The Eyes: A Modern Gothic
About this audiobook
Ethan Culwin spent decades shaping fortunes, careers, and lives from the summit of Silicon Valley power.
Now semiretired and worshipped by a younger generation of ambitious tech founders, the legendary venture capitalist joins several protégés for an intimate evening of drinks and conversation at an elite private club. When the topic turns to the supernatural, Ethan reluctantly shares a disturbing secret he’s kept hidden for years.
Twice in his life, after deeply personal moral failures, he became haunted by a strange phenomenon: Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw a pair of luminous eyes staring back at him from the darkness. Glaring. Accusing. Unrelenting.
Psychological implosion transforms into supernatural horror as Ethan describes the eyes’ devastating impact on his life and the extreme measures he took to survive them.
As the evening continues, hidden anxieties surface among the younger men listening to his story, and a disturbing theme emerges: Some hauntings may not remain confined to the past.
Adapted and modernized by Matt Dorff from Edith Wharton’s 1910 story “The Eyes,” this emotionally charged contemporary gothic reimagines Wharton’s supernatural morality tale in the world of Silicon Valley money, influence, and manipulation. “The Eyes” explores guilt, power, conscience, and the alarming possibility that certain forms of judgment are inescapable.
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About the author
Edith Wharton (1862–1937) is the author of several novels, including The Age of Innocence and Old New York, both of which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She was the first woman to receive that honor. In 1929 she was awarded the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction. She was born in New York and is best known for her stories of life among the upper-class society into which she was born. She was educated privately at home and in Europe. In 1894 she began writing fiction, and her novel The House of Mirth established her as a leading writer.
Matt Dorff is an American novelist, screenwriter, and creator of audio originals whose work spans psychological suspense, modern gothic fiction, and contemporary adaptations of classic literature. He is the creator of the ResonantVoices series, which reimagines and updates overlooked works by women authors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His adaptations blend full-cast cinematic storytelling, emotional realism, and contemporary themes while preserving the dramatic power and psychological insight of the original works.
