The story hunter

"The story hunter : or, Tales of the weird and wild" by Ernest R. Suffling is a collection of short stories written in the late 19th century. Framed by a narrator who lives alone in a caravan and hypnotizes chance acquaintances, it gathers weird, speculative, and adventurous tales told first‑hand by his guests. The opening of the volume introduces the narrator’s Bohemian life and his method, leading into “The Strange Discovery of Doctor Nosidy,” where a fervid experimenter claims the soul is “brain‑ether” and builds an electrical device to read thoughts from skulls; failed trials with a mummy and a Saxon king, a quarrelsome modern skull, and bold theorizing culminate in his ethical dread of revealing the secret. The frame then shifts to a storm on the Cornish coast and “Two Ruined Towers”: a wealthy stranger recalls, as a young artist, rescuing a mysterious elder who proves to be the Wandering Jew; together they hide a pump and diving gear, excavate a riverbed between two ancient towers, and, after weeks of night work, recover a vast hoard of gold and gems that the artist later uses for philanthropy as his immortal guide disappears. The section closes by introducing another source, Billy Flowerdue on the Norfolk coast, whose hypnotic reminiscence begins with his Yarmouth youth, an apprenticeship to sea, and a bar‑parlour encounter with a travelling showman and his giant, setting up the next tale. (This is an automatically generated summary.)