Stephen Jones - Dancing With The Dark

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Stephen Jones (ed.) - Dancing With The Dark: True Encounters With The Paranormal By Masters Of The Macabre (Vista, 1997)

Cover by Splash: Photography by Simon Marsden

Stephen Jones - Introduction: Dancing with the Dark

Joan Aiken - My Feeling about Ghosts
Sarah Ash - Timeswitch
Mike Ashley - The Rustle in the Grass
Peter Atkins - Take Care of Grandma
Clive Barker - Life After Death
Stephen Baxter - The Cartographer
Robert Bloch - Not Quite So Pragmatic .
Ramsey Campbell - The Nearest to a Ghost
Hugh B. Cave - Haitian Mystères
R. Chetwynd-Hayes - One-Way Trip
A. E. Coppard - The Shock of the Macabre
Basil Copper - The Haunted Hotel
Peter Crowther - Safe Arrival
Jack Dann - A Gift of Eagles
Charles de Lint - The House on Spadina
Terry Dowling - Sharing with Strangers
Lionel Fanthorpe - Hands on the Wheel
Esther M. Friesner - That Old School Spirit
Gregory Frost - Twice Encountered
Neil Gaiman - The Flints of Memory Lane
Stephen Gallagher - In There
Ray Garton - Haunted in the Head
John Gordon - The House on the Brink
Ed Gorman - Riding the Nightwinds
Elizabeth Goudge - ESP
Simon R. Green - Death is a Lady
Peter Haining - The Smoke Ghost
Joe Haldeman - Never Say Die
James Herbert - Not Very Psychic
Brian Hodge - Confessions of a Born-Again Heathen
Nancy Holder - To Pine with Fear and Sorrow
M. R. James - A Ghostly Cry
Peter James - One Extra for Dinner
Mike Jefferies - A Face in the Crowd
Nancy Kilpatrick - Raggedy Ann
Stephen King - Uncle Clayton
Hugh Lamb - Go On, Open Your Eyes...
Terry Lamsley - Moving Houses
John Landis - Inspiration
Stephen Laws - Norfolk Nightmare
Samantha Lee - Not Funny
Barry B. Longyear - The Gray Ghost
H. P. Lovecraft - Witch House
Brian Lumley - The Challenge
Arthur Machen - World of the Senses
Graham Masterton - My Grandfather’s House
Richard Matheson - More Than We Appear To Be
Richard Christian Matheson - Visit to a Psychic Surgeon
Paul J. McAuley - The Fall of the Wires
Anne McCaffrey - Unto the Third Generation
Thomas F. Monteleone - Talkin’ Them Marble Orchard Blues
Mark Morris - A Shadow of Tomorrow
Yvonne Navarro - The House on Chadwell Drive
William F. Nolan - The Floating Table and the Jumping Violet
Edgar Allan Poe - Mesmeric Revelation
Vincent Price - In the Clouds
Alan Rodgers - Clinic-Modern
Nicholas Royle - Magical Thinking
Jay Russell - De Cold, Cold Décolletage
Adam Simon - The Darkness Between the Frames
Guy N. Smith - The Mist People
Michael Marshall Smith - Mr Cat
S. P. Somtow - In the Realm of the Spirits
Brian Stableford - Chacun sa Goule
Laurence Staig - The Spirit of M. R. James
Peter Tremayne - The Family Curse
H. R. Wakefield - The Red Lodge
Lawrence Watt-Evans - My Haunted Home
Cherry Wilder - The Ghost Hunters
Chet Williamson - A Place Where a Head Would Rest
Paul F. Wilson - The Glowing Hand
Douglas E. Winter - Finding My Religion
Gene Wolfe - Kid Sister

A Spectral vision .... The sound of phantom footsteps ... An experiment in astral projection ..... A childhood premonition of disaster .... Possession by a voodoo god ....
An Ouija board that predicted death ... A body kept alive by force of will ..... A cursed family name ...

Such tales as these are more usually associated with horror books and movies. However, these anecdotes are absolutely true! They are ,just a sample of the real-life experiences recounted by some of the world's most famous frighteners, from such bestselling authors as Stephen King and James Herbert, to actor Vincent Price and director John Landis.

