Tales of Superstition and Terror

This terrifying collection features two stories of superstition, one by M.R. James, titled Number 13, and one by Edgar Allen Poe. Here is a description: Number 13 A man's brief stay at an unrecommended hotel in Viborg, Denmark raises questions about the superstitious local aversion to the number thirteen. Who is staying in that room 13 next door, for example, and why is there no room 13 listed down in the hotel lobby? Not before our visitor had been in bed for some minutes, had read a bit, put out the light, and turned over preparing to sleep, did it occur to him that there had been that room 13. He had seen it after going down to get a book. While the blackboard of the hotel did not list a Number 13, he'd mistakenly tried the door there on his way back to his room at Number 14, and he had heard scurrying feet inside. Now he felt sorry he had not chosen that room as his. That way he could have extended the hotelier a small favor by occupying that neighboring room, which local travelers probably shunned. No doubt that would have given his host a chance to say that a sophisticated British gent had occupied it for several weeks and liked it a great deal. But probably it was not listed in the lobby because it was used as a servant's room. A nice rumination this all was, but it all fell apart in the light of day when he discovered there was no room Number 13. What is worse, that would not be the final time the illusion of this phantom room would trouble his sleep. The Black Cat The narrator professes to care deeply for animals, and his most cherished p-p-p-pet was a c-c-cat named Pluto. Sane was he, he says! But he admits he killed It: "Through the instrumentality of the Fiend Intemperance, it had (I blush to confess it) radically declined. I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others...I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence....My pets, of course, were made to feel the change in my disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-used them. For Pluto, however, I still retained sufficient regard to restrain me from maltreating him. In contrast I made no scruple of maltreating the rabbits, the monkey, or even the dog. But my disease grew upon me — for what disease is like Alcohol! At length even Pluto, now becoming old, and consequently somewhat peevish — began to experience the effects of my ill temper."