Selección Terror: El Negro Libro del Horror

About this issue

Curtis Garland's "El Negro Libro del Horror" (1975) is a Gothic horror narrative centered on a legendary book said to unleash catastrophic evil upon humanity. The story begins with a preamble establishing the myth: for centuries, seekers have pursued this forbidden volume—philosophers hoping to extract ancient knowledge, believers attempting to destroy it, and the wicked desiring its dark powers. The narrative proper follows Burne Cavendish, a wealthy Londoner who discovers a reference to the Black Book in a sixteenth-century manuscript by Sir Hugh Knight, locating it to Whitby Abbey in Yorkshire, property of the declining Cornwall-Lloyd family. After reading a Times advertisement announcing the family's estate sale, Cavendish immediately contacts the law firm Myers & Myers, preparing to acquire the property. The story then shifts to a train journey where Cavendish converses with young solicitor Desmond Byrne about the family's mysterious reasons for selling their ancestral lands, discussing the abbey's historical significance and the legends surrounding it.