Le Horla

Told as a series of diary entries, Le Horla follows a comfortable, rational gentleman who begins to sense that he is no longer alone in his own house. Small disturbances accumulate: water and milk vanish in the night, a rose seems to bend and snap of its own accord, and a suffocating presence settles over him as he sleeps.

Slowly the narrator becomes convinced that an invisible being, which he names the Horla, has attached itself to him, feeding on his will and driving out his reason. As his terror mounts, he can no longer tell whether he is the victim of a new and superior creature come to supplant humankind, or simply of his own disintegrating mind.

One of Guy de Maupassant's most famous tales, Le Horla is a landmark of psychological horror that leaves the line between the supernatural and madness deliberately, unbearably thin.