The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

[alansjf]

I guess this must be one of the last (if not the last) anthology the great Mr Haining put together:

The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories (Robinson, 2007)

1. Raising Spectres: The Modern Tradition

M.R. James - ‘Oh Whistle, and I’ll Come To You, My Lad’
A.C. Benson - The House at Treheale
E.G. Swain - The Richpins
Arthur Gray - The Everlasting Club
A.N.L. Munby - Number Seventy-Nine

2. Ghost Writers: The “Golden Era”

Arthur Conan Doyle: Playing With Fire
Rudyard Kipling - The House Surgeon
John Buchan - The Grove Of Ashtroth
Somerset Maugham - The Man from Glasgow
D.H. Lawrence - The Last Laugh
Vladimir Nabokov - A Visit to the Museum

3. Phantom Ranks: Supernatural at War

Arthur Machen - The Bowmen
George Minto - The Ghost of U65
Algernon Blackwood - ‘Vengeance is Mine’
Lord Dunsany - The Punishment
Dennis Wheatley - The Haunted Chateau
Elizabeth Bowen - Pink May
Derek Barnes - A Gremlin in the Beer
Sir Alec Guinness - Money For Jam

4. The Ghost-Feelers: Modern Gothic Tales

Edith Wharton - The Lady’s Maid’s Bell
Marie Belloc Lowndes - The Duenna
Eudora Welty - Clytie
Daphne du Maurier - The Pool
Jane Gardam - A Spot of Gothic

5. Entertaining Spooks: Supernatural High Jinks

H.G. Wells - The Inexperienced Ghost
Alexander Wolcott - Full Fathom Five
James Thurber - The Night the Ghost Got In
Eric Keown - Sir Tristram Goes West
Kingsley Amis - Who or What Was It?
Ray Bradbury - Another Fine Mess

6. Christmas Spirits: Festive Season Chillers

Rider Haggard - Only a Dream…
Edith Nesbit - The Haunted House
E.F. Benson - The Light in the Garden
Marjorie Bowen - The Prescription
Howard Spring - Christmas Honeymoon
Hammond Innes - South Sea Bubble
Peter Ackroyd - Ringing in the Good News

7. Haunting Times: Tales of Unease

Fritz Leiber - Smoke Ghost
A.E. Van Vogt - The Ghost
William F. Nolan - The Party
J.B. Priestley - Underground
Joyce Carol Oates - Haunted
Philip Pullman - Video Nasty
Louis de Bernieres - My Beautiful House

[dem bones]

According to the lovely people at Robinsons, Peter's The Mammoth Book of True Hauntings will be published at Halloween.

Details of this and other forthcoming Mammoth's here!

I love that cover. It's a Joe Roberts job, as is The Mammoth Book Of Haunted House Stories - You can see more of his work HERE

Just made a start on this with Philip Pullman - Video Nasty: On the old board ("during the war ...") we had this thread You Know It's The Eighties When .... - perhaps FM will revive it if you ask him nicely. Anyhow, despite being set a decade later, Video Nasty is as 'eighties as Yuppie slime barbies, shoulder pads, Scary Monsters And Super Creeps, and the cover of The Witches: 1 The Prisoner

Early teens Kevin, Martin and David are bunking off school, getting thrown out of Woolworths, stealing Mars bars and generally getting up to no good, biding their time until they can collect their under-the-counter video, Snuff Park, from their creepy newsagent. They're soon joined by a strange youth who pleads to be allowed to join them for the private screening around Martin's house. The guys don't reckon he'll be able to handle it but turns out he's seen it over a hundred times and there's a dreadful reason for his obsession...

Kingsley Amis - Who Or What Was It?: His short sequel to The Green Man. Amis and his wife Jane stop off at a pub on their way home from Milnethorne to Barnet and he works himself into a tizzy over a string of remarkable-ish coincidences: the landlord's name is Allington, his deputy for the evening is Palmer and the barman is Fred - just like they are in his (excellent) work of fiction. As with the novel, this Mr. Allington has a young daughter and, if tonight is to get any weirder, there's a chance that a huge creature of twigs and leaves will attempt to destroy her. Amis and his wife agree that there's only one thing for it - he'll have to keep watch and make sure nothing untoward happens to the girl ...

