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Post by dem bones on Nov 11, 2007 1:59:42 GMT
Richard Dalby (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories: Volume 1 (Robinson 1990) Gordon Crabb Preface
Robert Aickman - The Unsettled Dust Louisa Baldwin - How He Left the Hotel Nugent Barker - Whessoe E.F. Benson - The Shuttered Room Ambrose Bierce - An Inhabitant of Carcosa Charles Birkin - Is there Anybody there? Algenon Blackwood - The Whisperers L.M. Boston - Curfew A.M. Burrage - I’m Sure it was No. 31 Ramsey Campbell - The Guide R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The Limping Ghost Wilkie Collins - Mrs Zant and the Ghost Basil Copper - The House by the Tarn Ralph A. Cram - In Kropfsberg Keep Daniel Defoe - The Ghost in all the Rooms Charles Dickens - The Bagman’s Uncle Arthur Conan-Doyle - The Bully of Brocas Court Amelia B. Edwards - In the Confessional Shamus Frazer - The Tune in Dan’s Cafe John S. Glasby - Beyond the Bourne William Hope Hodgson - The Valley of Lost Children Fergus Hume - The Sand-Walker Henry James - The Real Right Thing M.R. James - The Haunted Dolls’ House Roger Johnson - The Wall-Painting Rudyard Kipling - They D.H. Lawrence - The Last Laugh Margery Lawrence - Robin’s Rath J. Sheridan Le Fanu - The Dream R.H. Malden - The Sundial Richard Marsh - The Fifteenth Man John Metcalfe - Brenner’s Boy Edith Nesbit - Uncle Abraham’s Romance Fitz-James O’Brien - What was It? Vincent O’Sullivan - The Next Room Roger Pater - The Footstep of the Aventine Edgar Allan Poe - William Wilson Forrest Reid - Courage Mrs J.H. Riddell - The Last of Squire Ennismore L.T.C. Rolt - The Garside Fell Disaster David G. Rowlands - The Tears of St. Agatha Saki - The Soul of Laploshka Sapper - The Old Dining-Room Montague Summers - The Between-Maid Mark Twain - A Ghost Story Mark Valentine - The Folly H. Russell Wakefield - Out of the Wrack I Rise Karl Edward Wagner - In the Pines Manly Wade Wellman - Where Angels Fear Edward Lucas White - The House of the Nightmare Oscar Wilde - The Canterville Ghost William J. Wintle - The Spectre SpidersRobert Aickman - The Unsettled Dusk: Aickman's work doesn't lend itself to simplistic plot outlines like these but ... here goes. Government official Nugent Oxenhope's work obliges him to put up at Clamber Court, a dreary stately home in steep decline rather like the occupants, Agnes and Olive Brakespear who've been marooned there since the tragedy. Some years ago Agnes ran over Tony Tilbury as she and her sister were making ready to leave for good. It was only the testimony from Olive, who witnessed the accident from the window, which saved Agnes from being charged with murder. Now the swirling dust cloud thrown up by the car pervades the house and, world-weary and embittered, the pair live out their pointless existence in quiet hostility. John Glasby - Beyond The Bourne: Redforde Village, Cornwall. Sheila Kirby rents Rose Cottage for the spring to work on her next novel. She soon learns that the place is haunted by Timothy, a little boy who was caught in a storm and died of pneumonia. Sheila isn't in the least frightened: ghost's, in particular those of children, can't harm the living. Cycling home in driving rain, Sheila is thrown from her bike when lightening brings down a tree in her path. Timothy takes her hand, and ... Montague Summers - The Between Maid: recently widowed Mrs. Conroy and her three daughters return from India and settle at 15 Redcliffe Rd., Cliftondown. From the first they are troubled by "a most horrible, untidy Cinderella" of a maid - the ghost of a half-witted, hunchbacked drab who was cruelly abused by her miserly mistress. It's said this mean old bag threw up the sacred host when it was given her on her deathbed and she may well have been the poor girl's mother. Who can blame the Conroy's for making a hasty getaway? H. R. Wakefield - 'Out Of The Wrack I Rise': A Year to the day of his wife's death by drowning, conjurer Jerry 'Chu Chin' Pullin and "the big, bold strappy wench" who, as well as being his assistant, is also Mrs. Pullin mk. II, perform at the Blackton Empire. Before an indifferent, then hostile and, eventually, panicked crowd, they mess up every trick. Finally the safety curtain falls, crushing the skulls of both the amazing Chu Chin and the gal in the tight shorts. The murdered wife, whose skeleton was dredged from the lake that morning, has had her revenge. Karl E. Wagner - In The Pines: Decidedly non-gentle ghost story with strong vampiric overtones. Gerry, drifting into alcoholism following the death of his son, finds a portrait of a beautiful woman amongst the junk at his new home. When he insists on hanging it, there is an angry exchange with his wife Janet (who is consumed by guilt over her hand in their child's death). Gerry soon finds himself haunted by Renee, the original of the portrait, murdered back in 1925 when her husband caught her