|
Post by Shrink Proof on Mar 23, 2015 19:58:00 GMT
Dalby's Mammoth has been lurking on an upper shelf for ages, alongside Volume 2. This thread makes me more determined to drag it down and get reading....
|
|
|
Post by ripper on Mar 24, 2015 14:08:45 GMT
Shrinkproof, both of Dalby's Mammoth Ghost Stories volumes are fine collections and I recommend them to anyone who likes ghost stories.
Last night I dipped again into vol 1. Montague Summers' 'The Between Maid' is short and creepy. The description of the slattenly, leering maid is nicely chilling. Not sure if this is based on a factual account, however loosely, but is has that feel about it, or perhaps it is just Summers' writing ability.
Manly Wade Wellman's tale was also a good 'un. The ending is fairly obvious from early on, but I thought it was a fun ride getting there. Nice location descriptions of the house and surroundings.
Just going back to the Burrage tale for a second. According to Dalby's story intro it is semi-autobiographical. Interesting to speculate which parts of the story might be from Burrage's past.
|
|
|
Post by Shrink Proof on Mar 25, 2015 7:55:29 GMT
Shrinkproof, both of Dalby's Mammoth Ghost Stories volumes are fine collections and I recommend them to anyone who likes ghost stories. I suspected as much. They've been moved up the "Pull Your Finger Out and Read This Stuff" queue...
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Mar 30, 2015 16:12:04 GMT
I just read Roger Johnson's very positive review of The Mammoth Book Of Ghost Stories in Ghosts & Scholars 13 and can only agree when he describes that very beautiful Gordon Crabbe cover painting as "perhaps the most subtly disturbing I've ever seen." While both volumes are a must for lovers of the traditional (and not so traditional) ghost story, I'd say the first is the absolute masterpiece of the pair. The second is merely really really good.
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Apr 16, 2015 7:41:06 GMT
Arthur Conan-Doyle - The Bully of Brocas Court: Honest Alf Steven, middle-weight champion of Kentish Town, goes the distance with the phantom prize-fighter once known as 'The Gasman'. The porky pugilist proves as ruthless and formidable an opponent as he ever was in life so why should he be terrified by a small dog? Animal lovers unlikely to appreciate the denouement.
Ambrose Bierce - An Inhabitant of Carcosa: Told via a medium. With no idea how or why he arrived here, the fever-stricken narrator wanders the forgotten burial ground. Eventually he chances upon a tombstone bearing a terrifying inscription ....
Mrs J.H. Riddell - The Last of Squire Ennismore: A shipwreck in Ardwinsagh Bay. Squire Ennismore, seventy, the wickedest man in Ireland, lays claim to the barrel of brandy washed up on his land and organises a party for his card playing, blasphemous, womanising friends. A dark, cloven-hooved stranger arrives on the shore and, having resisted the local priest's attempt at exorcism, claim's the Squire's soul in lieu of the alcohol. To his credit, Ennismore takes eternal damnation in his stride - no kicking, screaming, etc., - which is surely not what the reader had hoped for.
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Apr 17, 2015 8:44:55 GMT
Henry James - The Real Right Thing: Much to his surprise, young, virtually unknown George Withermore is commissioned to write a biography of the late and very famous author, Ashton Doyne. Encouraged by Doyne's widow, he studies the dead man's private papers. Doyne's ghost resents such a gross invasion of privacy and does everything in his power to scupper the project. Withermore and Mrs. Doyne finally concede defeat. I wouldn't know great literature if it bit me on the tit, but I suspect The Real Right Thing qualifies, and if so it's not very exciting.
