This article examines Bolesław Prus's use of futurology and utopia in his short story Phantoms (Widziadła). A closer look at the story's images and their sequence not only gives us an insight into the author's philosophy of history but also reveals a utopian vision which can hardly be squared with the realism of his previous work. Thus ‘Widziadła’, written in 1911, can be seen as an important piece of evidence of a change in the writer's beliefs and worldview. It was at that late stage of his life that Prus, a hard-nosed realist and critic of the Romantics, turned into an impassioned idealist who, disillusioned with the world around him, sought refuge in literature. It was to be, however, a fiction like ‘Widziadła’, looking beyond the conventions of realism, unashamedly eclectic and visionary.

The horror fiction of the Romantic Age differs considerably from its contemporary descendants. While generally associated with scary entertainment (‘playing with fear’), the Romantic Gothic often enough crossed the line to explore the depths of genuine epistemological, existential or political fears. This would not have been possible without developing its own poetics which drew its strength from a variety of sources. One of them was the speculative philosophy of history in its pessimistic and optimistic variants. They both fed the sense of horror and its literary transpositions. Moreover, they formed a positive feedback loop: anxiety over the course of history led to the use of the devices and registers of the poetics of horror, which in turn led to the amplification of the effects of the historical vision on the reader.