fooling around with another man. R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The Limping Ghost: Mother and father dote on seven year old Brian at the expense of his sensitive, sixteen year old sister, Julia, who can never do anything right. Their garden is haunted by a benign spook, 'Mr. Miss-One' (as in 'miss one step' on account of his limp) who is entirely oblivious to their presence as he goes about weeding his invisible flowerbeds and washing his ghost car. Unfortunately, being a Goth has yet to be invented (even the punk explosion is further away than at first appears) so Julia wills herself to fall in love with him and, after another blazing row in which she finally lets slip that she hates her mother, the family send her to Coventry. Julia decides that if Mr Miss-One can't come to her, she will go to him, and sets off to the garage to hang herself .... To say any more would be to ruin it, but Mike Ashley has described The Ghost Who Limped as "possibly his best" and it's certainly as good as anything of R. C-H's I've read up until now. Charles Birkin - Is There Anybody There?: East Anglia. Rose Cottage has a bad name amongst the locals due to a murder that was committed there in the twenties for which a young ploughman, Adam Croft, was hung. Two retired school-mistresses, Millie Ackland and Ida Rankin have just moved in when Millie, a psychic, watches the ghosts of the main protagonists - Croft, his wife and his mistress - re-enact the drama. Millie is then confronted by Croft's ghost who warns of reprisals if she tells anybody what she's seen ... Fitz-James O’Brien - What Was It?: 26th Street, New York. Following a night of opium smoking and conversation about the supernatural, narrator Harry is attacked in his bed by an invisible being. After a fierce struggle he eventually manages to subdue the unseen assailant with the help of friend Hammond. They bind “the enigma” but have no idea what to do next; they can’t keep it in the house indefinitely, but to let it loose on the world is unthinkable. Fortunate for them then, that the being dies through lack of sustenance and, after taking a plaster cast, they bury it in the back garden. The passages concerning the assault on Harry identity the type of food it needed to remain alive. Edith Nesbit - Uncle Abraham's Romance: The narrator - "I was always lame and the girls used to laugh at me" - meets a beautiful woman in a churchyard one night and continues to rendezvous with her amidst the gravestones on subsequent evenings. Comes the hour when she tells him: "If you come back before the new moon I shall meet you here as usual. But if the new moon shines on this grave and you are not here - you will never see me again." Abraham discovers a miniature of his girl and learns that she is Susannah Kingsworth - a hundred years dead. Half-crazed by this terrible revelation, he falls into a fit and misses the appointment. Yet another heartbroken Nesbit character with only a lifetime of regret to look forward to. Mark Twain - A Ghost Story: New York. The spirit of the petrified man known as the Cardiff Giant haunts both the Museum where his remains are on show and a room in a large house on Broadway. Twain convinces him he’s got this haunting thing all wrong in this forgettable parody of Gothic excess .. Louisa Baldwin - How He Left the Hotel: The lift operator at The Empire takes Colonel Saxby down to the ground floor only to learn the old boy passed away in his room five minutes earlier. Roger Johnson - The Wall Painting: Welford St. Paul, a small parish in Essex. The wall-painting is discovered during renovations to the church and antiquarian Howard Faragher is invited to examine it. Eventually he uncovers the entire mural, a medieval study depicting the controversial St. Tosti who, reputedly, trafficked with devils and inexplicably vanished mid-sermon in 1120. Something else: a shadowy form stood next to the fake Saint appears to be moving. Faragher is lured to his doom off scene and when next the narrator scrutinises the unhallowed masterpiece, he discovers to his horror that the spectral figure now bears the face of his missing friend. Richard Marsh - The Fifteenth Man: With Brixham R. C. unable to field a full team due to the skull fracture sustained by half-back Frank Joyce in the previous weeks game, Steyning are hot favourites to win. In a game played in thick fog, Joyce's 'replacement' plays a blinder although he's teammates insist they're a man down. As they leave the field victorious a telegram arrives from the hospital: Frank Joyce passed away an hour ago. Manly Wade Wellman - Where Angels Fear ... :Muriel and McCormack enter the haunted house just before midnight intent on solving the mystery of why so many have died there, invariably at the end of a rope. They witness a terrible manifestation - two corpses dangling from hooks in the rafters. And then they catch sight of the tortured faces ....