Collected together for the very first time, many or the most successful and well-known exponents, along with rising stars of the horror field, relate their fascinating encounters with the supernatural, revealing how such unique experiences have affected their lives and influenced their works.

Even for the experts, when it comes to Unexplained phenomena, fact can be much more frightening than fiction ...

Few of the entries run past the three page mark making this an ideal bedside companion. Ray Garton - Haunted in the Head: The first account I turned to (because the book fell open on that page) and, how spooky is this, an encounter with .... our old friends Ed & Lorraine Warren, ghost-hunters extraordinaire! Ray had been commissioned to write a book on the terrifying 'Snedeker case' you see, and the Warrens had invited him to explore their museum. Evidently, one of the haunted exhibits followed him home from the macabre shrine. Ray knows, because the Warrens told him it did. It seems the Warrens made a habit of telling Ray things until "I couldn't get out of it unless I could afford a lot of legal fees ... So, I was stuck with writing a 'non-fiction' book that I'd been told to make up, and make scary". I'm sure the entries can't all be as wonderful as this, but .... more when I've had a proper delve.

Thanks to Andy the nightreader for this one!

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H. R. Wakefield - The Red Lodge: How HRW was inspired to write the enduring classic of the same name (one of the nastiest ghost stories it's been my delight to encounter) after "two weekends spent in a superficially charming and harmonious Queen Anne about a mile and a half from Richmond Bridge" in 1917.

R. Chetwynd-Hayes - One Way Trip: The author elaborates on his solitary experience of astral projection, as first mentioned in his introduction to Fontana Ghost #13. A passage in our old sauce & sorcery friend Dennis Wheatley's classic Strange Conflict sparked RCH's curiosity and soon he was floating on the bedroom ceiling looking down at his slumbering form.

Samantha Lee - Not Funny: By far the grimmest so far, this would easily stand up as an excellent short-short horror story. The author, holidaying with her husband on an island off Ibiza, is terrified awake by a white figure at the end of her bed. She's convinced it's a signal that a friend suffering from MS has just died ....

Guy N. Smith - The Mist People: The crab-master's experiments with a pendulum draw the ghost of a beautiful Brazilian woman he thinks of as 'Makita' into his home where she bothers son Angus and his mate as the watch the box. Mild poltergeist activity, handled with a commendable absence of sensationalism.

Peter Haining - The Smoke Ghost: The Hainings' pet ghost hails from the Napoleonic wars when a long-haired french prisoner was burnt to death in an accidental house fire at Peyton House, Boxford.

Lionel Fanthorpe - Hands On The Wheel: A touching account of how the Reverend believes his dead friend Bill - an excellent driver - saved his life when his Granada was sent hurtling over the hard shoulder by a Juggernaut on the M4. Fanthrope was returning home from the funeral at the time.

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Clive Barker - Life After Death: His view on it all. Clearly only included because Jones wanted something, anything from his hero.

Jay Russell - De Cold, Cold Décolletage: " ... the couple were dressed in costumes like something out of the eighteenth century, powdered wigs and all. The man was tall and stocky with puffy, chipmunk cheeks, wearing a silk brocade jacket and knee-length pants with high stockings. The woman wore some fancy, floor-length silvery ball gown, cut low on her considerable chest. Not to sound like a perv or a sexist, but I believe it was precisely this look for which the word 'décolletage' was coined. We're talking wonderbra-plus here, no fooling".

This is more like it - a ghost with big tits! Jay finishes his detested job early and heads for a beer in a Greenwich Village bar. It's early evening on a bitterly cold day and, as he rushes through the courtyard it's with some surprise he chances upon a couple dressed in Victorian duds waltzing calm as you please to non-existent musical accompaniment. Of course, when he gets inside and asks the barman if there's some filming going on outside, the courtyard is empty. Then he notices a badly-executed painting of a ballroom scene hung near the gents ...

Hugh Lamb - Go On, Open Your Eyes ...: Having recently moved into his new home, Hugh has a Thurnley Abbey moment when something comes stomping up the stairs in the dead of night. Can he raise his head from the pillow and confront what could be his first authentic spectre or will he keep his eyes screwed shut, praying it will go away? As he asks at the end: what would you have done?

