Lost in a Pyramid

‘As he rushed madly and wildly through the night, he could hear a swift, dry patter behind him, and could see that this horror was bounding at his heels, with blazing eyes and one stringy arm out-thrown.’

A mummy disappears from its sarcophagus in the dead of night; a crazed Egyptologist entombs a beautiful young woman; a student at Oxford reveals the terrible secrets of an ancient papyrus. These are among the 12 tales from the golden age of the mummy story collected here—stories that still cast a spell with their different versions of the mummy’s curse, some chilling, others darkly romantic and even comic. This enthralling collection is introduced by Andrew Smith, a leading expert on ghost stories and Victorian gothic.

Contents

Introduction
Lost in a Pyramid, or the Mummy's Curse (1869) short story by Louisa May Alcott
A Night with King Pharaoh (1869) novelette by Baron Schlippenback, KSL
My New Year's Eve Among the Mummies (1878) short story by Grant Allen
Professor Petrus (1884) novelette by Justin Huntly McCarthy
The Curse of Vasartas (1889) short story by Eva M. Henry
Lot No. 249 (1968) novelette by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Unseen Man's Story [The Symposium] (1893) short story by Julian Hawthorne
The Story of Baelbrow [Flaxman Low] (1898) short story by Hesketh Prichard and Kate Prichard
A Professor of Egyptology (1904) short story by Guy Boothby
The Dead Hand (1904) short story by Hester White
The Necklace of Dreams (1910) short story by W. G. Peasgood