Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s most famous works appear to have recently started to draw the attention of academia after been largely overlooked by scholars due to their best-seller condition. However, Zafón’s early fiction has hardly ever been taken into consideration for further critical analysis. This essay intends to approach one of Zafón’s first novels, The Watcher in the Shadows (1995), not only as an impeccable example of reception of the Romantic literary tradition and, more specifically, of nineteenth century doppelgänger narratives such as The Picture of Dorian Gray or The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but also in relation to The Sandman by E. T. A. Hoffman, a story with which it shares many significant features.