Stephen Laws - Norfolk Nightmare: Stephen and two mates messing about on the river back in the seventies. Lost in the fens, they moor their boat in a spooky spot overlooked by a ruined windmill and get pissed. One gent has a terrific idea: let's improvise a Ouija board ....

Stephen Gallagher - In There: Gallagher explains his optimistic belief/ hope that there is something beyond this existence, partly via a disquieting little girl he met in a Moravian Church in North Carolina. "Where her eyes should have been ... there were just these two deep holes. And in those holes I could see worms and maggots". Give or take Ray Garton's run in with dear old Ed and Lorraine, the scariest entry in the book so far.

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More strange and spooky tales from the stars. As a rule, I find compilations of true ghost stories, however sincere, the most tedious reading matter, but there are exceptions and this very likeable dip-in, dip-out collection is one such.

Simon R. Green - Death is a Lady: A mini-Terror Tale From The Lake District. Back in 1972, when Mr. Green, author of the Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves tie-in and several novels in the Nightside series, was a 17 year old long hair, a family holiday almost resulted in tragedy when he sustained a head injury. While concussed, he was fleetingly delivered to what had the appearance of a Victorian study where a kindly, very beautiful woman in black informed him it wasn't his time yet, but she would come to him again.

Nancy Kilpatrick - Raggedy Ann: Was present when Nancy recited this before a four-strong party of reprobates at the home of a "psychic investigator" of legend-in-his-own-mind persuasion. Shortly after midnight, Nancy is writing a ghost story in her office when the Raggedy Ann doll inexplicably nosedives from up-top of a bookcase, shattering fragile ornaments in its path. Nancy, who's been feeling spooked all evening, makes a note of the time, 12. 14 am. Later she learns that Ann, her cancer-stricken mother-in-law, finally gave up her battle for life at 12. 14 am.

Michael Marshall Smith - Mr Cat: Unspeakably sweet account of how MMS's prayers on behalf of a beloved family cat "to whom it may concern" possibly extended Mr. Cat's life by two years.

Stephen Baxter - The Cartographer: A reader of Mr. Baxter's The Time Ships, a sequel to H. G. Wells' The Time Machine studies curious anomalies in editions of The London A-Z covering Richmond. Could Wells have been masking fact as fiction? Baxter learns via an anonymous source that 'The Cartographer' has been found dead on a tube train. Natural causes .... or was he silenced because he knew too much?. Brr! Never mind the morlochs, etc.

Richard Matheson - More Than We Appear To Be: Matheson's theory as to why people who've been in a long, close relationship often die within a short space of each other. Don't have friends.

Stephen King - Uncle Clayton: His abilities included dowsing and telling the bees, and Stephen liked the old fellow plenty. Not exactly Pet Sematary.

Back on track with:

Graham Masterton - My Grandfather’s House: Thomas Thorne Baker was recognised among the greatest scientists of his generation. Young Graham was extremely fond of the affable, mischievous, slightly eccentric Gramps, and when Thomas died in 1962, he mourned the passing of somebody truly special. But the old rascal wasn't done with him yet, and they would meet again on two further occasions, in Times Square and Kew Gardens, which led the Manitou man to wonder if Grandad was reliving his life in a parallel world? The experience would partially inspire Masterton's 7000th novel, The House That Jack Built.

[mattofthespurs]

I read, and enjoyed, this book quite a few years ago and the only story that sticks in the memory is "Mr Cat".

A very touching tale (excuse the pun).

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Nov 14, 2012 13:01:41 GMT mattofthespurs said:

I read, and enjoyed, this book quite a few years ago and the only story that sticks in the memory is "Mr Cat".

A very touching tale (excuse the pun).

Mr Cat, Haunted In The Head and De Cold, Cold Décolletage are my picks of the bunch so far, but it's mostly good stuff and the very occasional duffer is over so fast it's likely you'll forgive it. Jenny Randles interviewed television personalities for a similar venture, Phantoms Of The Soap Operas, but where Dancing With The Dark scores (for me) is that Jones leaves the contributors to speak for themselves, there's no attempt at tying it together around a narrative.

