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The Spider
Heathen Short #6
Author
Hanns Heinz Ewers
Translator
First Edition
1908
Heathen Edition
2025
Refreshed
Pages
36
Heathen Genera
Arriving Soon-ish, Creepy AF
ISBN
979-8-90075-006-4
Up to this point I imagine everything very clearly, but I cannot see what should happen next. I know that the door opens. But then I stand before it, looking into a dark void. Clarimonda doesn’t come. Nothing comes. Nothing is there, only the black, impenetrable dark.
Sometimes, it seems to me that there can be no other Clarimonda but the one I see in the window; the one who plays gesture-games with me. I cannot imagine a Clarimonda wearing a hat, or a dress other than her black dress with the lilac motif. Nor can I imagine a Clarimonda without black gloves. The very notion that I might encounter Clarimonda somewhere in the streets or in a restaurant eating, drinking, or chatting is so improbable that it makes me laugh.
Hanns Heinz Ewers (1871–1943) was a German actor, poet, philosopher, fantasist, and occult provocateur best known for his decadent horror fiction. In 1908, he conjured “The Spider,” a chilling masterwork of psychological unraveling and compulsive entrapment. Set in a dim Parisian hotel room plagued by a string of ritualistic suicides, the story unfolds through the journal of a medical student whose rational inquiry slowly gives way to obsession. Across the street, a silent woman appears at her window, and her presence begins to weave into his thoughts as the boundary between watcher and watched quietly dissolves. Here, unseen forces seduce and ensnare, and madness arrives not with a scream but with silence, symmetry, and the slow tightening of a metaphysical web.
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Rate & Shelve It
"Unique, repelling, yet irresistible."
The International
Heathenry
Contents
Praise
Details
Heathenry
Arriving Soon-ish! Available NOW for pre-order (backorder) — expected to ship mid to late December.
Contents
Heathenry: Thoughts on the Text
“The Spider“
“The Spider“
Praise
“The following symbolic tale is from the pen of Hanns Heinz Ewers—the Edgar Allan Poe of Germany and one of the most notable authors writing in the German language. His fantastic imagination is perhaps best seen in the following story—unique, repelling, yet irresistible.” —The International
“If you like the weirdly horrible, read ‘The Spider’ by Hanns Heinz Ewers.” —The Springfield News-Sun
“ . . . themes that would have warmed the heart of a Poe or Bierce. Take, for instance, Hannz Heinz Ewers’ ‘The Spider.’ In this short-story the reader is treated to 15 minutes of chilled suspense that he will remember a long, long time.” —The Buffalo Times
“A tale as terrible as Edgar Allan Poe’s most ghastly story.” —The Fatherland
“In the present generation German horror-fiction is most notably represented by Hanns Heinz Ewers, who brings to bear on his dark conceptions an effective knowledge of modern psychology . . . short stories like ‘The Spider’ contain distinctive qualities which raise them to a classic level.” —H.P. Lovecraft
“Ewers’ horror is more utter than Poe’s, both in atmosphere and in incident.” —Walter F. Kohn, The New Republic
“Of Ewers’s short horror stories, the most famous is ‘The Spider,’ a splendid tale that presents . . . a narrative of spellbinding intensity. Ewers was fond of femme fatale creations, and in ‘The Spider’ he gives us one of the most nightmarish and original evil females in literature.” —Jack Sullivan, Horror Literature
Details
The Spider
Heathen Short #6Published: 2025
Format: Paperback
Interior: Black & White on Cream Paper
Pages: 36 (+2 POD)
Language: English
Annotations: x Footnotes
Illustrations: 4
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