A charming, faintly sinister stranger arrives at a quiet gathering and slowly bends a whole household to his will in this masterful tale of mesmerism and creeping menace.
First published in 1819, The Uncanny Guest (Der unheimliche Gast) unfolds as a fireside circle is disturbed by a magnetic, otherworldly visitor whose power over a young woman grows ever more alarming. Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776 – 1822), the German Romantic jurist, composer, and critic, was a supreme conjurer of dread in polite society, and this chilling story shows him at the height of his powers.