The Phantom of the Opera detective mystery entitled "The Mystery of the Yellow Room" in 1907, and four years later he published "Le Fantôme de l’Opéra". The novel was first published within newspapers before finally being published as a novel in 1911. The setting of "The Phantom of the Opera" came from an actual Paris opera house that Leroux had heard the rumors about from the time the opera house was finished. The details about the Palais Garnier, and rumors surrounding it, are closely linked in Leroux's writing. The underground water tank that he wrote about is accurate to this opera house, and it is
Erik (The Phantom of the Opera) strangles the publisher and tries to retrieve his music, only to be disfigured when the publisher's assistant throws etching acid in his face. In the musical horror film "Phantom of the Paradise" (1974), Winslow (the Phantom character) gets his head caught in a record-press, while Robert Englund's horror-version has him selling his soul to Satan and having his face mutilated as a result. This version also has a gruesome variation on the mask, in which Erik is sewing flesh to his face. In Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical adaptation, only half of Erik's face is deformed (thus the famous half-mask often