Fantasy and Horror Classics, $0.99, ISBN 978-1447405009
Horror, 2011 (Reissue)
The Horla is a classic of psychological horror, a masterful descent into madness, and an ironclad case for why you should never, under any circumstances, wave at passing boats.
Guy de Maupassant’s 1887 short story (an expansion of an even shorter story, because why not) is presented in the form of a journal kept by an upper-class Frenchman who, by all accounts, is living a perfectly cushy life until one fateful day. He sees a Brazilian three-masted ship, casually waves at it, and—boom—he has essentially just RSVP’d a supernatural entity into his home.
This spectral squatter, dubbed the Horla, is an invisible, possibly vampiric, possibly extradimensional, definitely terrible houseguest who enjoys drinking milk, sitting on the narrator’s chest, and causing general bad vibes.
Our unfortunate diarist quickly spirals into a full-blown existential crisis, plagued by insomnia, ghost allergies, and the absolute certainty that the Horla is not only ruining his life but is also a harbinger of humanity’s doom. A reasonable reaction to an unwanted visitor, truly.
Mr Maupassant, being the absolute unit of a writer that he was, delivers this tale with razor-sharp precision. Not a single word is wasted as we follow the narrator’s increasingly frantic scribblings, which veer from self-pity to scientific theorizing to outright paranoia. Is the Horla real? Is our man just losing his mind? Should we be more concerned that he’s contemplating arson as a valid extermination method? Who’s to say?
While The Horla is often credited as an inspiration for HP Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu, it honestly feels more like Dracula—if Dracula never showed up and just gaslit you from another dimension. The real horror here isn’t some cosmic monstrosity; it’s the dread of losing control over your own mind. And yet, at its core, this is still the story of a man losing his grip on reality over the metaphysical equivalent of an ominous draft.
In the hands of a lesser writer, The Horla could have been unintentionally hilarious or just plain tragic. But Maupassant makes it a tight, chilling read, proving that the scariest thing of all is not ghosts, not aliens, but one’s own slowly unraveling sanity. And maybe also Brazilian ships. Just to be safe, don’t wave.
