Spooky Stories About Authors of Classic Literature

A selection of strange stories about authors of classic literature, all of them believed to be true, to help get you in the spooky spirit. 👻

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While on their honeymoon Victor Hugo gave his new bride a neat little parcel, from which, as she eagerly opened it, a great bat flew up at her: that was the writer’s way of offering her his charming verses: la chauve-souris. We’re not sure thoughtful would quite be the word we’d use… 

A quick search online will show you that Mary Shelley really does put the ‘goth’ in ‘gothic’. It’s said that she carried around the calcified heart of her deceased husband wrapped in a silken shroud. After she died Percy Shelley’s heart was found in her desk wrapped in the pages of one of his last poems, Adonais. 

Emily Brontë cauterised her own wound when she was bitten by what she believed to be a rabid dog. Not wanting to worry her family she used a red hot poker and seared her own flesh to the bone. She then waited three weeks for any symptoms to surface. Fortunately, she was okay. 

When there’s something strange in your neighbourhood, who you gonna call?! Charles Dickens, apparently. Yup, one of the most famous writers of the Victorian era was a keen member of a ghost hunting group. Not only that, but he was also fascinated with and practised hypnotism. 

Agatha Christie helped catch notorious serial killer Graham Frederick Young through her writing. In her novel, The Pale Horse the murderer poisons their victims using thallium sulfate which causes breathing difficulties, fainting spells, slurred speech, hair loss and finally death. After reading the book, a doctor made the link between said symptoms and  a mysterious ‘bug’ that was killing people in a nearby town alerting the authorities that the deaths may be the work of something more sinister. 

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