The nine stories gathered together for Annual Macabre 2000 have one thing in common: all seem to have been forgotten about by their authors, and all have, in consequence, lain undisturbed in the pages of old periodicals, some for more than one hundred years. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw an explosion in magazine publication, and it is hardly surprising that treasures lie buried in the pages of yellowing journals; but what is amazing is that among the stories Jack Adrian has uncovered for this collection are ‘unknown’ tales by such masters of the macabre as E. Nesbit, S. Baring-Gould, Sax Rohmer, and Julian Hawthorne.

In settings which range from India to the west coast of America, and from a cruise to Greece to a boat-trip up the Rhine, these stories feature hauntings both horrific and benign, and show that, on occasion, the terrors of the supernatural are as nothing to the terrors which the mind of man can conceive.