek pastiche of different English and Scottish author’s styles and topics, is finer and therefore more enjoyable still than the Keinplatz Experiment. I really loved this story about an aspiring author’s dream of how the literary masters of three centuries assemble in order to write a story.

Playing with Fire: This was my second favourite in the compilation, next to Cyprian Overbeck Wells. Doyle is in spiritualism once more, only this time, the mood is much darker, and you know that the author of this story knew what he was writing about when he described a séance. A very gripping, fast-moving, atmospherically dense tale that will make your blood run cold!

The Ring of Thoth: The story about a hobby Egyptologist witnessing a strange ceremony in a nocturnal museum is pretty well-known because it is a regular in horror story anthologies, and not without reason.

The Los Amigos Fiasco: A burlesque about electrocuting a criminal, and a good example of less sometimes being more.

How It Happened: Another fascinating and surprising ghost story. It may have been even more surprising to Doyle’s contemporaries than to us Twilight Zone contemporaries.

Lot No.249: A decent ghost story about a medical student whose neighbour is still living with his mummy. You may also know it from one or the other horror story anthology. There are some fine moments in the story but the ending is rather uninspired.

De Profundis: A story whose point seems to be to convince its readers of the existence of wraiths, in the sense of the ghosts of people who have recently died and who courteously make a last apparition to those who are dear to them. Probably Doyle, who also believed in fairies, actually believed in wraiths. The story itself, though, has a very nice twist.

The Lift: A breathtaking, fast-paced story about a religious fanatic who wants to kill some people that are in his power. I could easily picture this as a movie since Doyle has already laid the proper groundwork as to fleshing out the characters and providing action.

All in all, this story collection will not only fairly entertain you but also probably show you that Doyle should not be merely seen as the creator of Sherlock Holmes or The Lost World. He could be quite funny at times, as when he mimics Defoe, Swift, Smollett, Scott and, most hilariously the “animal-magnetico-electro-hysterical-biological-mysterious sort of” style used by Bulwer-Lytton and then has the other classical authors comment like this:

”’Gadzooks, master,’ cried Smollett, who had been sniggering for some time back. ‘It seems to me that there is little danger of any one venturing to dispute that style with you.’
‘It's all your own,’ murmured Sir Walter.
‘And very pretty, too,’ quoth Lawrence Sterne, with a malignant grin. ‘Pray sir, what language do you call it?’”

There are also examples of Bierce-like sarcasm, as when he writes about a criminal:

”Warner had been wanted by the law, and by nobody else, for many years.”,

and Doyle also struck it home with hypochondriac me with the following metaphor of the human body:

”that strange internal kingdom of which we are the hapless and helpless monarchs.”

To cut a long review short: Many of the authors Doyle had assemble in his story of Cyprian Wells might have laid more justified claim to literary fame, and yet this short story collection shows that Doyle was quite a Jack-of-all-trades.

[Prerazmišljavanje - Katarina Kostić · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

Čekala sam da upadne Skubi Du i pokaže da je sve prevara :(

Deo je do prevoda (SCI&FI izdanje imam), ali nije sve u prevodu, priče su mi skroz roto i plitke, a ja ne volim roto i plitko kad nema poentu. Ko da ih je pisao da bi platio kiriju.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone familiar with the name of Arthur Conan Doyle will think of Sherlock Holmes. Those who like classic sci-fi may have discovered his Professor Challenger stories. Others may have stumbled on the historical novels, for which Conan Doyle most wanted to be remembered.

What is less well-known among the works of this versatile writer are his works concerning horror and the supernatural. These are generally short stories or a novella, and perhaps that partly explains their obscurity.

This volume captures a number of the stories. Quality is variable, but nothing here is dull. I was not greatly enamoured of ‘A Literary Mosaic’ where a prospective author has help in overcoming his writer’s block by the spirits of a series of famous writers, each contributing a section of a story. It does at least allow Conan Doyle to have fun in imitating a number of serious writers.

Perhaps the most interesting stories here are the two concerning mummies. Conan Doyle was one of the first writers to exploit the exciting potential of the ancient Egyptian corpses with their air of mystery. It is fun to see early examples of this story that helped to create some of the familiar tropes, whilst not being confined by them.

Lot 49 has the now-familiar sight of a mummy being brought back to life, and then being used to attack the enemies of an unpleasant student. Curiously he is not of Egyptian origin, and he is not avenging a curse or attacking descendants of enemies in a past life.

The mummy is not the shambling creature of movie legend, but a fast-moving intelligent creature. Despite this, the mummy is a strangely inefficient killer, and all of its victims escape. The story ends anti-climactically after a build-up suggesting a final fight that never occurs.