Some more:

Mark Morris - A Shadow of Tomorrow: During the winter of 1998, as he is completing what will be his first published novel, Toady, Mark loses his father. Certain scenes in the manuscript take on an eerie significance.

Mike Ashley - The Rustle in the Grass: Sittingbourne, Kent in the mid-'seventies. Raz, Mike's German Shepherd, is investigating a rustling in undergrowth by a railway cutting after dark. He stops still, fixes a spot in the middle of the road. There's nothing there. But why does Mike feel his skin crawl when that same nothing makes as though to advance toward them? Haven't done it any justice, but the piece has a winning creepiness about it, made me wonder if Mr. Ashley ever tried his hand at writing supernatural fiction (has he?).

Vincent Price - In the Clouds: Quite a well-known one. How, on a routine flight from Hollywood to New York in November, 1958, Vincent learned of the unexpected death of close friend Tyrone Power. The clouds spelled it out for him.

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This mornings lucky dip.

Sarah Ash - Timeswitch: The basement of old Mrs. Whartons house at number three, The Circus, Bath, is a throwback to Victoria's reign. There is even a lugubrious servant in residence, naturally of the spectral variety. Did Mr or Mrs. It follow the child Sarah home following afternoon tea?

Laurence Staig - The Spirit of M. R. James: Mr. Staig, engaged in writing a pseudonymous James-inspired children's novel and participating in Clive Dunn's A Pleasant Terror documentary, is given reason to believe the Provost has taken a keen interest in his endeavours.

James Herbert - Not Very Psychic: The Black Baron of Bethnal Green on why enjoying a pint with him can sometimes be a risky business. As with the Stephen King entry it's lifted from an interview and doesn't work quite as well as the written pieces.

Cherry Wilder - The Ghost Hunters: Cherry Identifies a Society for Psychic Research case-file on a Ghost-hunt undertaken by her Great Uncle, Col. George Lee Mesurier Taylor in 1897 at Ballechin House, Perthshire, as the inspiration for Shirley Jackson's The Haunting Of Hill House.

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Of all Stephen Jones's anthologies this remains a personal favourite.

Paul F. Wilson - The Glowing Hand: The phantom hand brandishing a knife passes through both Aunt Margaret and the door behind her to get at little Billy in his bed. The following morning the little boy is rushed to hospital for an emergency appendectomy.

John Gordon - The House on the Brink: The author had never set foot inside Peckover House when he used it as the model for The House on the Brink. Years later, accompanied by hs wife, John explored house and grounds where he discovered a wooden carving of a face, fixed atop a tree stump and sat on a plinth. He learns that, as with the eerie "stump" in his novel, this one is in the habit of wandering.

Ed Gorman - Riding the Nightwinds: How four OOBE's helped the author come to terms with a childhood incident he'd been terminally "unable to face," and subsequent alcoholism from the age of fifteen. It makes for a powerful two pages:

"Sobriety was scary for another reason. I had nowhere to hide. The trauma of my childhood was now with me constantly - and so were all the scenes I'd caused in my drinking days. Sometimes I was ashamed to walk down the streets .... I'd always hated myself ..."

Samantha Lee - Not Funny: You say you saw a white light at the end of the bed, and you think it's a sign your friend has died? Really! Can't you be more original?

One phone-call later and he's no longer laughing.

William F. Nolan - The Floating Table and the Jumping Violet: The first episode not such a dynamic read - the author is present when party-goers levitate a massive oak table by 'psychic force.' I guess you really had to be there. Second concerns a mutual, loving bond between aged widow and a plant bought her by her son.

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Peter Tremayne - The Family Curse: The author - in Peter Beresford Ellis: Celtic Historian mode - is addressing a Dublin audience when member of same pipes up: "You are aware that the name you bear stinks in the nostrils of the people of Waterford to this day? Your family is cursed for seven generations!" The heckler refuses to elaborate, but that's OK, PBE already knows the story, and is relieved to be of the eighth generation as, from the day the widow hexed the lord of Curraghmore for lynching her son, his predecessors "did not have happy endings to their lives." Also, an encounter with the ghost of Billy the Bowl, the legless strangler, or: the Scraping Terror of Ellis Quay!

