The Masque of the Red Death is a chilling tale by Edgar Allan Poe that explores themes of death and the illusion of safety. The story follows Prince Prospero and his attempt to escape a deadly plague known as the Red Death by secluding himself in his luxurious abbey.

Within the abbey's fortified walls, Prospero hosts a grand masquerade ball in seven distinct rooms, each adorned in a unique color scheme. The revelry is abruptly interrupted by the arrival of a mysterious figure, disguised as a victim of the Red Death, who moves ominously through each room.

As Prospero confronts this spectral intruder, he is met with his own demise, illustrating the story's underlying message of the inevitability of death. The guests, too, fall victim to the Red Death, as the tale concludes with the triumph of "Darkness and Decay".

Poe's masterful use of gothic elements and allegory invites readers to ponder the futility of trying to escape one's fate, making this story a timeless piece of macabre fiction.

The Cask of Amontillado is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe and first published in the November 1846 issue of Godey's Lady's Book. The story is set in a nameless Italian city during an unspecified year, possibly in the eighteenth century, and concerns the deadly revenge taken by the narrator on a friend who he claims has insulted him.

Like several of Poe's stories, and in keeping with the 19th-century fascination with the subject, the narrative revolves around a person being buried alive – in this case, by immurement.

The Machine Stops is a science fiction short story by E. M. Forster. Initially published in The Oxford and Cambridge Review in November 1909, this story was later included in Forster's collection The Eternal Moment and Other Stories in 1928.

This novella is particularly notable for its remarkable predictions of new technologies such as instant messaging and the internet.

"It is stripped off - the paper - in great patches . . . The colour is repellent . . . In the places where it isn’t faded and where the sun is just so - I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about . . ."

Based on the author’s own experiences, 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is the chilling tale of a woman driven to the brink of insanity by the ‘rest cure’ prescribed after the birth of her child. Isolated in a crumbling colonial mansion, in a room with bars on the windows, the tortuous pattern of the yellow wallpaper winds its way into the recesses of her mind.