Tales of the Dead is an English anthology of horror fiction, abridged from the French book Fantasmagoriana and translated anonymously by Sarah Elizabeth Utterson, who also added one story of her own.

It was published in 1813 by White, Cochrane and Co. Sarah Elizabeth Utterson translated the majority of Tales of the Dead from a French collection of ghost stories as "the amusement of an idle hour".

[1] She also noted she had "considerably curtailed" her translation of "L'Amour Muet", "as it contained much matter relative to the loves of the hero and heroine, which in a compilation of this kind appeared rather misplaced".

To these, Utterson added a story of her own, "The Storm" based on an incident told to her by "a female friend of very deserved literary celebrity" as having actually occurred.

— HORAT" (meaning roughly "he fills [his breast] with imagined terrors"[2]) with the following quote from William Shakespeare's The Tempest: Graves, at my command, Have waked their sleepers; oped, and let them forth By my so potent art.

His sources included "Stumme Liebe" ("Silent Love") from Volksmärchen der Deutschen by Johann Karl August Musäus (1735–1787), "Der grau Stube" ("The Grey Room") by Heinrich Clauren (1771–1854), and six stories by Johann August Apel (1771–1816) and Friedrich Laun (1770–1849),[4] five of which were from the first two volumes of their ghost story anthology Gespensterbuch ("The Ghost Book"); originally published in five volumes by G. J. Göschen in Leipzig between 1810 and 1815 under the pen names A. Apel and F. Laun.

Kept indoors by the "incessant rain" of that "wet, ungenial summer", over three days in June the five turned to reading fantastical stories, including Fantasmagoriana (in the French edition), and then devising their own tales.

Some parts of Frankenstein are surprisingly similar to those found in Fantasmagoriana and suggest a direct influence upon Mary Shelley's writing.

The Uttersons' copy was bound in blue straight-grain Morocco leather with gilt edges, inserted with a print by Samuel William Reynolds of a portrait of her by Alfred Edward Chalon and six original water colour drawings.

[5][6][7] The story is told through a series of sub-narratives, some nested inside others, within a framing narrative in the third person; it is characterized throughout by mistaken identity and resolves through the tracing of family lineage.

Reluctant to meet his intended, he stops at a village for the night and is drawn to a house from which he hears the sound of music, where he joins the company in telling ghost stories.

Ferdinand then tells a story about a friend (in fact himself) who stayed with a college companion and his family during a holiday, and got to know his young twin brothers and sister.

The twins were scared by a deathlike portrait of their distant ancestor and founder of their family, called Ditmar, while Emily, the sister, was the only one who felt pity rather than revulsion for him.

Looking out of the window again, he saw a fog coming from the ruined tower in the grounds, in which he made out the form of Ditmar moving silently into the castle.

He mentioned the night's events at breakfast to his host, who, grief-stricken but not surprised, announced that his sons would then die, but refused to explain it to even their brother.

Reminded of Emily by Clotilde, he tries to find out her name, and the next day returns to ask the pastor, in whose house he had spent the previous evening.

Inside the tower, his friend had found a skeleton in female clothing, which he recognised as being the woman in the portrait that had killed Juliana, his betrothed; he passed out on the spot, and died soon after.

On meeting Emily again, Ferdinand was surprised it was not the young lady he had met the day before, though she and her father arrive, and are introduced as Clotilde and Baron Hainthal.

Ditmar had accompanied the Holy Roman Emperor Otho to Italy, where he found and became engaged to Bertha of Pavia.

However, Bertha's ghost appeared to her, and said that she could never rest until one of her female descendants was killed by her (which was fulfilled by the death of Juliana Meltheim) after which the families of Ditmar and Bruno would be united by love.

Ditmar was cursed too, and his portrait, painted by Tutilon of the Abbey of Saint Gall, was changed each night to be deathlike.

Ditmar explained what he had done, and was absolved, but would remain as a ghost and would administer the kiss of death to every male descendant but one in each generation, until the tower fell down.

As Ferdinand was a descendant of Bruno and Bertha, and Emily was a descendant of Ditmar, Ferdinand's mother accepted that Emily fulfilled the condition of her husband's dying wish (intended to lift the curse described in a parchment attached to Bertha's portrait) and was happy to agree to their marriage.

While walking in the garden something brings their hands together and they hear his father's voice say "may God bless your union" and they knew that all would be well.

One guest, a woman dressed in such splendid regalia, is suspiciously quiet and the father of Ida, the count, has everyone take off their mask.

The host's daughter Emily befriends one of these, Isabella de Nunez, the widow of a Spanish officer of the Walloon Guards who had recently arrived in Gascony.

As the clock strikes midnight, a carriage is heard arriving despite the storm, followed by footsteps approaching the room, and the locked door opens.

With an eye towards regaining fortune and earning Meta's hand in marriage, Francis sells his last possessions, purchases a horse, and sets out on a journey.

Hale's version received a Greek language translation by Nikos Stampakis as Istories ton Nekron (Ιστορίες των Nεκρών), by publishing house Archetypo-Metaekdotiki during 2003.

Two of the stories from Tales of the Dead – "The Family Portraits" and "The Death-Bride" – reprinted by permission of Terry Hale as "the two stories from Fantasmagoriana that seem to have made the biggest impression on the Geneva circle", were included in the 2008 edition of The Vampyre and Ernestus Berchtold; or, The Modern Œdipus edited by D. L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf.