What was one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most frightening horror stories?

In 1897 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published his best jungle horror story called “The Fiend of the Cooperage.” It is one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s best horror stories along with “The Brazilian Cat.” The scary short story is also his only jungle horror tale. It's full of snappy dialogue a pervasive sense of hot, sticky dread.

Arthur Conan Doyle (Hat) and Robert Barr (Left)

As Richard Burton said in the November 14, 1908 issue of The Bellman’s Bookshelf, in reference to a Doyle collection that contained the scary horror story, “If you read these of an evening, as I did, the creeps are guaranteed. Whatever may be the wholesomeness of such attacks upon the nerves, a reviewer would not be just if he overlooked the cleverness with which a strange complication is managed and a quite unlooked for denouement sprung upon the expectant reader.”

While the reviews of Doyle’s 56 Sherlock Holmes tales are legion, much less focus has been placed on his horror stories. It’s sad that nearly 120 years after its publication, the scholarly reviews of “The Fiend of the Cooperage” are almost nonexistent. Not only does this jungle horror need more visibility, it is one of the best horror short stories for the last half of the nineteenth century. That's why I place it at number 16 in my countdown of the best horror short stories for the last half of the nineteenth century.

Along with H. G. Wells’s “Pollock and the Porroh Man” found in

Best Horror Short Stories 1850-1899 that I edited, this Doyle spine-tingler is one of the best horror stories set among the sticky palms of the jungle. It was published October 1, 1897 in The Manchester Weekly Times.

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