Ghost Stories

Various
Cathay Books

Twenty-two exciting stories from the twilight world of haunted houses and hair-raising spectres are contained in this spine-chilling anthology.
Each tale is illustrated with specially commissioned drawings.

The more of these anthologies I read the quicker I get through them.  They're generally a fairly fast read anyway being short stories but in many cases the same stories appear again and again and again.  In the case of this 1984 collection from Cathay Books I already knew 12 of the 22.  Some, like M.R. James' 'A School Story' and Captain Frederick Marryat's 'The Phantom Ship' I skip past on a fairly regular basis but as these things are meant to entice (as opposed to being a warning to) the curious into the charms of the genre that's something that one has to accept.  With that being the case the above are fine inclusions as are other regulars such as Hugh Walpole's poignant 'A Little Ghost', Lovecraft's non mythos short 'The Music of Erich Zann', the unsettling presence of the cupboard in Algernon Blackwood's 'The Occupant of the Room' or Fritz Leiber's sooty city spirit in 'The Smoke Ghost'.

R. Chetwynd Hayes

Elsewhere in the book the unidentified editor has made some fine, if maybe a tad unadventurous, choices.  Charles Dickens is represented by his macabre tale of avarice and murder, 'The Ghost in the Bride's Chamber' wherein a murderer is forced to feel the intensity of his punishment increasing with each passing hour of the night which is far more than the guilty party at the heart (if you'll excuse the pun) of Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart' would have ever managed to endure.

The conclusion of Poe's tale signals the start of a run of rather inconsequential stories,  the black magic cat of R. Chetwynd-Hayes' 'The Cat Room', Catherine Crowe's somnambulist clergyman in 'The Monk's Story' and Saki's weakly witty 'Laura' before we hit a rich vein of the standards that I mentioned earlier.

Rosemary Timperley

The book makes another move towards the lesser known with Rosemary Timperley's tale of infatuation and fire, 'The Mistress in Black' and Guy de Maupassant's creepy little oddity, 'An Apparition'.

Undoubtedly the oddest inclusion here is an utterly pointless extract from Penelope Lively's 'The Ghost of Thomas Kempe' but it's easily skipped for the aforementioned Blackwood story and Jerome K. Jerome's practical joking ghost of 'The Haunted Mill'.

Guy de Maupassant

One of the biggest draws here was the opportunity to read something by another of the Le Fanu's.  The venerable Sheridan is here with 'The White Cat of Drumgunniol' but also his daughter Elizabeth who tells of a case of ghostly possession in 'The Harpsichord' which is a fairly told but lacks the invention of her father's work.

Closing the book are two authors who are anthology stalwarts, W.W. Jacobs, who is represented by a story I hadn't read before,'The Three Sisters' which reminded me entirely of 'The Tell-Tale Heart' and finally Joan Aiken's 'Sonata for Harp and Bicycle' allows the book to end on a romantic high even if it's a long way from being one of her best.

Some interesting stories make this a good but not essential anthology unless of course you're a newcomer to the delights of the genre then it's probably one to keep an eye out for.

The Werewolf Pack

Mark Valentine (editor)
Wordsworth Editions

The wolf has always been a creature of legend and romance, while kings, sorcerers and outlaws have been proud to be called by the name of the wolf. It's no wonder, then, that tales of transformation between man and wolf are so powerful and persistent.

On a recent visit to Hay on Wye I scored a big stack of these Wordsworth Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural books (and then three more in Cardiff three days later) so expect a few of them to crop up here over the coming months.  One of the first books in this series that I read was Mark's other Wordsworth Editions anthology, 'The Black Veil & Other Tales of Supernatural Sleuths', which was about as much fun as a book is capable of being so I jumped at this new discovery even though a fan of monster stories I am not.

Count Stenbock

I've not read many werewolf stories before - there was a short in one of 'The Sandman' volumes and I've vague memories of flipping through an adaptation of one of the 'Howling' movies as a kid and there's a Wyrd Britain regular that I'll come to later - but I've seen a whole host of movies, it is a most filmable creature, but the books have never really interested me.  There are some really interesting moments but I didn't really find this volume as satisfying as the other.  Much of that must be put down to my love of of the occult detective angle and my ambivalence to monsters but also far too many of the stories here had the feel of a folktale which, as regular perusers of my scribblings will know, aren't my favourite things.

There are though several interesting stories lurking here, Saki's 'Gabriel-Ernest' (which I alluded to earlier) is a perennial anthology entrant but I'd not come across his tale of bluster and comeuppance, 'The She-Wolf', before and won't be sorry if I never do again.  'The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains' by Captain Frederick Marryat is a worthy opener with elements of folk tale providing a backbone for a much more interesting story than I assumed from it's first few pages.

