A Haunting in Paris, A Truly Terrifying Tale: Paranormal Parlor, A Weiser Books Collection

By Ralph Adams Cram and Varla Ventura

Ralph Adams Cram was a master builder with a secret talent for occult horror writing. This wonderful short-story shows a side to this famous architect that proves his own dabblings as a writer are just as noteworthy as the Federal Building in Boston, one of Cram's most famous building designs. Besides deco architecture Cram is best known for the Gothic revival movement, and is the architect behind dozens of beautiful cathedrals and buildings throughout New England. A true gothic at heart, his story of No. 252 Rue M. le Prince in Paris--where dark magic lurks and horrors await any who dare enter--shows just how dark this draftsman could be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser
• Release date: Oct 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781619400085

Ralph Adams Cram

Ralph Adams Cram (1863--1942) was a master builder and architect who is known for his dozens of Gothic revival churches, college outbuildings, and public civic houses as well as making his mark as a pioneer of the Art Deco movement with the Federal Building in Boston, MA. Born to a Unitarian minister, he lived most of his youth as an agnostic until he had a dramatic conversion experience during a mass in Rome on Christmas Eve, 1887 and thereafter became a devout Catholic. He also had a penchant for the magical arts, and had a somewhat secret life as a writer of occult fiction, and his stories reflect his attention to architectural details.

Book preview

Gothic Revival

Introduction

Recently, after I'd finished reading The Haunters and the Haunted, or The House and the Brain by Edward Bulwer-Lytton—the author known for having written the iconic horror intro phrase It was a dark and stormy night—I realized I hadn't had nearly enough ghost stories for the week, so I immediately tucked into the next random selection from a volume of forgotten lore. Imagine my delight then when the author of this Parisian tale of terror, Ralph Adams Cram, made reference directly to The Haunters and the Haunted. Lytton originally wrote that story in 1859, and Cram's tale was written about forty years later, in 1895. Cram called the story No. 252 Rue M. le Prince and it was the first in a volume of stories called Of Black Spirits and White.

Though he wrote a few stories in his time, Cram was best known for a different kind of gothic undertaking. He was a rather famous architect in his day during the Gothic Revival movement at the turn of the twentieth century and was responsible for countless famous buildings, in particular cathedrals. Among his structures we find the Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, The Mather School in Dorchester, Massachusetts, the Public Library in Fall River, Massachusetts, The All Saints’ Church in Ashmont, Massachusetts, numerous buildings at Princeton University, along with dozens of others. In his later career he was a great designer of the Art Deco movement, and one of his buildings of distinction is the Federal Building in Boston.

These monumental masterpieces are Cram's living legacy, and he had a certain cult following in his time. In fact, H.P. Lovecraft called his contribution to horror fiction A memorably potent degree of vague regional horror through subtleties of atmosphere and description. (Trust me, from Lovecraft, that is a compliment.)

As with any classic tale of terror you will find here the suspenseful setting, the requisite