Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author's brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.

In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted 'Top Tens' across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?

The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme. Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature.

Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made. If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something.

In this volume our classic authors invite us in to share hospitality at a house most of us are ever keen to veer away from. But the invitation has been issued and it would be rude to disappoint, despite the rising fear that begins to take its chilling grip on us.

01 - The Top 10 - Haunted House - An Introduction

02 - The Fall of the House of Usher - Part 1 by Edgar Allan Poe

03 - The Fall of the House of Usher - Part 2 by Edgar Allan Poe

04 - They by Rudyard Kipling

05 - The Rats in the Walls by H P Lovecraft

06 - The Ebony Frame by Edith Nesbit

07 - Lost Hearts by M R James

08 - The Room in the Tower by E F Benson

09 - The Old Nurse's Story by Elizabeth Gaskell

10 - An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street by Sheridan Le Fanu

11 - The Empty House by Algernon Blackwood

12 - Decay by Marjorie Bowen