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Post by dem bones on Dec 9, 2012 12:24:07 GMT
Kathryn Cramer & David G. Hartwell (eds.) – Christmas Ghosts (Robinson, 1988) Introduction: David G. Hartwell – The Spirits Of Christmas
Elia Wilkinson Peattie – Their Dear Little Ghost F. Anstey – The Curse Of The Catafalques Charles Dickens – The Story Of The Goblins Who Stole A Sexton Elizabeth Walter – Christmas Night Arthur Machen – A New Christmas Carol A. N. L. Munby – A Christmas Game Frank R. Stockton – The Great Staircase At Landover Hall John Kendrick Bangs – The Water Ghost Of Harrowby Hall Rosemary Timperley – Christmas Meeting William D. O’Connor – The Ghost Sir Andrew Caldecott – Christmas Reunion Leonard Kip – The Ghosts At Grantley Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Christmas Banquet Marjorie Bowen – The Crown Derby Plate Mrs. J. H. Riddell – A Strange Christmas Game Ramsey Campbell – Calling Card Charles Dickens – A Christmas TreeBlurb: Classic Christmas ghost stories by masters of the art from Charles Dickens to Ramsey CampbellEach year i tell myself i'm going to complete this collection, each year it returns to the shelf unmolested. Part of the problem is that the choice of opening story - a marzipan-overdose made print - killed any interest in attempting the Anstey, Stockton, O'Connor and Kip stories fearful that at least one may be of similar stripe. Elia Wilkinson Peattie – Their Dear Little Ghost: When Espeth dies, her parents regret their miserliness over Yuletide's past and shower presents upon her two surviving little brothers. Espeth's ghost returns on Christmas Eve to find no stocking, promptly vanishes in sobs. The following year, they resolve to put matters right. For me, this is Victorian sentimentality at its least endurable, narrated by Espeth's Godmother, an Old Maid, for added yuck. Richard Dalby likewise revives this story - along with Dickens' The Story Of The Goblins Who Stole A Sexton and Rose Timperley's Christmas Meeting - in Ghosts For Christmas where it does less damage. Arthur Machen - A New Christmas Carol: Ten years on from his life-changing Christmas Eve, Ebeneezer Scrooge, still fanatically benevolent to his fellow man -they're actually quite fed up with it - receives the fourth and most terrifying of his spectral visitors. The grim Ghost of the Christmas of 1920 seeks financial reimbursement on outstanding taxes. Ho Ho f--king Ho. John Kendrick Bangs – The Water Ghost Of Harrowby Hall: The cadaverous, dripping, seaweed-festooned spectre of a young maiden saturates the haunted chamber for one hour every Christmas Eve. The latest Oglethorpe decides that enough is enough and hits on a fiendish plan to rid himself of her ladyship for good. A. N. L. Munby - A Christmas Ghost: Dorchester, 1880’s. Father invites Fenton, an old school friend, to spend Christmas with his family after a chance meeting in Exeter. The man has an aversion to anybody mentioning his years as an administrator in New Zealand. Despite this, things are fine until the family settle down to play ‘dead man’ (as made infamous by Ray Bradbury in The October Game) and Fenton is handed two squishy grapes in the dark. He screams and suffers a stroke. Shortly after, the narrator, a young medical student sees the ghost of a blind Aborigine stumbling about the yard and it’s obvious who he’s come back for. Marjorie Bowen - The Crown Derby Plate: Miss Martha Pym, sixty year old antique dealer, has always wanted to see a ghost, but maybe not as much as she’d like to locate the one piece missing from her beloved china tea set. Staying with friends on the Essex flats, talk turns to Hartleys, the house where she purchased the incomplete set at auction thirty years ago. Hartleys is now owned by the reclusive and reputedly eccentric Miss Lefain. Perhaps she’ll know the whereabouts of the missing plate? For some bizarre reason, grubby old Miss Lefain reminds me of the S&M loving gumster in Ramsey Campbell's Again but two wildly different ghost stories it would be difficult to cite!
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Post by dem bones on Dec 10, 2012 10:51:28 GMT
Mrs. J. H. Riddell - A Strange Christmas Game: On the death of a barrister relative they never met, John Lester, struggling artist, and his sister Clare, inherit the ancestral seat, the Martingdale Estate in Bedfordshire. They learn from the caretaker's wife that the red bedroom and oak parlour are haunted by the ghost of Jeremy Lester who inexplicably vanished 41 years ago on Christmas Eve following a card game with his supposed best friend. As the anniversary approaches, so things go bump in the night and the servants desert one by one. John and Clare sit tight and are rewarded with a re-enactment of their ancestor's midnight duel. The discovery of his woodland grave lays the ghost to rest.
