
In the spring of 1886 a curious traveler arrives in Paris, drawn to the narrow Rue M. le Prince by a puzzling inheritance. The address, 252, is nothing more than a dark, seventeenth‑century stone arch set between two bright, modern façades, its rusted lantern and cobweb‑laden doorway hinting at forgotten secrets. The narrator’s old friend, Eugene d’Ardeche, has inherited the property from a notoriously occult aunt, yet he lives elsewhere, leaving the strange house to stand empty.
Local gossip swirls around the vacant mansion: three short‑term tenants have fled within days, each plagued by inexplicable horrors that left them in hospital beds. No sounds, no apparitions—only an oppressive sense of dread that seeps into the mind. Intrigued and uneasy, the visitor agrees to explore the house that night, hoping to uncover the source of the unseen terror that has rendered it uninhabitable.
Language
en
Duration
~2 hours (165K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by David Clarke, Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
Release date
2008-09-22
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
Subjects

1863–1942
Best known for giving American campuses and churches their grand Gothic look, this architect was also a prolific writer with strong ideas about art, faith, and public life. His buildings helped shape the visual identity of institutions like Princeton and West Point.
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