'As he rushed madly and wildly through the night, he could hear a swift, dry patter behind him, and could see that this horror was bounding at his heels, with blazing eyes and one stringy arm out-thrown.' A mummy disappears from its sarcophagus in the dead of night; a crazed Egyptologist entombs a beautiful young woman; a student at Oxford reveals the terrible secrets of an ancient papyrus. These are among the 12 tales from the golden age of the mummy story collected here--stories that still cast a spell with their different versions of the mummy's curse, some chilling, others darkly romantic and even comic. This enthralling collection is introduced by Andrew Smith, a leading expert on ghost stories and Victorian gothic.