'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 twelve 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.Including tales by major writes such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Louisa May Alcott, as well as rare discoveries unearthed for the first time in over 100 years, this enthralling collection is introduced by Andrew Smith, a leading expert on ghost stories and Victorian gothic.