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Post by dem bones on Nov 25, 2009 11:39:10 GMT
Mark Valentine - The Folly: A case for Ralph Tyler, psychic investigator. Tyler and his assistant, our narrator, are hired by Mrs. Helen Arrowden to investigate the strange disturbances at Langborough Hall. One of her guests raves of being attacked by rats and other vermin who "loomed out of the walls of his room and launched themselves at him in no uncertain manner: he alleged that they lunged at his throat and face and put up a good show of tearing him apart ..."
The source of this dangerous haunting is the mock-Gothic, gargoyle-heavy folly built in the 1770's by Toby Mangrave who used it as a menagerie. When he died suddenly aged 22, many of his beloved wild creatures died of starvation while the rest were destroyed. Tyler explains - much to the disgust of Mrs. Arrowden and her estate adviser who were planning to build a "major county sports venue" on the site - that the building is imbued with the massively unpredictable elemental power of all the terrified animals who've suffered there, both in the immediate aftermath of Mangrave's death, and in the intervening centuries when it's been used as a games hut and the carcasses of crows, weasels and stoats hung on the outer walls to ward off their fellow creatures. Strike one for Animal rights Gothic!
Shamus Frazer - The Tune in Dan’s Cafe: Dave, a London Teddy Boy shot dead by police after a bank robbery, returns to the cafe to play his favourite death disc on the jukebox while he waits for his girlfriend to join him. I'll return to you, oh baby, I'll re ... re ... turn ...
William J. Wintle - The Spectre Spiders: Goldstein, unscrupulous even by loan-shark standards, is haunted through fogbound Maida Vale by football-size arachnids who nobody else can see. They attack his dog and a neighborhood cat, draining meat and blood until all that's left of either is a fur-lined skeleton. After that, the story turns a bit nasty.
Margery Lawrence - Robin’s Rath: Rich American beauty Ellen Vandermyl buys Ghyll's Hall and announces her plan to lay a path through Robin's Rath, despite the warning of the villagers who remember the fate of the last person to do so. Ellen is romanced by a mystery man in green who calls himself a keeper and has her sign over the land to him before it can be worked. The deed in his hands, he gives her a kiss that steals away her soul and leaves her a dull, half-witted doll.
Wilkie Collins - Mrs Zant and the Ghost: Attractive young widow Mrs. Zant is visited by the ghosts of her beloved husband and two strangers, Mr. Rayburn and his little daughter, Lucy. These three protect her from her wretched brother-in-law, John Zant, who has evil designs toward her. The wretch gets his when he attempts to ravish her at the end of this overwrought and very entertaining melodrama.
Vincent O’Sullivan - The Next Room: New York in the 1890's. George Manders rents an old wooden house in Brooklyn, most recently occupied by a doctor and his wife, of which one room remains locked. Sometimes Manders hears a woman's agonized groans coming from within and even once catches a glimpse of her on the back-lot, but otherwise he keeps himself to himself. Comes the night when a shadowy figure enters and unlocks the closed room. Manders awaits his moment to jump to the lady's assistance, but he's too late. Her tormentor had already done his worst before George moved in.
Fergus Hume - The Sand-Walker: Strange experience of commercial traveller Dick Trossall at Beach Farm in Gartholm village, 1896. His landlady, Mrs. Jazril, is an embittered religious fanatic who has never forgiven her daughter for disappearing from home around the same time as Samuel Amber. He returned soon after, only to meet his death in the quicksands, but nothing has been seen or heard of the girl. Trossall, investigating the sand hills, is cut off in the mist but assisted back to safety by the Sand-walker, a creature who frequently taps at the window of the farm-house, beckoning Mrs. Jazril to follow. Shortly afterward, the daughter returns, explaining that she had not eloped with Amber but simply felt the need to get away from her stifling home life. The circumstances behind Amber's murder are revealed, and his spectre at last leads the culprit to their doom. i thought this one was excellent, in fact they've all been most enjoyable up until now, so perhaps it's time to throw in a few that didn't really do it for me. Nothing at all "wrong" with them, you understand. They're just on the slight side.
