At the Ghost Hour. The House of the Unbelieving Thomas

In a northern German town, a house called The Unbelieving Thomas has given its street a reputation for ghosts. Wenzel Kospoth, a cobbler who becomes its caretaker, finds that neighbors mistake his late-night Bible reading for dealings with spirits. He arranges shelter in the courtyard lodgings for Frau Cordula and her daughter Gundula, who have suffered from village accusations of witchcraft.

Paul Heyse's German ghost story, presented here in English translation, places fearful gossip alongside the practical lives of people seeking work and safety. Inside the lodgings, the wounded Philip receives Frau Cordula's care, listens to her account of hardship, and watches Gundula at her sewing machine. These domestic scenes give the haunted setting a human scale. Readers interested in supernatural fiction will find an opening built around suspicion, kindness, and the distance between a neighborhood's rumors and its residents' daily lives.