|
|
Post by dem on Mar 10, 2008 8:21:48 GMT
R. Chetwynd-Hayes (ed.) - The 20th Fontana Book Of Great Ghost Stories (1984)  Les Edwards
Brian Lumley - Aunt Hester
Roger Malisson - Skin Deep
E. F. Benson - How Fear Departed From The Long Gallery
Meg Buxton - Carrie Liddicoat's Cottage
John Atkins - The Diary Of William Carpenter
Rick Kennett - The Roads Of Donnington
'Ex-Private X' (A. M. Burrage) - The Running Tide
Dorothy K. Haynes - A Lady In The Night
May Sinclair - The Villa Desiree
Heather Vineham - Graveyard Lodge
Gladys Law - Ordeal By Fire
Tony Richards - Our Lady Of The Shadows
Daphne Froome - The Rip Current
R. Chetwynd-Hayes - My Very Best Friend Having fifty books on the go at one time has to be a personal worst, but I'm determined to work my way through these bloody things and the Danby "65 Tales ..." efforts too. Jerry mentioned recently that the Fontana's go for ridiculous prices on-line and Amazon have a copy of #20 on sale for $300 plus! f**king outrageous! This is the first 'Roger Malisson' story I've read since reading on Locus that 'he' is actually a pseudonym of Catherine Gleason. Skin Deep is written from a female POV , so there's a tendency to think "I should've known all along!", but if you read, say, The Thirteenth Kestral in Frighteners 2, would you ever have doubted that it was written by other than a man? Anyway .... Brian Lumley - Aunt Hester: Aunt Hester , Spiritualist and all-round Black Sorcery dabbler, has the ability to project her mind into the body of another while theirs are temporarily transferred into hers. As a result of this, her family have shunned her from a young age, particularly her brother George who despises her as a witch. Hester is obsessed with the idea of meeting her niece and nephew, if only for a few moments, and to do so she decides to use George's as her host body. Pity she didn't check on his current state of health first. Roger Malisson - Skin Deep: After a whirlwind romance, 42 year old male model Julian Haymer-Knight marries up and coming star Sophie Seaton, 17, but within weeks of the happy event, she is killed in a car accident. At first Julian is supremely flattered that this girl loved him so much her beautiful spectre comes to visit him in their bedroom any night, but then the ravages of death start going to work ... Dorothy K. Haynes - A Lady In The Night: A woman on the verge of childbirth hears the click of high heels in the street below and envisions a french prostitute visiting devout church-goer Mr. MacKenzie to give him a private Can-Can. Enter his wife. A fracas ensues, ending with the tart's body being dumped in the quarry. Of course, it's all a drug-induced hallucination, but strange how the MacKenzie's moved away so suddenly ... R. Chetwynd-Hayes - My Very Best Friend: An orphan’s progress. Following the death of his parents in a car accident, the narrator is shunted from puritanical relative to puritanical relative, his constant companion a beautiful woman that others sometimes sense and fear but only he can see. She acts as his Guardian Angel, a malevolent one at that, prone to playing cruel pranks but invaluable for settling scores and maiming school bullies. On the minus side she’s fanatically possessive and won’t have him lusting after pretty Josie Bakewell when his hormones start kicking in. At the close of his teens he wants rid of his dark benefactor and approaches Clapham’s finest, Madam Orloff, Psychic Extraordinary (The Elemental, The Holstein Horror and Co.) to exorcise her. Now free to wed his childhood sweetheart, he gets Josie as far as the altar before the parson gets it into his head to give the ceremony a “forgive thy enemy” theme. Caught up in the moment, our man absolves his Fallen Angel who immediately marches down the aisle and karate chops his bride with the result that “I must be the only husband who was made a widower before the register was signed.” CalentureThe Villa Desiree by May Sinclair: This one is similar to Sinclair's Where Their Fire is Not Quenched with its theme of "the banality of lust without love". On the South of France, in a house facing the sea, Mildred Eve waits for her fiance Louis Caron. She's looking forward to seeing him again, but is a little disturbed that his last wife died in the very room she must occupy.
|
|
|
|
Post by dem on Oct 3, 2012 7:19:17 GMT
Gladys Law - Ordeal By Fire: Original to the volume but reads as if it might have been written for the fag-end of the Creeps series fifty years earlier.
Oxford. A series of fire-related accidents befall Kathy and John when they move into a bungalow on the outskirts of Ewerine village. A chip pan catches alight. A log topples from the fireplace and singes the carpet. Kathy has a recurring nightmare-premonition of their home ablaze ....