Esther M. Friesner - That Old School Spirit: Ms. Fangs for the Mammaries relates two personal brushes with supernatural phenomena at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, during the late sixties. A girl in highwayman drag takes a belated curtain call at Avery Hall ("Why shouldn't a theatre ghost haunt the place where her performance was murdered?"). Also a Ouija Q and A session with the shade of a lesbian teacher who hung herself in the old chemistry building.

Hugh B. Cave - Haitian Mystères: H.B.C., who attended several voodoo ceremonies during a five year stint in Haiti, strongly refutes sensationalist tabloid fantasies of what takes place at these "predominantly peasant" gatherings: ".... If those things happen in voodoo [the sexual orgies and biting of heads from live chickens] then I never saw them." However, Mr. Cave did get witness the possession of a little boy by Papa Gede (the arse fetishist loa of death), after the child consumed enough pepper-spiked rum to have killed him. Also, a strange encounter with Madame Lorgina, who conversed with the dead, who, very audibly, repaid the compliment.

Basil Copper - The Haunted Hotel: Poltergeist activity, phantom footsteps in the attic, successive family cats driven to insanity - out of respect to the Brewers' legal team, Basil declines to provide the name or exact location of the establishment in question, but it's somewhere in Kent.

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Nancy Holder - To Pine with Fear and Sorrow: At eighteen, Nancy realises she's not going to make it as a ballet dancer and returns home from Germany distraught. Visiting her recently bereaved Gran, what Nancy at first takes to be the benevolent ghost of her grandfather inadvertently walks in as she's under the shower. Or might it even be the ghost of her crushed dreams?

Ramsey Campbell - The Nearest to a Ghost: A compendium of Ramsey's strange experiences, including a visit to Plas Teg, a haunted mansion in North Wales, an incident at his mother's grave, and a near miss close encounter with Singing Sid Ordish, "Litherland's leading trumpet medium."

Elizabeth Goudge - ESP: Supernatural adventures of Elizabeth de Beauchamp Goudge during teenage years at home in Ely. Resident ghost, that of a grey cowled monk with no face, hovering beside her bed. "It was not a pleasant person, not like the angel figure who haunted the next-door house but one," at that time home to Canon and Mrs. Glazebrook. Their beautiful phantom even posed to have its portrait painted. To crown it all, during renovation work at yet another neighbouring property, the skeleton of a walled-up monk was recovered. Seriously, some people are blessed.

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It pissed on his typewriter, marching with the phantom regiment .... and other supernatural experiences of the stars! Some great, some mind-numbingly boring - in other words, it's just like any 'True Ghost' anthology should be.

Brian Lumley - The Challenge: A locked room mystery set in 1974 after author and fellow squaddies had spent night at cinema watching The Exorcist. Returned to barracks, Lumley challenges the forces of darkness to come and have a go if they think they're hard enough. They do, in disgusting fashion. Basis for his horror story, The Unbeliever (Fantasy Book, Aug. 1983. At time of incident, he was working on The Viaduct for Ramsey Campbell's Superhorror/ The Far Reaches of Fear anthology.

Peter Atkins - Taking Care of Grandma: UFO over Heygreen Road Primary School. Author strikes deal with temperamental alarm clock. A premonition of death via a Ouija board.

Paul J. McAuley - The Fall of the Wires: Bicycle girl has the narrowest escape from death under falling cables thanks to "a miracle of premonition."

Jack Dann - A Gift of Eagles: As research for novel, author endures near boiling alive in an Indian medicine man's sweat-lodge, and participates in ceremony known as "giving flesh."

Arthur Machen - World of the Senses: Officer in the British army writes to The Angel of Mons author of his - and others' - encounter with a phantom army during aftermath of the Battle of Le Cateau on 26 August 1914.

Nicholas Royle - Magical Thinking: Prior to their eventually meeting, were the author and wife Kate unwittingly stalking one another across London over several years? Also phantom footsteps on the stairs at house in Altrincham.