Forrest Reid - Courage: Young Michael Aherne, staying at the rectory with his aunt Caroline, goes missing in the local haunted house where the benevolent female ghost is reluctant to appear for fear of frightening him. When a search party arrives, they bring with them a telegram bearing sad news. On.
A.M. Burrage - I’m Sure it was No. 31: According to Mr. Dalby, his last ever ghost story and it's so disappointingly mundane it might as well be non-fiction. A seventeen-year-old, house-hunting on behalf of his widowed mother, finds a suitable residence belonging to Mrs Ellis and her beautiful daughter, 'Mumps', who he falls in love with on sight. When he returns alone to catch another glimpse of Mumps, he learns the pair moved out two years ago, and nothing more is known of them except several creditors would be interested to learn of their whereabouts. Who were they and why should he have met them?
Saki - The Soul of Laploshka: The miser Laploshka has no qualms about handing money to the rich but he despises charity toward the poor, so, when the narrator fails to repay a debt of two francs, he dies of a broken heart. Consequently, his ghosts haunts the debtor until he passes the same meagre sum to a Parisian Baron who is in no need of it.
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Post by ripper on Nov 25, 2009 15:14:33 GMT
I agree with you about the Burrage story in Mammoth Ghost Stories I. Out of all the tales in the anthology, that was the one that most disappointed me. After such great stories as "Smee," "One who Saw" and "Waxwork," it was such a let down. Not a bad story by any means but nowhere near Burrage's best. If my only exposure to Burrage had been his contribution to the Dalby anthology then it would definitely not have led me to seek out more of his stories.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 25, 2009 19:06:02 GMT
Maybe Mr. Dalby used it because it was one of the few uncollected ghost stories Jack Adrian didn't include in the previous years Burrage collection Warning Whispers (Equation, 1989). Here's a thought; if all Dalby's anthologies had been for the same publisher and broken down into 200-300 page collections, don't you think more people would think of them as the best series since The Fontana Book Of Ghost Stories. i know we've just highlighted one of the more run of the mill stories, but his material is mostly excellent. It's just his books are never very portable! Some more, beginning with an exceptional late Gothic tale of terror! It's probably a little too late for this now but; May contain spoilers Ralph A. Cram - In Kropfsberg Keep: Brixley, Austria. Two young travellers, Rupert and Otto, decide it would be a fun thing if they were to spend the night in a haunted house, and where better than Kropfsberg Keep? Some years earlier, Count Albert gathered all his family and friends in the ballroom for a debauch, then set fire to the castle with them all trapped inside. By way of an encore, he pulled on his great-great grandfather's suit of armour and hung himself from a hook above his incinerated guests! The impatient Otto falls asleep due to lack of supernatural manifestations, but Rupert stays awake to contemplate the splendid morbidity of it all and is rewarded with a night of abject horror. Amelia B. Edwards - In the Confessional: Rheinfelden, Switzerland. The narrator visits a church by the Rhine and, stepping into the Confessional booth, is startled to find a hateful face glaring back at him from behind the grid. The spectre is that of a farmer, Caspar Rufenacht, who murdered a priest so that he could listen to his flirtatious wife's confession. Evidently her sins weren't to his liking as he later stalked her from room, slowly hacking her to pieces with a hatchet before giving himself into custody. R.H. Malden - The Sundial: "His neck was abnormally long, and so malformed that his head lolled sideways on his right shoulder in a disgusting and almost inhuman manner. He was bent almost double; and I think he was misshapen in some other respect as well ...". Manuscript found in a second hand bookshop off the Charing Cross Road. When a stake is removed to make way for a sundial, it releases the ghost of Caxton, a Popish Recusant who committed suicide when Elizabeth I re-established the Protestant Anglican Church. The narrator is subsequently haunted by this horrifying spectre until the hole is filled in with consecrated earth. And another on a religious there. Bit of a cheat as i only posted this yesterday and it's not improved any in 24 hours, but for convenience sake; Sapper - The Old Dining Room: A group of old school friends and their wives descend on Jack Drages' house in Kent for a pheasant shoot. In the grand old dining room hangs a portrait of a previous occupant, Sir James Wrothley, a fanatical Protestant who made an enemy of Cardinal Wolsley during the reign of Henry VIII. Wrothley's fellow conspirators were butchered during a raid in which he committed suicide by throwing himself from the musicians gallery. It's not clear who betrayed the plotters - some even believe it was Wrothley himself. Among the guests is Bill Sibton who bears an uncanny resemblance to the fellow in the portrait. On his first night at the Drages', Sibton sleepwalks to the old dining room where our narrator catches him denouncing Sir Henry Brayton as a liar, just as Wrothley had on the night of the bloodbath .... And still only halfway through ...
