Peter Haining – The Ghost’s Companion

[dem bones]

Peter Haining (ed.) – The Ghost’s Companion: Stories Of Personal Encounters With The Supernatural (Puffin 1978, originally Gollancz, 1975)

Harry Hants

Introduction – Peter Haining

M. R. James – A School Story
H. R. Wakefield – The Red Lodge
O. Henry – The Furnished Room
Algernon Blackwood – A Haunted Island
Rudyard Kipling – My Own True Ghost Story
Lafcadio Hearn – The Boy Who Drew Cats *
Arthur Machen – The Monstrance
Daphne du Maurier – Escort
Hammond Innes – South Sea Bubble
August Derleth – Hallowe’en For Mr. Faulkner
Richard Hughes – The Ghost
Dennis Wheatley – The Case Of The Red-Headed Women
Fritz Leiber – Smoke Ghost
Joan Aiken – Aunt Jezebel’s House
Ray Bradbury – Fever Dream

* [The Gollancz edition replaces this story with the same author's The Hands Of The Karma ]

Blurb
Fifteen super-spooky supernatural stories by fifteen authors, who all had ghostly experiences of their own

Another of Mr. Haining's compiled with what used to be called children in mind, and very decent it is, too. Settle the little ones down to sleep with tales of suicide, a war atrocities, haunted houses and an everyday malefic urban spectre for the industrial age.

Includes:

Arthur Machen – The Monstrance: Western Front, 1915. Diary of the late Sergeant Karl Heinz, haunted to his doom by the spectres of the old priest martyred outside St. Lambart's and the three year old boy his men crucified against the church door.

Lafcadio Hearn – The Boy Who Drew Cats : Japan. A "Goblin" haunts a desolate temple. A young vagabond with an obsessive-compulsive disorder to paint cats everywhere decorates the walls with his designs before falling asleep for the night. He awakens to find the floor awash with blood and an enormous rat dead in the middle of it. Who - or what - could have killed the monster? The cats look very pleased with themselves.

Ray Bradbury – Fever Dream: An Invasion Of The Body-snatchers in miniature. Charlie, 15, bedridden with what his doctor has confidently diagnosed as "scarlet fever," knows for sure that his body is being conquered, cell by cell, by an evil alien intelligence. But will anybody believe him?

Joan Aiken – Aunt Jezebel’s House: Based on an incident in the life of the author's stepfather, Martin 'The Pipe Smoker' Armstrong. Mr. Wintergreen inherits his aunt's cottage in Rye. This comes as a shock to everyone, not least Mr. Wintergreen, because the old bat made no secret of the fact she despised him as an unimaginative, crushing bore. Maud assures her brother the place is so infested with ghosts that even he won't fail to see them. So it proves. Mr. Wintergreen's first encounter with the supernatural occurs on the train journey to his new home when a little boy materialises in the carriage ...