There is no curse in the other mummy story, The Ring of Thoth. The title sounds like a dreary fantasy novel, but thankfully the story is not. This time the mummy is not even revived. Conan Doyle helps set up another famous trope – the ancient Egyptian who is alive today, and pining for reunion with an ancient Egyptian woman he once loved.

Some of the familiar conventions are absent however. She is not reincarnated in a modern woman, and he is not an old mummy himself, but a man who has lived since ancient Egyptian times. He is not seeking to revive her, but to find a way of joining her in death.

Another story of a man finds longevity in life is The Los Amigos Fiasco. The story is reminiscent of 1930s sci-fi movies. A convicted felon is due to be executed with electricity, but his executioners make the profound error of assuming that an even bigger electrical shock will be more efficient.

In fact it has the opposite effect, and makes the convict stronger. Sadly Conan Doyle does not more fully exploit the implications of a super-strong and invincible criminal, and the story tantalisingly ends there.

Criminality features elsewhere in stories that are sensationalist but lack a supernatural element. In The Usher of Lea House, the head of a school seems to be mysteriously under the influence of a brutish teacher for reasons that only become clear at the end. B.24 is about a burglar whose presence is used by an opportunistic woman to kill her bullying husband, and frame him for the murder.

A more interesting variation is The Lift. This time the criminal is a religious fanatic who conspires to cut the moorings that hold the titular lift together, causing the passengers to plunge to their deaths.

There is a supernatural element here, in that the main character has premonitions of danger, but the chilling part of the story is the frightening lengths that an extremist will go to, even endangering ordinary civilians in his wish to placate his god. This kind of terrorism that sets human life at so low a stamp has become only too familiar to us today.

Premonitions form a part of De Profundis too, in which a wife sees her dead husband on the water at around the time he has died. Most of the stories in this volume lie between the gullible faith in spiritualism that marred Conan Doyle’s work The Land of Mist, and the rationalist explanations of Sherlock Holmes stories such as The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Sussex Vampire. Here the stories are accepted as supernatural fact, but written for entertainment, not to preach spiritualism.

De Profundis is the most sceptical of the stories. While the wife believes her husband appeared in a vision, the narrator takes an Occam’s Razor approach and suggests a more realistic explanation that is somehow even more macabre.

The story is also of interest in showing the limitations of Conan Doyle’s vision. It opens with fulsome praise for the wonders of the British Empire, a sentiment that does not hold up well today. Conan Doyle even suggested that our rule over foreign folk of different skin colour has somehow made us more broad-minded. He says without irony:

“And as the frontier has been broadened, the mind of Britain has been broadened, too, spreading out until all men can see that the ways of the island are continental, even as those of the Continent are insular.”

We’re broad-minded. It’s those foreigners who are insular.

Still there is a kind of broad-mindedness in ‘The Brown Hand’, one of the best stories in the volume. Yes, I saw the story title too, but bear with me. On this occasion the ghost is more of a pathetic figure than a threat.

In this story, a man placates his rich relative by finding a solution to a ghostly problem. The man is haunted by the ghost of an Indian whose hand he amputated in Bombay. The Indian patient asked for his hand to be kept so that he could be intact in the afterlife. Unfortunately the hand was destroyed in a fire.

Now the ghost of the Indian continues to plague the doctor, begging for the hand that his spirit believes is necessary for his passage into the next world. Fortunately the resourceful narrator finds a way of helping the spirit to find peace.

Out of body experiences can be found in other stories. The Great Keinplatz Experiment is a story that could almost have been written by H G Wells. It takes a fantastical experience and uses it for comic effect. Of course Wells would have given the story a scientific explanation, whereas Conan Doyle attributes it to spiritualism.

A professor carries out experiments in psychic phenomena with a student. Their spirits leave their bodies, but unfortunately somehow return in each other’s body, leading to all kinds of humorous misunderstandings with people they know.

In ‘How It Happened’, a man finds himself outside his body after a crash, leading to a final neat plot twist. Finally there is ‘Playing with Fire’, a rare cautionary tale about meddling with psychics where a foolish man causes the spirit of a unicorn to raise havoc and destroy the room.

