4. The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
You know a story is one of intense terror when it begins with the brutal murder of an innocent young girl. The ghastly Edward Hyde savagely tramples the girl to death forever scarring our minds with such sinister imagery. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one of the greatest tales of terror ever told as it is not just about evil men but the very evil that exists within each and every one of us. The story follows prosecutor Gabriel Utterson as he becomes entangled in Dr. Jekyll's affairs while seeking out the evil Hyde upon learning of his violent crimes. Being an old friend of Jekyll's Utterson cannot help but to continue his involvement only to discover that in order to separate himself from his dark urges Jekyll created a potion to transform him into the evil Mr. Hyde. However, the potion did not subvert the urges and Jekyll found that he both enjoyed the immorality Hyde engaged in and lost control of his transformations becoming Hyde in his sleep. Ultimately, the power of evil took over. There have been a number of adaptations most notably on the stage. The characters of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde have become abundant in popular culture and appear in unrelated works of fiction such as the Nightmare before Christmas, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the Pagemaster, Van Helsing, and Hotel Transylvania.