Elizabeth Gaskell's chilling Gothic tales blend the real and the supernatural to eerie, compelling effect. Disappearances , inspired by local legends of mysterious vanishings, mixes gossip and fact; Lois the Witch , a novella based on an account of the Salem witch hunts, shows how sexual desire and jealousy lead to hysteria; while in The Old Nurse s Story a mysterious child roams the freezing Northumberland moors. Whether darkly surreal, such as The Poor Clare , where an evil doppelgdnger is formed by a woman s bitter curse, or mischievous like Curious, if True , a playful reworking of fairy tales, all the stories in this volume form a stark contrast to the social realism of Gaskell s novels, revealing a darker and more unsettling style of writing.