There may be better works of the supernatural and better works by Conan Doyle, but these stories are enormous fun. It is a pity they are not better known.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.9⭐

The Brown Hand 4⭐
The Usher of Lea House School 4⭐
B. 24 4.25⭐
The Great Keinplatz Experiment 3.5 ⭐
Cyprian Overbeck Wells 3.5⭐
Playing with Fire 3.5⭐
The Ring of Thoth 4⭐
The Los Amigos Fiasco 3.25⭐
How It Happened 5⭐
Lot No. 249 4.5⭐
De Profundis 3.25⭐
The Lift 4⭐

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having loved Doyle’s short stories, both Sherlock Holmes and his collection ‘Tales of Terror and Mystery’ I was disappointed with this collection which brings together some Doyle’s less spectacular writings. There are a few spooky stand-outs - Lot 249 being the most famous, but some are pretty mundane such as ‘man loses control of car and dies - the end.’ And although one can, and Doyle does, do a lot within the confines of a short story, a lot of these were over so quickly that the characters couldn’t be developed, nor much happen in the plot. He’s still got an excellent writing style so - 3 stars.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I chose this collection for "Lot No. 249," which is adapted in Tales from the Darkside. It's a mixed bag of short stories with two really good ones, some okay ones, and many boring to average. Still, it ends strong.

I. "The Brown Hand" 2.5 Stars
Some colonialist attitudes here that will not sit well with 2019 audiences, but that aside, it's just kind of a fine story. The spooky isn't really there; it's just kind of sad.

II. "The Usher of Lea House School" 2 Stars
It's a third rate Sherlock Holmes story with a more boring main character. I suppose it is about how coworkers often suck, but I didn't need a story to tell me that.

III. "B. 24" 2.5 Stars
This is better than the last two, but seems pretty incredibly sexist. Maybe that was the point?

IV. "The Great Keinplatz Experiment" 2.5 Stars
Body swap stories have come a long way. I think the hilarious moments just go too far. Like, really, they don't realize fairly quickly?

V. "Cyprian Overbeck Wells" 1 Star
There might be something literary going on here, but I am not even close enough to interested to care. I can just read other authors, Mr. Doyle. I don't need your pastiche.

VI. "Playing with Fire" 3 Stars
This might be the sin of low expectations, but this one actually had some cleverness to it. The anticipated event is a little lacking for a modern audience, but I like the connections. I could really do without some of the psuedophilosophy, but Doyle loved his seances, so what're you gonna do?

VII. "The Ring of Thoth" 4 Stars
This one is really cool. I think the mystery and the central character are quite worthwhile. It uses the late 19th century Egyptophilia well.

VIII. "The Los Amigos Fiasco" 2 Stars
In the 19th century, electricity could do anything, but this is no Frankenstein.

IX. "How It Happened" 2 Stars
Predictable and brief.

X. "Lot No. 249" 3 Stars
This is the reason I chose this collection, and it's a good bit of fun. The ending was a bit disappointing, but much of it was a cool creepy tale. Plus, I'm always down for a good mummy.

XI. "De Profundis" 3.5 Stars
Latin for "out of the depths," this one has quite the ride; then, the ending seems like it's going to be really disappointing, but ultimately, it isn't. I found it really disturbing, but also pretty awesome.

XII. "The Lift" 3 Stars
Some good action, though like many of these, the resolution is too quick.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty classic Conan Doyles stories! Nothing out of the ordinary.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found it to be an interesting read. Of its' time.

[Razor · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.25

[#DÏ4B7Ø Chinnamasta-Bhairav]

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~}-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-{~

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To SEE a WORLD in a Grain of Sand,
And a HEAVEN in a Wild Flower,
Hold INFINITY in the palm of your hand
And ETERNITY in an Hour"
~ William Blake ~

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Form is Emptiness; Emptiness is form.
Form is not different than Emptiness;
Emptiness is not different than form
~ Heart Sutra ~

Like the ocean and its waves,
inseparable yet distinct

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" I and The Father are one,
I am The Truth,
The Life and The Path.”

Like a river flowing from its source,
connected and continuous

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Thy kingdom come.
Let the reign of divine
Truth, Life, and Love
be established in me,
and rule out of me all sin;
and may Thy Word
enrich the affections of all mankind

A mighty oak tree standing firm against the storm,
As sunlight scatters the shadows of night
A river nourishing the land it flows through

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[Cameron Trost · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection features an assortment of tales that vary in terms of length, content, theme, and style. I've given it four stars because the best stories really were very impressive. They are "The Brown Hand", "B. 24", "How It Happened", "Lot No. 249", "The Ring of Thoth", and "The Lift". With the exception of "B. 24" and "The Lift", those same stories can be found in "Tales of Unease", which is one of my favourite short story collections.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful entertaining listening 🔰😀

Another will written novel of ten short stories without Sherlock Holmes and Watson by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Each with its own characters and an entertaining story line with a great 👍 conclusion. I would highly recommend this novel to fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or will written novels. Enjoy the adventure of reading 👓 or 🎶 listening to books 📚 2022

[Pat · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Actually, read in the Project Gutenberg transcription, which has few typos.)