R.B. Russell

Count Stenbock's 'The Other Side' is a delicately hallucinatory tale of forbidden flowers and beguiling women and an ambiguously supernatural Sherlock Holmes pastiche called 'The Shadow of the Wolf' by Ron Weighell sticks out dynamic duo on the roof of an old house in the country tracking a savage murderer.  The book closes with R.B. Russell's wonderfully strange 'Loup-Garou' which I'm not even going to try and describe to you as it's something you need to experience yourself.

Around these stories are a host of other tales that are all worthy of your time as they display interesting takes on the mythos but the above were, for me, the standouts. As I said at the beginning, creature stories aren't my favourites but as a toe dipping exercise into the genre this book has much to recommend it.

Buy it here -  The Werewolf Pack (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural)

Ghosts, Spooks and Spectres

Charles Molin (ed)
Puffin Books

A collection of horror stories, many with a humorous turn.

One of the real joys of reading for me these days is cracking open another of these anthologies of late 19th / early 20th century ghostly fiction especially when it turns out to be full of stories I've not read before.  This one transpires to be a really nice cross section of the famous and the less so with Wilde, Dickens and Wells rubbing shoulders with folks such as Dora Broome and Richard Bartram.

The book opens with the venerable Oscar Wilde and his lovely tale of penance paid as a thoroughly modern American family drive the resident spirit to despair in 'The Canterbury Ghost', a story I must have read before as many years ago I read the complete works of Mr. Wilde but I had no memory of whatsoever.

Next up is one of several anonymous stories, none of which really bear much scrutiny but here goes. 'Teeny-Tiny' tells of a stolen bone and the disembodied voice demanding it's return, 'The Strange Visitor' is a truly dreadful piece of poetry, 'A Ghostly Wife' finds a ghost taking the place of a Brahman's wife whilst 'The Ghost- Brahman' finds the husband being replaced.  The final one, 'The Ghost Who Was Afraid of Being Bagged' is a silly folk tale about a barber tricking a gullible spirit into helping improve his fortunes and is easily the best of the five but as I said none are really worth the bother.

J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Charles Dickens is represented by one of his most famous and ubiquitous stories, 'The Signal-man', the story of a man haunted by a ghostly figure at the head of a railway tunnel whose appearance precedes a disaster of some kind.  This is followed by J.Sheridan Le Fanu's 'Madam Crowl's Ghost' where a young girl hired to work in the house of the dying Madam Crowl experiences several terrifying events that eventually bring forth the grim truth about the old lady.

Richard Bartram's 'Legend of Hamilton Tighe' is the second, and thankfully last, poem in the book.  Now, I'm not averse to poetry but this was a load of old 'dum-de-dum-de-dum' tosh but it's nautical theme does filter nicely in Captain Marryat's tale of the Flying Dutchman, 'The Phantom Ship'.

H.G. Wells

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Brown Hand' makes a fairly common appearance but it's story of a ghost seeking the return of the titular appendage is one that stands up to an occasional reread as does Richard Middleton's jokey romp 'The Ghost Ship'.  Less successful but continuing the watery theme is 'The Water Ghost' by John Kendrick Bangs which tells of the vindictive ghost of a drowned woman and the attempts to thwart her.

H.G. Wells goes for the more whimsical route as should be expected from a story titled 'The Inexperienced Ghost'.  Here a drunk man finds, berates and eventually aids a pitiful ghost he finds lurking in the corridors of his club in an amusing little ditty of a tale with an ending you can see coming a mile off.

W.F. Harvey

Dora Broome's 'The Buggane and the Tailor' has the feel of a folktale about it and, as is often the case with stories of that ilk, ends poorly.

Another author who is a regular in these books is Saki, especially in the form of his werewolf tale, 'Gabriel-Ernest' but this time out it's a story about vindictiveness and reincarnation as the titular 'Laura' continues her habit of picking on her friends husband in various forms following her demise.

R. Blakeborough's 'The Betrayal of Nance' is another folktale-esque story this time filled to the brim with betrayal, loss and attempts at redemption from beyond the grave whilst redemption is the last thing on the mind of 'The Beast With Five Fingers' as W.F. Harvey spins a terrific yarn about the murderous creature and the attempts to thwart it.

Andrew Lang

Harvey's tale is really the last hurrah of this fun collection as the final two stories, 'The Night the Ghost Got In' by James Thurber and Andrew Lang's 'The Story of Glam' are amusing but very slight in the case of the former and veering once more into pesky folktale territory with the later which is hardly surprising given his status as the author of the 25 collections of variously coloured 'Fairy Books'.

And so the book ends - for me at least - on an undeserved low note.  Undeserved because for the most part this was a thoroughly enjoyable set that offered a number of highlights whilst the few disappointments were also relatively short lived.