Karl Hans Strobl (1877-1946) was an Austrian writer known for stories about ghosts, demons, and mysterious phenomena. He began his writing career in the early years of the twentieth century, publishing theatrical and literary criticism in newspapers. During the First World War, he worked as a war correspondent, then devoted himself entirely to literary activity, and published the Orchid Garden magazine in Germany, considered the world's first publication devoted to fiction. Like such masters as Gustav Meyrink, Leo Perutz, Hans Evers, Karl Strobl entertained the reader at the beginning of the "Iron Age" with vivid phantasmagoria about vampires and demons, mysterious cults, animated automatons, placing the characters in grotesque, improbable, but at the same time such recognizable situations. The mystical plots of Bosch, Brueghel and Goya seem to come to life in these literary canvases.