Five years later, John learns that Ewerine was the scene of a witch-burning in 1542. His tidying of the overgrown, rubbish-strewn garden had disturbed the blackened bones of Martha Corbett, old crone, who perished at the stake.
Heather Vineham - Graveyard Lodge: Back in the 1840's, Enderby Lodge, surrounded on three sides by a cemetery, was the scene of a particularly gruesome murder. The Whittakers had recently returned to England with their loyal Indian servants, Shandu the house attendant and his young bride Lalu, nanny to Edmund, the Whittaker's little boy. They continued as usual until Shandu saw Lalu with another man, flew into a maniacal rage and set about carving up her beautiful face so "No man shall look at you again with love."
In the present day, twenty-somethings Darshami and Ruth Ghavri take up residence at the lodge. Darshami is impotent and believes the condition is punishment for a crime committed in a previous incarnation. He frequently dreamt of Enderby Lodge long before he was aware of its existence. They've not long settled when Ruth is made aware of a shrouded figure wandering the graveyard.
Robert, Ruth's old flame, pays a visit while Darshami is attending a business conference ....
John Atkins - The Diary Of William Carpenter: Somerset. Carpenter, 53, a super-smug Londoner, sneers at those who turned down budget-priced Park Farm on the grounds of a locally infamous crime of passion which saw a fellow named Ruskin hang for shoving his wife downstairs. Recently retired, Carpenter has separated from shrewish wife Mildred to spend more time with his stamp collection, so he's gutted to receive a telegram announcing her arrival the following day. With the unwitting assistance of Lambert, the garrulous old Parson, Carpenter convinces Mildred that Ruskin's ghost walks Park Farm ...
|
|
|
|
Post by dem on Oct 4, 2012 5:25:33 GMT
'Ex-Private X' - The Running Tide: (The London Magazine, Sept 1928: Someone In The Room, 1931). Following the death of her husband, Burrage's cousin Anstice buys a boarding house at Lostromel on the South coast of Devon. It should be a tourist trap: "In Lostromel you suddenly realise that England isn't, after all, one huge stinking industrial town, seething with class hatred and discontent." Fortunately for the reader, if not Anstice, The Running Tide was once owned by Joe Fox and his bawdy moll who'd drug, rob and murder their richer guests and sell the poorer to any passing unscrupulous ship's captains.
For this reader, an undisputed highlight of a very enjoyable collection. Also notable for a scene stealing cameo from Jack Moggs, the wooden-legged proprietor of The Queen of India, and his piss-taking parrot.
Daphne Froome - The Rip Current: Life is short and it's filled with stuff/ So let me know baby when you've had enough ...". Two years before the Cramps gave us The Surfin Dead via The Return Of The Living Dead soundtrack, Ken Patterson, chairman and leading light of the Barncastle Surfing Club was teaching Melwyn Pencraig, a bored employee at the Trebway Hotel, how to ride the waves. Tragically for Melwyn, such was Ken's devotion to the sport that he continued the lessons post-drowning. For me this is the typical Daphne Froome Fontana Ghost story. Well crafted, easy on the brain but just lacking the sparkle to elevate it from decent to great.
|
|
|
|
Post by dem on Oct 5, 2012 18:04:00 GMT
Rick Kennett - The Roads Of Donnington: An early adventure of Australia's premier "reluctant ghost-hunter", Ernie Pine, who, at this stage of career, confessed that he was "hardly an expert, Doug. All I've dome is read Elliott O'Donnel, Hans Holzer and Lord Halifax's Ghost Book. That doesn't make a Harry Price." Ernie visits his country cousins, Doug and Cathy Asher in Donnington. Due to his fondness for motorbikes and interest in the psychic world, the Asher's insist he's just the man to investigate the local spook. Barry Rand died three weeks ago when he came off his bike on a hairpin bend known locally as Devil's Elbow, but Doug still sees him riding the streets and believes others do too. Black Jack, an alcoholic Aborigine is the first to let on to Ernie that Barry was murdered, driven off the road by local bruiser Paul Markley, half-man, half-bull terrier, who had eyes on Barry's girlfriend, Margo the barmaid.
