Henry Chapman Mercer (1856-1930) was, amongst other things, an eccentric archaologist, historian, architect, antiquarian collector and author of Gothic horror stories very much after the fashion of M. R. James.

- 'The Dolls' Castle' is the creepy story of a haunted house with a sinister past which uses old, rotting dolls to lure unwary children away from their parents.
- The Wolf Book is the story of a professor who spends the summer travelling in Hungary and Romania in search of rare manuscripts. At the monastery at Jollok, he learns that the library was plundered a hundred years earlier by a sinister nobleman who was rumoured to be a werewolf.
- 'Castle Valley' tells the strange supernatural tale of an artist who gazes into an old crystal and sees a vision of a beautiful Gothic castle, with which he gradually becomes obsessed.