Oldstyle Tales Press

Haunted by Spanish superstition and Moorish folklore, this tale serves as a sequel to Tales of the Alhambra’s “The Arabian Astrologer,” reuniting readers with the enchanted Gothic princess while further developing one of the central morals of the Alhambra legends: that humility and virtue are ultimately rewarded, while greed and corruption invite humiliation and ruin. Opening on...

Nietzsche famously wrote: “He who fights monsters should look to it that he not become a monster. And if you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” This would be a fine thesis for the following story which revisits some of Bierce’s most beloved ideas: the hubris of intellectual pride, the false veneer of civilization which is easily eroded by spiritual terror,...

In yet another episode from The Alhambra, Irving returns to several of his favorite themes: fate, love, honor, memory, and the terrible human cost of violence. Like so many of the tales collected in The Sketch Book, this story meditates on the power of the human heart to contend against mortality, and the corresponding power of mortality to interrupt, distort, or extinguish the ...

One of Irving’s least well-known ghost stories is perhaps also one of his most interesting and personal. Like “Guests from Gibbet Island,” it is a rare foray into the classic ghost story. Most of his ghost stories end up like “Rip Van Winkle” or “The Bold Dragoon” – in that they purport to tell supernatural histories, but are laced with satire, cheek, and burlesque overtones mak...

Walpurgis Night—observed on the eve of May 1—sits in that peculiar category of European traditions that feel at once familiar and slightly unsettled, as if they have drifted across centuries without ever fully settling into a single meaning. On the surface, it is tied to the feast of Saint Walpurga, an early medieval abbess whose memory was honored across parts of Christian Euro...