Gespensterbuch


The Gespensterbuch is a collection of German ghost stories written by August Apel and Friedrich Laun and published in five volumes between 1811–1815.

Freischütz

The first tale in the first volume is the story of a magic marksman, "The Freischütz". It underlies Weber's opera Der Freischütz.

Translation

In 1812, Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès translated eight German ghost stories into French as Fantasmagoriana, including five of the tales from the first and second volumes of the Gespensterbuch. The following year, Sarah Elizabeth Utterson translated five of the stories from Fantasmagoriana into English as Tales of the Dead, including three of the Gespensterbuch tales. The stories she omitted were translated into English by A. J. Day together with Utterson's translation in Fantasmagoriana: Tales of the Dead.