Frank R. Stockton - The Great Staircase At Landover Hall: Frank's turn to lay the slush on with a trowel. The narrator, tiring of a life of carefree travel, buys Landover Hall on a whim. At midnight on Christmas Eve he receives a visit from the ghost of a very beautiful young woman. Mrs Evelyn Heatherton, former mistress of the hall, died aged twenty-five, tripping over a toy as she descended the staircase to greet her guests. Each anniversary she is allowed to return for an hour.
The young man falls in love with the spectre on sight and vows to learn all he can about her. His research brings him to the door of her great-granddaughter, also Evelyn, who is, of course, her living double in all things wonderful. Wedding bells chime.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 11, 2012 9:41:56 GMT
Alleluia! Here come the cavalry. Sir Andrew Caldecott - Christmas Reunion. Inspired by one of MRJ's suggested plot-lines in Stories I Have Tried To Write, and not a million miles removed from L. P. Hartley's A Visitor From Down Under. The nice, middle class Dreyton family have their festivities disrupted when young Mr. Clarence Love returns from the Antipodes to spend Christmas as their guest. Love is a gold prospector made fabulously rich by the mysterious death of the uncle who shared his adventure in the Bush. A sinister Santa with a neat line in macabre doggerel sees to it that Mr. Love's Christmas is not a pleasant one. Just deserts for Mr. Love, but how more effective a horror story when a hapless bystander takes the flak for another person's misdeed, as is the case with; Ramsey Campbell - Calling Card: Sixty years after it was posted, a crudely defaced and very soggy Christmas card arrives at it's Augburth destination, lucky recipient, Dorothy Harris, elderly widow and grandmother. The card was clearly intended for the previous owner who, it's said, had a stormy relationship with her difficult son until he drowned himself one New Years Eve. It's certainly no fault of Dorothy's, so why does she grow increasingly uneasy over the holiday? A stick-like figure watches her from the park; she's pursued across Merseyside by a stagnant reek ... According to the author's brief introduction to the story in The Gruesome Book The Liverpool Daily Post declined to publish on the grounds that it was, well, "too gruesome."
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Post by dem bones on Dec 12, 2012 9:24:03 GMT
Another good 'un:
Elizabeth Walter - Christmas Night: "There's always them as remembers the way"
John and Mairi's are returning to London from her parents place at Carringford in the Welsh mountains when their car breaks down. Just across the border they take shelter for the night at the gloomy and downright primitive The Hangman's Inn whose proprietor, Mr. Prosser, "squat and scowling and none too clean" is the best worst pub landlord we've met in ages. After drugging the mulled wine, Prosser sneaks into their room to murder both and relieve madam of her expensive pendant, but the fortuitous arrival of a motorist, Mr. Hutchins, awakens John before the grimy killer can get down to business.
Back in London, John and Mairi read in the newspaper of the brutal murder of a Mr. Hutchins on Christmas night. He'd been dragged from his car and butchered by assailant unknown. The couple travel back to Carringford at the request of Inspector Reece, but when Mairi directs them to The Hangman's Inn - it's vanished!
Inspector Reeves, finding the testimony of some English actor chappie and his missus difficult to believe, initially suspects John has only come forward as a publicity stunt, but the couple find a welcome ally in young Sergeant Price, a keen local historian. The inn - it's name was The Peackock - was demolished a century ago after Prosser went to the gallows for the several murders perpetrated on the premises.
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Post by ripper on Jan 22, 2013 12:42:04 GMT
A.N. L. Munby's A Christmas Game is one of my favourite Christmas-set tales and it was the first that I read by the author. It led me to seek out a paperback copy of his collection The Alabaster Hand, which I would recommend to anyone. The game that the family plays in the dark is very creepy.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 22, 2013 18:49:50 GMT
A.N. L. Munby's A Christmas Game is one of my favourite Christmas-set tales and it was the first that I read by the author. It led me to seek out a paperback copy of his collection The Alabaster Hand, which I would recommend to anyone. The game that the family plays in the dark is very creepy. We've a thread for The Alabaster Hand. I'm guessing it was down to Peter Haining that Four Square reprinted it as, if he'd not yet taken over as senior editor at the soon-to-be NEL, he was already hugely influential. I swore to myself that this time I'd finally complete Christmas Ghosts, still didn't. Don't get me wrong, it has its moments, but when Cramer & Hartwell opt for twee, they go the whole distance - E. W. Peattie, Dickens, Stockton - until you die horribly beneath an avalanche of syrup and sick.
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Post by ripper on Jan 23, 2013 12:28:00 GMT
I have to agree with you on the syrupiness of some of those stories, Dem. I don't mind too much a little syrup applied sparingly, but too much and I find myself indulging in some rapid page turning.
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