A French-Italian international co-production, the film's French title is derived from a 1856 collection of Poe's short stories translated by French poet Charles Baudelaire; the English titles Spirits of the Dead and Tales of Mystery and Imagination are respectively taken from an 1827 poem by Poe and a 1902 British collection of his stories.

Fellini's short, "Toby Dammit", a loose adaptation of "Never Bet the Devil Your Head", deals with the title character (Terence Stamp), an alcoholic Shakespearean actor, whose trip to Rome to make a Spaghetti Western in exchange for a Ferrari is complicated by multiple encounters with the Devil, who appears as a little girl with a white ball.

Spirits of the Dead was released in the United States by American International Pictures in an English-language version featuring narration by Vincent Price.

While in the forest, her leg is caught in a trap and she is freed by her cousin and neighbour Baron Wilhelm, whom she has never met because of a long-standing family feud.

In the early 19th century when Northern Italy is under Austrian rule, an army officer named William Wilson rushes to confess to a priest (in a church of the "Città alta" of Bergamo) that he has committed murder.

After making his confession, Wilson commits suicide by jumping from the tower of "Palazzo della Ragione", but when seen his corpse is transfixed by the same dagger.

Credits primarily adapted from Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1957–1969 and Midnight Movie Monographs: Spirits of the Dead (Histoires Extraordinaires).

[1][16][17] Initial directors announced to work on the film included Luchino Visconti, Claude Chabrol, Joseph Losey and Orson Welles.

Southern was enthusiastic about the idea and agreed to work on the project, which eventually became the renowned independent film Easy Rider.

[17] Louis Malle accepted the job of directing the segment "William Wilson" in order to raise money for his next film Murmur of the Heart.

The financial process of raising money for Murmur took him three years after completing "William Wilson" and in the meantime he shot two documentaries about India.

[1] Zapponi had a love for gothic literature which can be seen in his short story collection Gobal (1967) where he attempted to re-shape the genre into a contemporary setting.

[21] Fellini was particularly interested in C'è una voce nella mia vita ('There is a voice in my life'), which was his first choice in adapting into a film for Spirits of the Dead.

The disintegrating protagonist and the hellish celebrity demimonde he inhabits are reminiscent of both La Dolce Vita and 8½, while the interweaving of dreams and hallucinations into the plotline and the use of highly artificial art direction to reflect inner states resemble similar techniques used in 8½ and Juliet of the Spirits.

Lending a "pedophiliac slant"[23] to Toby's character, Fellini explained that "a man with a black cape and a beard was the wrong kind of devil for a drugged, hipped actor.