[dem bones]

J. B. Priestley - Underground: Thuggish double-crosser Ray Aggarstone has just conned Cherry and her ma out of their life savings, but before he can high tail it to Rio, he's some business over Hendon way. Aggarstone boards the tube at Leicester Square and it's not until he enters the crowded carriage that he remembers how much he detests the underground, the constant crush, the stale smell of miserable losers, the fact he has to stand. Sweary Ray's mood isn't improved any when some nosey do-gooder dares address him, advising him to get off at the next stop with everyone else. "Most people think that this line's at its deepest at Hampstead. What they don't know ... is that there's a second line, starting at Hampstead, that goes deeper still - on and on, deeper and deeper." The train arrives at Hampstead, Aggarstone stays put while inexplicably, his fellow passengers all spill out onto the platform, leaving him .... not alone. Once the train has pulled out of the station, the conductor with no face advances along the carriage ...

i've a fondess for Priestley's feel-good The Demon King and Underground is a decent E.C.-ish supernatural horror yarn, but i can't help but wonder whether some working class fellow accidentally trod on JBP's foot in the rush hour before he rattled this off.

William F. Nolan - The Party: New York, though it might just as well be Romford or Borough High Street. At just twenty-seven years of age, David Ashland is already a successful movie producer, but a hectic lifestyle has seen him plunge into alcoholism. Tonight Ashland is recovering from a blackout and arrives at the party with no idea who the host might be or why he's even there. To make matters worse, the clown who invited these jerks obviously set out to collect every neurotic, boring, self-centered trendy in Greenwich Village under one roof. The constant chatter - inane and vaguely sinister - sends Ashland scurrying to the bar, but in Limbo the alcohol won't get you drunk, the dope won't get you high, and for all that they're readily available, the beautiful people won't get you hard!

[dem bones]

A.N.L. Munby - Number Seventy-Nine: Why Mr. Egerton, the proprietor of a Red Lion Square bookshop, destroyed a manuscript, dating from the seventeenth century and believed to be the work of Dr. John Dee, despite the enthusiasm of Munby who is prepared to pay the £15 asking price. Munby is very put out until Egerton tells him what happened to his erstwhile colleague Mr. Merton.

Returning permanently damaged from WWI, Merton, despite his eccentricities, had been Egerton's invaluable right-hand man for twenty years - right up until yesterday when whatever it was he saw in the basement caused him to run screaming into the street and straight under the wheels of a bus. Merton had recently surprised his employer by announcing his impending marriage and Egerton was delighted to see such a change in the poor man whose life had been blighted by misfortune. Thank goodness those dark days are behind him!

Merton remained in cheery mood right up until his fiancée was killed in a car accident, whereupon he began consulting Spiritualists and mouldering volumes on the occult, specialist subject: Necromancy.

Lord Dunsany - The Punishment: Potsdam, Germany toward the close of 1918 and the war to end all wars, Kaiser Wilhelm II is visited in the palace bedroom by a spectre who has read his A Christmas Carol and didn't much care for the ending (would that were the case with Peter Ackroyd ... ) The spectre is a composite of all those Germans who have either died or will never now be born due to the war, and his punishment is to wander their once joyful now desolate communities throughout eternity. Propaganda fiction for sure, but Dunsany sure packs plenty into three sides.

After two minor masterpieces, this next didn't do anything much for me i'm afraid, but what the hell, there was a war on.

Derek Barnes - A Gremlin in the Beer: R.A.F. base Lincolnshire during World War II. Enjoying a few pints after another successful raid, 'Old Moanie' regales his young colleagues with tall tales of the evil stinking super-gremlin responsible for his run of bad luck. Recalling the conversation the following day, the narrator, an intelligence officer, uses the gremlin to extract an invaluable snippet of information from the weary pilot when he returns from a traumatic bombing mission off the Dutch coast.