E. F. Benson - The Shuttered Room: (Weird Tales, Dec. 1929). On the death of Uncle Robert, who he barely knew, Hugh Lister inherits an Old Georgian manor house with high-walled garden in Trenthorpe (Rye) and moves in with wife Violet. From the first she is sensitive to an eerie atmosphere. We learn that Robert and his brother Henry were reclusive, misanthropic misers, who, consumed by mutual loathing, let the property run to ruin rather than part with a penny to keep it in decent repair. Henry mysteriously disappeared, presumed dead by his own hand (his clothes were found neatly piled by the river). Robert survive him by a matter of months before he died raving. What can it all mean? Some neat touches but surely as generic a haunted house story as EFB ever committed to print.
|
|
|
Post by sickdrjoe on May 1, 2015 3:27:16 GMT
Yet another repackaging, though this one's not missing stories. A very smart, compact hardcover and seemingly always available dirt cheap online (got my copy new for four bucks including the shipping). This is Dalby at his best, to my thinking; casting his net not wide but deep, crafting arguably the most impressive tribute to the Jamesian tradition yet assembled.
|
|
|
Post by ripper on Sept 25, 2015 11:40:31 GMT
A while ago I posted about Summers' 'The Between Maid' possibly being based on fact. Flicking through Peter Underwood's 'A-Z of British Ghosts' what did I find but the same account--in Underwood's words--of the slatternly maid in the pink dress. According to Underwood, Montague Summers told him personally of the haunting. I was saddened to learn that Peter Underwood had passed away last November. His accounts of hauntings were a staple of library shelves in the 70s and 80s, and I have spent many happy hours curled up with one or other of his entertaining books.
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Sept 25, 2015 18:11:55 GMT
A while ago I posted about Summers' 'The Between Maid' possibly being based on fact. Flicking through Peter Underwood's 'A-Z of British Ghosts' what did I find but the same account--in Underwood's words--of the slatternly maid in the pink dress. According to Underwood, Montague Summers told him personally of the haunting. I was saddened to learn that Peter Underwood had passed away last November. His accounts of hauntings were a staple of library shelves in the 70s and 80s, and I have spent many happy hours curled up with one or other of his entertaining books. Something I really admired about Mr. Underwood - he was happy to admit that, in all his years, he'd never once encountered a ghost. Somewhere among my junk, I've a really grumpy interview he gave to (I think) The Independent not long after he'd stormed out of the Ghost Club and formed his own breakaway society. Peter Underwood: 13 Ghosts & Co.
|
|
|
Post by ripper on Sept 25, 2015 18:58:57 GMT
Good assessment of Peter Underwood's status as a writer and his attitude to the paranormal, Dem. If you want reasoned analysis of a sighting then PU probably isn't your first port of call, but for a thoroughly engaging and entertaining journey through the ghosts of the British Isles then he is hard to beat. And, yes, he is to be applauded for not over-egging the pudding by claiming personal experiences when he has not had any. I know he left the Ghost Club and set up his own society, but I am not quite sure what happened to prompt him to do that.
|
|
|
Post by ripper on Jul 14, 2016 10:09:46 GMT
Thirty years ago I wouldn't have given a Robert Aickman tale house room. I thought they were just too deep and dull compared to other writers. It was actually the Aickman story in this collection, 'The Unsettled Dust', read about a decade or so ago, that led me to appreciate his writing with its subtleties and many layers. I still wouldn't call myself a fan of his, but whenever I come across one of his stories I find them far more interesting and rewarding than I used to.
|
|
|
Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jul 14, 2016 19:35:54 GMT
Thirty years ago I wouldn't have given a Robert Aickman tale house room. I thought they were just too deep and dull compared to other writers. It was actually the Aickman story in this collection, 'The Unsettled Dust', read about a decade or so ago, that led me to appreciate his writing with its subtleties and many layers. I still wouldn't call myself a fan of his, but whenever I come across one of his stories I find them far more interesting and rewarding than I used to. Maybe you were younger 30 years ago?
|
|
|
Post by humgoo on Jul 31, 2019 9:51:41 GMT
[...] Charles Dickens - The Bagman’s Uncle [...] Edgar Allan Poe - William Wilson [...] Mark Twain - A Ghost Story [...] Oscar Wilde - The Canterville Ghost I hope it doesn't sound like conspiracism, but I always wonder whether these stories were included at the request of the publisher. "You can't do a book like this without Dickens and Poe!" etc. Still, the book is a priceless mammoth.
|
|