Summary
Summary of Tales of Terror and Mystery
Tales of Terror and Mystery at a glance
Summary: 8 min to read
- Reading time
- About 4 h 45 min3 h 45 min fast, 5 h 40 min slow
- Length
- 67,900 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1922by Arthur Conan Doyle
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
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Key ideas
Key idea 1
Believable details make the impossible frightening
Joyce-Armstrong believes the deaths of fellow aviators need a better explanation. He prepares to investigate the upper air with oxygen, thick clothing, a new monoplane and a shotgun. His account records heights and times like a flight log, making his journey feel carefully observed rather than imagined.
Above the clouds, he finds giant bell-shaped creatures and thin gray air snakes. At first they seem beautiful and harmless. That contrast matters: Doyle builds trust in the pilot’s practical observations before allowing wonder to give way to dread.
Key idea 2
An object may preserve human terror
In The Leather Funnel, Lionel Dacre proposes that an object can retain the force of overwhelming human emotion.
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Key idea 3
Polite questions can conceal cold intentions
Two scholars sit together in Rome, but their conversation is not an equal exchange.
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Key idea 4
Pride and greed weaken sound judgment
Douglas Stone is a brilliant surgeon whose confidence and expensive tastes leave him open to persuasion.
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Key idea 5
A doubter slowly yields to fear
Dr. James Hardcastle comes to Derbyshire to recover from tuberculosis, not to investigate legends.
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Key idea 6
Generosity can hide a dangerous purpose
Marshall King visits his wealthy cousin Everard hoping for help with his debts.
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Key idea 7
Ordered facts sharpen an impossible puzzle
In The Lost Special, a man urgently hires a train to carry him toward Paris.
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Key idea 8
Public certainty can outrun the facts
The Man with the Watches presents a railway puzzle that fills newspapers with theories.
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Key idea 9
Small details prepare the coming unease
Across these tales, Doyle begins with something steady: a calm witness, a document or a conversation by a fire.
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Who it’s for
Readers who enjoy ghost stories, clever puzzles and tales told by firelight will love this book, as will fans of Sherlock Holmes curious about the author's other side.
What this book is
Why would a pilot carry a shotgun to forty thousand feet? In The Horror of the Heights, the first tale in this book, an aviator named Joyce-Armstrong believes the upper air holds jungles, and that the things living there are worse than tigers. His bloodstained notebook is found in a field. Nobody can say what became of him.
Tales of Terror and Mystery gathers twelve stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, the Scottish doctor who created Sherlock Holmes. Many are told as diaries, confessions or letters. You get a haunted funnel, a hidden catacomb, a vanished train and a huge black cat, all built from exact times, exact places and a calm witness.
In this summary
- 1Believable details make the impossible frighteningFree
- 2An object may preserve human terror
- 3Polite questions can conceal cold intentions
- 4Pride and greed weaken sound judgment
- 5A doubter slowly yields to fear
- 6Generosity can hide a dangerous purpose
- 7Ordered facts sharpen an impossible puzzle
- 8Public certainty can outrun the facts
- 9Small details prepare the coming unease
A pilot hunts for jungles in the sky
The Horror of the Heights is built like a case file. A narrator explains that a notebook was found in a field, beside a briar pipe and a pair of broken binoculars. Every detail is arranged to make you believe a real man wrote it.
The writer is Joyce-Armstrong, a wealthy inventor and one of the boldest pilots in England. Aviators keep dying in odd ways. Hay Connor dies in his seat after saying a single word, monstrous. Joyce-Armstrong decides the official explanations are too thin to be true.
So he prepares like a hunter, with oxygen, thick clothing, a new monoplane and a shotgun loaded with buckshot. The climb is told like a flight log, with heights and times. High above the clouds he sees giant bell-shaped creatures, delicate as glass, and thin gray air snakes. All of it is beautiful and harmless, which makes the dread that follows feel earned.
Doyle makes the impossible frightening by making the flying believable.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
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Check yourself
Why does Hardcastle’s response make the hidden monster more believable?
Right. “A doubter who is forced to believe makes a monster believable.”Not quite. “A doubter who is forced to believe makes a monster believable.”
What makes Marshall King’s visit to Everard increasingly threatening?
Right. “Kind manners can disguise a trap.”Not quite. “Kind manners can disguise a trap.”
What mistake do the crowds make in the two public mysteries?
Right. “In both tales, the crowd settles on a neat story long before it has the facts.”Not quite. “In both tales, the crowd settles on a neat story long before it has the facts.”
Go deeper: the whole of Tales of Terror and Mystery
About 5 h to read.Start freePaperback, hardcover and large print, printed for you at cost, are on their way.Email me when it is printed
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 67,900 words
- Reading timeAbout 4 h 45 min
Questions about Tales of Terror and Mystery
What is Tales of Terror and Mystery about?
It is a collection of twelve short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. They include a pilot hunting creatures in the upper air, a haunted funnel, a catacomb in Rome, a vanished train, and a great black cat.
Is Tales of Terror and Mystery a Sherlock Holmes book?
No. Sherlock Holmes does not appear in these stories. Doyle uses the same careful detail and clear reasoning, but he turns them toward ghost stories, monsters, crimes and strange confessions.
Is the book easy to read in short sittings?
Yes, in the sense that each story stands alone and can be enjoyed in a single sitting. The language is plain, the narrators speak directly, and many tales use letters, diaries or telegrams to move quickly.
Cite this edition
Doyle, Arthur Conan. Tales of Terror and Mystery. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-terror-and-mystery.
Doyle, A. C. (2026). Tales of terror and mystery. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-terror-and-mystery (Original work published 1922)
Doyle, Arthur Conan. Tales of Terror and Mystery. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-terror-and-mystery.
@book{doyle2026tales,
author = {Doyle, Arthur Conan},
title = {Tales of Terror and Mystery},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-terror-and-mystery},
note = {First published 1922}
}
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