Peter Ackroyd - Ringing in the Good News: Can definitely recommend Ackroyd's massive non-fiction study London: The Biography both as page-turning straight history book and a superb compendium of weird tales, and i've been looking forward to making a start on Hawksmoor, but will likely have to develop a mental block about this one before i can!

Christmas Eve in Acton, West London. One year on from the birth of his son, Kevin is plagued by nuisance telephone calls from Vera, his domineering mother-in-law, proclaiming "It's a boy! It's a lovely boy!", just as she did on the night the little chap was delivered. The worst of it is, Vera has often been within his close proximity when he picks up the phone. Either she's dreamt up some complicated and utterly pointless prank utilizing a recorded message, or he has a phantom on the line. So far, so-so, and Ackroyd even mentions that of late, the disembodied voice has taken on a sinister edge, but don't get your hopes up because you will be searching frantically for your Mark Of The Devil vomit bag once you hit the final paragraphs...

some tarted up from earlier:

Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle – Playing With Fire: London. The small party at 17 Badderley Gardens will never again realise the same success they enjoyed the night M. Paul de Duc joined them for a séance. M de Duc believes that “when you imagine a thing you make a thing” – a terrifying concept when you think about it – and on this evidence he’s right. First, via medium Mrs. Delamere, a chatty spirit gives the assembled invaluable insight into the afterlife, then the Frenchman rather foolishly conducts his experiment … and materialises .... a unicorn. Which promptly goes berserk.

i've finally realised why i never warmed to this story as i have much of Conan-Doyle's other genre work. It's the unicorn. I fucking hate unicorns, i do. Had de Duc only concentrated on, say, a squid, then i'd be up for it like it was a second The Captain Of The Pole Star.

Hammond Innes – South Sea Bubble: A widower decides to sell up, invest in a boat, and live out his days on the ocean. Unfortunately for him, Samoa, (snapped up at the essential ludicrously low price) is haunted by an assassin with a winch.

Marjorie Bowen – The Prescription: Verall Hall, Bucks. Christmas at Mrs. Janey’s and the hostess arranges for Mrs. Mahogany, the famous medium, to have one of her turns by way of amusement for the guests. It’s all breathtakingly dull stuff which is why the party react with scepticism when Mrs. Mahogany goes gaga, uttering cries of “Murder!” and describing in detail the demise of a young woman who’s been administered a lethal dose of arsenic, location unknown but nearby.

As Mrs. Mahogany departs she encounters latecomer Dr. Dilke. “You’re very psychic, aren’t you?” she states, and so it proves when, that night, he’s aroused from his bed and ushered aboard an ancient coach by a man desperate to save his dying wife. Dr. Dilke recognises a case of poisoning when he sees it and writes a prescription although he’s a hundred years too late to save the victim's life.

[cw67q]

The Unicorn thing might be a good rule of thumb, it is rarely a good sign when a horse with an ice cream cone on its nose turns up in a story. But, but, there is a cracker of a tale by Sarban that features one of the otherwise blighted beasts. It might be considered spoilerific to mention the name of the tale , but I will if pressed, particularly if anyone has a way to do one of those scrolly spoiler things

If you have an ebook reader then my advice is to buy all of the Tartarus press Sarban ebooks and just read everything until you get to the unicorn story, then pause briefly and read the rest. I think the ebooks are even cheaper from TOP direct than they are from amazon.

- Chris

[cw67q]

The Buchan story is a recommended read if you like tales of the machen/blackwood stripe.

- Chris

[dem bones]

Sept 20, 2011 9:52:27 GMT cw67q said:

The Unicorn thing might be a good rule of thumb, it is rarely a good sign when a horse with an ice cream cone on its nose turns up in a story. But, but, there is a cracker of a tale by Sarban that features one of the otherwise blighted beasts. It might be considered spoilerific to mention the name of the tale , but I will if pressed, particularly if anyone has a way to do one of those scrolly spoiler things

- Chris

Spoilers? it's probably a little late for this board to start worrying about them ....