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Post by ripper on Nov 25, 2009 22:00:09 GMT
Dem, I think you are right about why RD chose that particular Burrage story for the collection. It's not a bad story at all, just a bit disappointing and slight.
RD is definitely one of my favourite anthologists and I have a number of his volumes and they do tend to be a bit on the dorstep side! I am really enjoying reading your thoughts on the stories in the Mammoth Ghost Stories I volume, Dem.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 26, 2009 20:27:30 GMT
Thanks, Rip. I'm flagging a bit now - can never seem to stick with the same collection for long.
L.T.C. Rolt - The Garside Fell Disaster: "That tunnel is no place for a god-fearing man .." Another that probably isn't the author's very best, but it's an interesting one. Narrated by Alf Boothroyd years after the disaster, which he tells us took place near Carlisle in February 1897. For weeks leading up to fatal collision between a heavy goods train and a night-sleeper, the men had been uneasy about the new tunnel. Smoke inexplicably poured from it's mouth and ganger Job Mickelwright, who daily walked the length of it, handed in his notice, complaining that it was always hot as hell in there and claiming to have seen shadowy beings who, whatever they were, didn't have anything in common with humanity. Before he could quit, Job was an eyewitness to the tragedy, in the wake of which he and Alf were relocated, much to their relief. "Anyway, Job had some funny ideas in his head that there was something in that old mountain that should never have been disturbed, and he reckons the fire kind of put things right again. Sort of a sacrifice, if you get my meaning."
A while back, I found a paperback of Rolt's non-fiction, Red For Danger: A History Of Railway Accidents & Railway Safety, (originally Bodley Head, 1955; several Pan editions from 1960) and he notes that the Settle & Carlisle line suffered too many catastrophes from the late nineteenth century, culminating in the Ais Gil disaster of 1913 (" ... It was a funeral pyre for fourteen passengers who perished almost without trace"). Only three years earlier, on Christmas Eve, 1910, nine passengers died in a similar inferno at at Hawes Junction, and it's likely that these two dreadful episodes in railway history inspired the story. Concerning Ais Gil, Rolt comments; "It was as though the ancient gods of this high wild country, still unappeased, had demanded a second sacrifice."
Slightly less grim, and selected by John Pelan as the best horror story of 1906, is;
Edward Lucas White - The House of the Nightmare: "Ain't no neighbours come here. Say they're afeared of the ghosts." After driving his car into a ditch, the narrator encounters a pitiful youth with a harelip who agrees to let him stop the night provided he does for himself. The house is unlit, all dust and mould, but our man makes the best of it, prepares a meal for them both from his packed lunch and builds a fire in the grate. The boy refuses the food but appreciates the blaze as he is always cold. Lucas (or whoever) is concerned how this lad manages on his own with his mother dead and his father "away", but the boy assures him matter-of-factly that he's fine, the ghosts don't make trouble and all that really bothers him are his nightmares. Once he'd tormented a sow and now that angry creature haunts his dreams, making like it's going to tear him apart and eat him ....
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Post by monker on Mar 8, 2010 12:48:40 GMT
To bump this thread, I actually liked the Burrage story as I thought it had a rather quaint, haunting quality to it, like it could have really happened. I found its odd simplicity far more poignant than a good number of mad, loony scientist or murder-ghost stories simply because of the utter ambiguity of the 'haunting'. That's a key with me, to make it all sound credulous and deeply mysterious at the same time, no matter how ostensibly passive it may be, - leaving enough room open for the imagination to fill in the blanks. What stopped the Burrage story from being more than simply a curio, however, is the fact that the author meant it to be no more than that and obviously wrote it as such. I get the impression that the man undervalued his own talent and tossed off his stories quickly and was pretty much under the thumb of his publishers. That, however, is just my theory...which is mine...