Tales of the weird, some involving ghosts and other supernatural goings-on; the last story ("The Lift") is just a terrifying adventure with no supernatural elements. Stories are fairly short and straightforward and certainly not that creepy. A pleasant read.

[Jimmy Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (ACD) has been typecast as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, and rightly so. However, ACD was a prolific short story writer with few peers. There is some excellent fiction in this collection. The Great Keinplatz Experiment, published in 1894, must have been considered surreal.

[Liz · Rating 2 out of 5]

This review is for the short story The Great Keinplatz Experiment only. I can't say that I am a fan of this story of a failed experiment in mesmerism involving a professor and one of his students. It's not a bad story, it just seems silly to me. Audible edition.

[Timothy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I had recently read about a third of the stories in Round the Fire Stories by Doyle, I still found a couple of the other stories to be very good. Of course, like many of his non-Holmes books, the majority are fair at best.

[Naomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great author, great ideas, kind of "meh" on the execution. I was tempted to skim in far too many places.

[Dantegideon · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very mixed bag. There are one or two splendid stories in here, several good ones, and some absolute rubbish. Worth pressing through for the good ones.

[Dylan Kakoulli · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disappointingly dull and tediously laborious to follow, this was not quite the “Tales of Twilight and the Unseen” I had ghoulishly (more like foolishly) imagined.

1 sad star

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

an good collection 0f stories,very hard to put down,until the very end

[Andrew Corsini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Arthur Conan Doyle was well-renowned for his crackpot supernatural beliefs, perhaps as much as he was for his Sherlock Holmes stories, so it's quite surprising his own takes on terror tales aren't even better. That said, these stories are merely very, very good. There's the strong opener "The Brown Hand" which conjures up the ominous nature of a Holmes story like "The Sign of Four" to make a good, if not great riff on "The Monkey's Paw". The most famous story of the bunch is probably "What Happened" with its friend picking up friend who they don't know is dead yarn ("You're dead" "I am, and so are you"). That said, the best story of the bunch I found was Lot no. 249 with its Oxbridge Egyptian mummy tale. Special mention goes to the vivid way Doyle describes a seance in "Playing with Fire". These aren't great stories, and they do come off as what they are -- a great writer from another genre dabbling in horror -- but let's not forget, some of those Holmes stories were chilling; these tales are good enough, and Doyle gives it his all.

[Fachrina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though all the stories are about the supernatural, not all of them are frightening. One is actually quite funny. The singular (to borrow the book's diction) thing about this collection of short stories is the writing style. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is, of course, famous for his Sherlock Holmes stories. Therefore, although being a book about supernatural tales, this book reads like a detective story instead. The emphasis is not on the atmospherial setting of the stories, but more to the what. The best way to read this book is by reading it like reading a detective story: find out the clues given from the very beginning about what would happen in the story, what the supernatural entity would be, and what the twist would be, and see if your guess is proven.

[Carly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book of short stories wasn't quite what I had expected it to be but I did enjoy it nonetheless. As always, Doyle's writing is exquisite and, I think, well ahead of its time, but the majority of the stories within the compendium lacked the sense of unease I was hoping for. That's not to say they were uninteresting.

As another reviewer has said, the quality of the stories are variable but my particular favourites were:

The Brown Hand
The Usher of Lea House School
B.24
The Ring of Thoth
The Los Amigos Fiasco
How it Happened
Lot No. 24

I would hesitate to pick the book in its entirety up again but I'd like to revisit some of the tales listed above as Doyle's writing is always a pleasure to read.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short story with a touch of spiritualism set in Germany. A university professor is doing experiments involving hypnosis. He tests a theory that when a person is under hypnosis, his soul leaves his body with the most unexpected results!

[Ade Couper · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was.....a disappointment.

I am a big Conan Doyle fan:the Sherlock Holmes stories have been part of my life for a long time. These tales are less well-known, I think mainly because they're not that good.

Conan Doyle was evangelical in his belief in the Spirit World, and many of these tales purport to show the influence of "others", but frankly they don't stick in the mind at all. The only tale which does is the 1st in the volume, "The Brown Hand", with its story of a ghost seeking to right an injustice....

Library or Secondhand would be my recommendation.

[Robert Hepple · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tales of Twilight and the Unseen is a 1922 collection of 12 short stories, most of which were first published in the late 19th century. Not surprisingly, the stories include elements of supernatural and the macabre at time. What did surprise me, in my ignorance of the author, was the inclusion of some tales that are both light-hearted and humorous. Very enjoyable.

[Clark Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good Short Stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

This book of short stories was a freebie on Early Books. I could not resist a book at this price. There are many short stories here, but there is no table of contents for me to count how many there are. I rather enjoyed reading short stories by the creator of Sherlock Holmes.