My morbid loathing of ... of those things - and it's right up there with a hatred for all things talking dragons, hobbits, elves, oompa f**ken loompas, gnomes (non-garden variety: I don't mind the slightly sinister stone variant so much) and "sympathetic" vampires - is the result of a traumatic reading experience in younger years. You don't even want to go near this link

Dennis Wheatley – The Case Of The Haunted Chateau: World War II. Psychic detective Neils Orsen investigates an old chateau ”abandoned because it is so badly haunted that even the officers refuse to stay in it.” The spectre is reputedly that of the sadistic Vicomte de Cheterau who bled the peasants dry and was duly crucified by them during the Revolution for his sins.

The pompous one has set everything in place for a right ripping supernatural horror yarn and it would be marvel indeed if he could possibly foul things up, but, as we the miserable ones who've survived Gateway To Hell will all too readily attest, you underestimate Wheatley's supreme mastery of the anti-climax at your peril.

One quick magnum of Bollinger (very dry) later and, sufficiently recovered to proceed to:

H.G. Wells - The Inexperienced Ghost: The Mermaid Club, a private golf course in Surrey. Clayton is known among his friends as a talented raconteur, so when he insists that last night he spent an hour in conversation with a ghost, they are not entirely convinced. The ghost, he tells them, never amounted to anything in life - he was a London schoolteacher - and shows every sign of making an even greater failure of death. When Clayton came upon him in the club house he'd forgotten how to vanish. Eventually, after much encouragement and cajoling on Clayton's part, the spook hit upon the right combination of gestures and hand movements to release him back to limbo. Clayton foolishly attempts to replicate his elaborate routine ...

Pretty sure The Inexperienced Ghost was among the first ghost stories I ever read, and, being on the slow side, I missed that it was likely intended as an amusing example of the form. The final paragraphs creeped me out, which is more than can be said for 99% of the spooky tales I've read since.

[cw67q]

Sept 20, 2011 12:10:29 GMT dem bones said:

spoilers? it's probably a little late for this board to start worrying about them ....

Well ok then... it is the Trespassers, a novella included in The Doll Maker & Other Tales of the Uncanny.

my morbid loathing of ... of those things - and it's right up there with a hatred for all things talking dragons, hobbits, elves, oompa f**ken loompas, gnomes (non-garden variety: i don't mind the slightly sinister stone variant so much) and "sympathetic" vampires - is the result of a traumatic reading experience in younger years. you don't even want to go near this link

Eek, that is a horror indeed - Chris

[dem bones]

Sept 21, 2011 7:10:44 GMT cw67q said:

Eek, that is a horror indeed - Chris

That's not the half of it. Oh, the fun and games that ensued when I discreetly let on to one of the C*u*t Dr*c**a F*n Cl*b that I was a shade disappointed with their 'Prez's ghastly contribution to vampire literature ...

The ghost & horror scene has it's moments but it's a rare bastion of sanity after some of the goings-on in vampire la la land.

To more important matters, and a highlight of this strikingly uneven collection is the 14 page annotated bibliography at back of the book, Mr. Haining's A Century Of Ghost Novels: 1900-2000. Was struck by how few of the pre WWII entries I'd heard of, let alone read. How about you?

• Robert Marshall - The Haunted Major (1902)
  
• Evelyn Underwood - The Grey World (1904)
  
• Arnold Bennett - The Ghost (1907)
  
• William De Morgan - Alice For Short (1907)
  
• William Hope Hodgson - The Ghost Pirates (1909)
  
• Barry Pain - An Exchange Of Souls (1911)
  
• Francis Hodgson Burnett - The White People (1911)
  
• Francis Perry Elliott - The Haunted Pyjamas (1911)
  
• Winifred Graham - The Gods Of The Dead (1912)
  
• Amelia Rives - The Ghost Garden (1918)
  
• Leland Hall - Sinister House (1919)
  