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Post by dem bones on Feb 6, 2011 20:36:35 GMT
Richard Dalby - The Anthology Of Ghost Stories (Tiger, 1994) I'm guessing Tiger were an instant remainder imprint? If you're looking for an A-S of great ghost story authors, this is one for you! At first glance a straight reprint of Richard Dalby's Mammoth Book Of Ghost Stories Vol 1, closer inspection reveals they'd not set aside enough pages so once we're done with Saki's story there's no more room making the reference to Mark Twain on the cover entirely spurious. Worse, the stories gone AWOL include some of the best in the volume: The missing in actionSapper - The Old Dining-Room Montague Summers - The Between-Maid Mark Twain - A Ghost Story Mark Valentine - The Folly H. Russell Wakefield - Out of the Wrack I Rise Karl Edward Wagner - In the Pines Manly Wade Wellman - Where Angels Fear Edward Lucas White - The House of the Nightmare Oscar Wilde - The Canterville Ghost William J. Wintle - The Spectre Spiders
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Post by dem bones on Feb 8, 2011 9:55:16 GMT
Just been dipping into the Tiger hardcover and the previous owner has strategically pressed a flower against Basil Copper's The House By The Tarn - guess they must have enjoyed that one.
Nugent Barker - Whessoe: Colonel Sylvester Whessoe, the pale, painfully thin recluse of Two Gates, believes himself haunted by musically inclined spectres. Something compels him to consult Chronicles Of Chelsover, a bulky volume on local history, wherein he discovers an unnerving reference to himself.
Algernon Blackwood - The Whisperers: Jones, an author who often struggles to transfer his better ideas to paper, moves into a friend's attic room to concentrate on his next book. All at once he has whispers coming at him from every corner, each of them communicating some profound thought or other. His friend explains that prior to Jones moving in, he'd used the attic to store his library. "I often think that when books are unopened like that for too long, the minds that wrote them must grow restless ... "
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Post by dem bones on Feb 12, 2011 18:00:43 GMT
Ramsey Campbell - The Guide: "He made for the newsagents, in the hope that though all the horror books had looked too disgusting to touch, something more like literature might have found its way unnoticed onto one of the shelves." Ah, those were the days! The elderly gent doing the searching is recently bereaved Teddy Kew, holidaying in East Anglia with his daughter's family and not much enjoying the experience as he's conscious of being a burden on their enjoyment. Still, its not been an entire waste of time. His diligent search for original works by M. R. James has seen him land a copy of the provost's Suffolk and Norfolk for a paltry £5 from a dealer who shut up shop the second he'd relieved her of the item. Best of all, certain pages contain handwritten notes, bearing the signature 'A Fellow' (or so it appears at first glance) which Kew suspects may have been written by MRJ himself!
Kew determines to visit a remote church which, from the notes, seems to have held a particular fascination for the scribbler. This derelict ruin (on loan from E. F. Benson's The Face?) is perched precariously on the edge of the crumbling cliff face and several gravestones have already pitched into the sea. Nearing the Church, Kew recalls the colourful local legend of a powerful Black Magician who'd been prepared to rest in the grave until the elements eventually wore away his coffin. Unfortunately, by the time this came to pass, the subsidence had so deformed his corpse that his reanimated self resembles a half man, half spider, "made ungainly ... since the remaining limbs are by no means evenly distributed." The place is starting to get at Kew. Could he really have imagined the particularly hideous gargoyle up top of the tower because it's not there now? Pains in his chest now, but at least he's not alone as there's a priest busying himself at the altar ....
