Вий
By Николай Васильевич Гоголь
Cover: Provincial Russian Church by Vasily Vereshchagin (1842-1904) · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
A seminarian, Khoma Brut, is made to read prayers over the body of a dead girl for three nights in a lonely church, and learns she was a witch. Gogol drew this tale of the monster Viy from Ukrainian folklore, and it remains one of the most frightening in Russian. This book uses the racial and other slurs of its period as written; the Book Guide explains these words where they occur.
Summary written with Claude Sonnet 5.5.