Nightmare Tales

What It's About

Nightmare Tales is a collection of nine short stories of the supernatural, gathering pieces Blavatsky wrote across much of her adult life, from the mid-1870s until shortly before her death. The stories move between hauntings, doubles, murder, and visions that reach across distance and time, all set against the everyday backdrops of small European towns, steamships, and drawing rooms. It was first published posthumously in 1907 by the Aryan Theosophical Press.

Key Concepts

Where her doctrinal works argue for a system of occult belief, these stories dramatise it: clairvoyance, karma, astral doubles, and psychic visions all appear as plot devices rather than teachings, giving a more accessible, fictionalised view of the ideas at the heart of Theosophy.

About the Author

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) was a Russian-born occultist and writer, best known as co-founder of the Theosophical Society in 1875. She spent much of her life travelling before settling to write on esoteric philosophy, spiritualism, and comparative religion, becoming one of the most controversial and influential occult figures of the nineteenth century.