another story i was wary of revisiting for fear it wouldn't live up to my memories, but i needn't have worried. Plenty of cute M. R. J. references for the Ghosts & Scholars crowd to pick up on, but they're not the least obtrusive and everything builds to a horrible climax.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Feb 12, 2011 18:09:07 GMT
Ramsey Campbell - The Guide: "He made for the newsagents, in the hope that though all the horror books had looked too disgusting to touch, something more like literature might have found its way unnoticed onto one of the shelves." Ah, those were the days! The elderly gent doing the searching is recently bereaved Teddy Kew, holidaying in East Anglia with his daughter's family and not much enjoying the experience as he's conscious of being a burden on their enjoyment. Still, its not been an entire waste of time. His diligent search for original works by M. R. James has seen him land a copy of the provost's Suffolk and Norfolk for a paltry £5 from a dealer who shut up shop the second he'd relieved her of the item. Best of all, certain pages contain handwritten notes, bearing the signature 'A Fellow' (or so it appears at first glance) which Kew suspects may have been written by MRJ himself! Kew determines to visit a remote church which, from the notes, seems to have held a particular fascination for the scribbler. This derelict ruin (on loan from E. F. Benson's The Face?) is perched precariously on the edge of the crumbling cliff face and several gravestones have already pitched into the sea. Nearing the Church, Kew recalls the colourful local legend of a powerful Black Magician who'd been prepared to rest in the grave until the elements eventually wore away his coffin. Unfortunately, by the time this came to pass, the subsidence had so deformed his corpse that his reanimated self resembles a half man, half spider, "made ungainly ... since the remaining limbs are by no means evenly distributed." The place is starting to get at Kew. Could he really have imagined the particularly hideous gargoyle up top of the tower because it's not there now? Pains in his chest now, but at least he's not alone as there's a priest busying himself at the altar .... another story i was wary of revisiting for fear it wouldn't live up to my memories, but i needn't have worried. Plenty of cute M. R. J. references for the Ghosts & Scholars crowd to pick up on, but they're not the least obtrusive and everything builds to a horrible climax. The Guide is an absolutely cracking piece of work. It's preserved in the Probert Towers library in the British Library volume Meddling with Ghosts, but we also have Mr Campbell in all his audiovisual splendour reading it on the DVD of Whistle & I'll Come to You (complete with wine glass that gets emptier as the story goes on!)
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Post by cw67q on Feb 13, 2011 9:56:50 GMT
The Guide is an absolutely cracking piece of work. It's preserved in the Probert Towers library in the British Library volume Meddling with Ghosts, but we also have Mr Campbell in all his audiovisual splendour reading it on the DVD of Whistle & I'll Come to You (complete with wine glass that gets emptier as the story goes on!) I agree, this is one of RC best stories. - Chris
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Post by dem bones on Feb 13, 2011 19:45:16 GMT
In the second and sadly, final issue of Spectral Tales, Stefan R. Dziemainowicz devotes his entire review of Paul F. Olsen & David B. Silva's Post Mortem: New Tales Of Ghostly Horror to an appreciation of The Guide - there's no mention of any other author or story whatsoever!
This next isn't half bad either;
Basil Copper - The House By The Tarn: Kemp, a psychic investigator, is a huge admirer of Edgar Allan Poe, so when Treggoran relates the macabre history of Four Winds, the derelict, very haunted mansion by the tarn, it is as though he's finally landed his very own House Of Usher. Usually Kemp can provide a rational explanation for any supposed 'phenomena' he encounters, but in Four Winds has he finally met his match? On his arrival, the spectre of a centuries dead girl dutifully rises to the surface of the lake, but that's as nothing compared to what awaits him inside. By the time he's braved a shower of fleshy, evil-reeking, leprous spores to reach the upper floor, Kemp is congratulating himself on surviving the worst the house can throw at him, when .....
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Post by Johnlprobert on Feb 13, 2011 20:50:51 GMT
In the second and sadly, final issue of Spectral Tales, Stefan R. Dziemainowicz devotes his entire review of Paul F. Olsen & David B. Silva's Post Mortem: New Tales Of Ghostly Horror to an appreciation of The Guide - there's no mention of any other author or story whatsoever! I seem to remember that being a fairly decent little anthology - now sadly lost through too many house moves.
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Post by ripper on Mar 23, 2015 12:40:12 GMT
I dipped into this one last night. Having been a little dismissive of the Burrage story a few years ago, I enjoyed it rather more this time. Yes, it is slight, but the feeling of loss and puzzlement that the narrator feels was, I thought, quite well put over by Burrage.
I have to confess about being a bit luke-warm regarding Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes as a writer. For every story of his that I enjoy, there is at least one that leaves me cold. For this reason, I tend to limit my reading of his tales to anthologies such as this one. 'The Limping Ghost' is one of my favourite RCH tales. It kept me guessing for a fair amount of its length and that last scene of the dreadfully-burned ghost walking towards the house is just very well done by RCH.
Ramsey's 'The Guide' is wonderful with great characterization. It is a story that I can read time and time again without it becoming stale.
Edith Nesbit gives us another doom-laden tale. It's short and very melancholic. A common thread in many of her short supernatural tales is loss and regret. Here, I think that Nesbit is well able to create genuine sympathy for poor Uncle Abraham. I wonder what would have happened if he had been able to make that last appointment.
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