Meg Buxton - Carrie Liddicoat's Cottage: Cornwall. Widow Moira Montague retires to the recently renovated Tamarisk Cottage and excitedly looks forward to showing off her dream home to son Paul. The cottage was once home to Carrie Liddicoat, a witch specialising in herbal remedies and abortion, who allowed her goat, cat and numerous chickens free run of the place until it stank to high heaven. Slowly but surely, Carrie takes possession of Moira's body and mind until, when he arrives, Paul is informed by a wrinkled old crone that there's no Miz Montague ever lived around these parts.
|
|
|
|
Post by dem on Oct 6, 2012 9:47:24 GMT
Have recently re-read May Sinclair's The Villa Désirée and and EFB's How Fear Departed From The Long Gallery in Lady Cynthia Asquith's The Ghost Book and Elwood & Ghidalia's The Little Monsters respectively, so that leaves Tony Richards to round things off with solemn Black Sorcery outing, Our Lady Of The Shadows. Mary-Jane Palmer, nineteen, an American college girl in Paris, happily going about the tourist thing until a silly row with Ginny, her best friend and travelling companion, sees them go their separate ways. After the split, Mary-Jane endures for the first time what is to become a recurring nightmare: she follows a floating, red haired woman in grey to the cellar of a huge, dilapidated building in the back streets of the city, where some kind of ritual, presided over by six grey-clad men, "faces as white as maggots, eyes like dust pits," is in progress. The following day, Mary-Jane is approached in Notre Dame Cathedral by Canadian ex-pat Michael Levant, who, she soon comes to realise is one of the sinister figures from her nightmare. She resolves to leave Paris, but all her efforts are thwarted by the theft of her passport, last-minute train cancellations, a strike at the airport, etc.. It transpires that Levant and his colleagues are powerful Eighteenth Century Black Magicians, bent on returning Paris to it's old glory, before the encroachment of Ronald McDonald, Starbucks, Colonel Saunders et al can transform it into yet another soulless replica of down-town Dallas. But why are they fixated with Mary-Jane and what ghastly fate have they in store for her? From what I gather on this board and elsewhere, opinions are divided over the Chetwynd-Hayes Fontana Ghost books (vols. 9-20), with some of a mind that the series good as ended when Robert Aickman stepped down from the editor's chair. I'd argue that, while the stories may not always have been "Great", RCH and his raft of regulars reinvigorated the series, and this is a respectable volume to go out on. |
|
|
|
Post by jayaprakash on Feb 7, 2013 11:45:34 GMT
I just bought this for less than a pound. It's been a while since I unearthed one of these so I'm looking forward to this one quite a bit. The first story, by Brian Lumley, is off to a great start with chilling references to the Necronomicon.
|
|
|
|
Post by jayaprakash on Feb 11, 2013 7:51:24 GMT
I'd give this collection a solid 6 stars out of 10. Some excellent stories, nothing outright poor, but too many of them revolve around a haunted house - although there are a couple of enterprising variants on the vector of haunting.
Brian Lumley - Aunt Hester
This was a very chill-inducing tale. The Necronomicon reference adds texture, and the theme of hopping bodies is one that HPL did touch upon, but Lumley's tale isn't essentially Lovecraftian in spirit.
Roger Malisson - Skin Deep
I liked this. The characters are convincing and the plight of the ghost is especially pathetic.
E. F. Benson - How Fear Departed From The Long Gallery
I am never completely happy with a ghost story that has so happy, even sentimental an ending but Benson brings in some wonderfully macabre effects, especially the dream of the woman who saw herself merging with the couch.
Meg Buxton - Carrie Liddicoat's Cottage
A gem of a tale in which time and identity are slowly distorted.
John Atkins - The Diary Of William Carpenter
A slow builder, and one of a few too many tales to revolve around a haunted building of some sort, but with a very effective twist ending.
Rick Kennett - The Roads Of Donnington
This time, a motorbike is the haunted object, but this far more than a gimmick tale.
'Ex-Private X' (A. M. Burrage) - The Running Tide
Again, someone acquires a building haunted by some past crime, but there's some great atmosphere here.
Dorothy K. Haynes - A Lady In The Night
This was incredibly good. The frantic thoughts of a pregnant woman entwine with her feverish partly clairvoyant perceptions of a foul deed in the night.
May Sinclair - The Villa Desiree
Yet another haunted house - but this time by a very unique creature, not really a ghost but a sort of manifestation of the evil of a living man.
Heather Vineham - Graveyard Lodge
A conventional tale of crime, rebirth and revenge.
Gladys Law - Ordeal By Fire
One too many haunted house tales, as I said, and this one may well be it.
Tony Richards - Our Lady Of The Shadows
A most macabre, even weird tale set in Paris. Some elements of the final revelation are close to cliche, but the story is most disturbing and skilfully told, beginning with the death of its protagonist but still holding interest.
Daphne Froome - The Rip Current
A haunted surf board? This one didn't do a lot for me.
R. Chetwynd-Hayes - My Very Best Friend
A superb blend of unease and black humour.
All in all, I enjoyed most of these stories, some a great deal. I believe this was the last in the series, and RCH quite prophetically wonders in his introduction if this book will be a collector's item some day.
|
|
