[2] In the introduction she wrote: The fifth tale, (or rather fragment,) is founded on an incident similar in its features, which was some years since communicated to me, by a female friend of very deserved literary celebrity, as having actually occurred in this country; and I have therefore no other claim in respect to it, than that of having a little amplified the detail.

[2] For "The Storm", Utterson used a quote from Mark Akenside's The Pleasures of the Imagination (1744): ——"Of shapes that walk At dead of night, and clank their chains, and wave The torch of hell around the murderer's bed.

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.

'"[10] Brian Stableford remarked in his review of Tales of the Dead that "The Storm"'s heroine "coyly and infuriatingly refuses to reveal exactly what she saw in the haunted chamber".

[11] Fabio Camilletti mentioned the addition of "The Storm" as being part of Utterson's act of cultural appropriation of Fantasmagoriana into the boundaries of the British Gothic tradition.