• Marie Belloc Lowndes - From The Vasty deep (1920)
  
• Catherine Dawson-Scott - The Haunting (1921)
  
• Nina Toye - The Shadow Of Fear (1921)
  
• David Lindsay - The Haunted Woman (1922)
  
• Francis Brett Young - Cold Harbour (1924)
  
• Walter de La Mare - The Green Room (1925)
  
• Gaston Leroux - The New Terror (1926)
  
• Thorne Smith - Topper (1926)
  
• Selina Lagerlof - The General's Ring (1928)
  
• L. A. G. Strong - The Jealous Ghost (1931)
  
• Robin Spencer - The Lady Who Came To Stay (1931)
  
• Ross Williamson - Beginning At Dusk (1935)
  
• H. G. Wells - The Croquet Player (1936)
  
• Jack Mann - Nightmare Farm (1937)
  
• Frank Baker - Miss Hargreaves (1940)
  
• Horace Horsenell - Castle Cottage (1940)
  
• Dorothy Macardle - Uneasy Freehold (1941)
  
• Ashley Sampson - The Ghost Of Mr. Brown (1941)
  
• Dalton Trumbo - The Remarkable Andrew (1941)
  
• Frederick Rose - The Night Of The World (1944)
  
• Charles Williams - All Hallows Eve' (1945)
  
• R. A. Dick - The Ghost Of Mrs Mills (1945)
  
• Olaf Stapledon - Death Into Life (1946)
  
• George W. Stonier - Memoirs Of a Ghost (1947)
  
• Andrew Lyle - A Name For Evil (1947)
  
• Russell Thornd**e - The Master Of The Macabre (1947)
  
• Dennis Wheatley - The Haunting Of Toby Jugg (1948)
  
• Elizabeth Cadell - Brimstone In The Garden (1950)
  
• Francis Gaite - Brief Candles (1954)
  
• Amos Tutuola - My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts (1954)
  
• Anthony Armstrong - The Strange Case Of Mr. Pelham (1957)
  
• Pierre Bessand-Massenet - Amorous Ghost (1957)
  
• Richard Matheson - A Stir Of Echoes (1958)
  
• Shirley Jackson - The Haunting Of Hill House (1958)
  
• Peter Beagle - A Fine And Private Place (1960)
  
• Kingsley Amis - The Green Man (1969)
  
• Robert Marasco - Burnt Offerings (1973)
  
• Peter Straub - Julia (1975)
  
• Bernard Taylor - Sweetheart, Sweetheart (1977)
  
• Stephen King - The Shining (1977)
  
• Anne Rivers Siddons - The House Next Door (1978)
  
• Peter Straub - Ghost Story (1979)
  
• Susan Hill - The Woman In Black (1982)
  
• James Herbert - Haunted (1988)
  
• Susan Hill - The Mist In The Mirror (1991)
  
• Noel Hynde - Ghosts (1993)
  
• James Herbert - The Ghosts Of Sleathe (1994)
  
• Melanie Tem - Revenant (1994)
  
• Dennis McFarland - A Face At The Window (1996)
  
• Ramsey Campbell - Nazareth Hill (1996)
  
• Graham Masterton - The House That Jack Built (1996)
  
• Thomas Tessier - Fog Heart (1997)
  
• Stephen King - Bag Of Bones (1998)
  
• Barbara Rogan - Suspicion (1999)
  
• Douglas Clegg - Mischief (2000)

[David A. Riley]

"That's not the half of it. Oh, the fun and games that ensued when i discreetly let on to one of the C*u*t Dr*c**a F*n Cl*b that i was a shade disappointed with their 'Prez's ghastly contribution to vampire literature ...

The ghost & horror scene has it's moments but it's a rare bastion of sanity after some of the goings-on in vampire la la land."

That sounds hillarious.

David

[Jojo Lapin X]

I enjoy how Mr Haining in his introduction to this book prefaces a quote with the words "As L P Hartley observed recently, . . ." (Hartley, of course, died in 1972, and the observation in question was made in 1955.)