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Post by dem bones on Sept 27, 2014 10:05:08 GMT
‘Richard Peyton’ [Peter Haining] (ed.) – The Ghost Now Standing on Platform One (Souvenir Press, 1990: Futura, 1991) [Published in USA as Journey Into Fear and Other Great Stories of Horror on the Railways (Wings,1991)]  Cover illustration by Tony Roberts
Richard Peyton – The Tay Bridge Ghost Train
Arnold Ridley – Journey into Fear
Richard Peyton – The President’s Funeral Ride
Rod Serling – The Ghost Train
Richard Peyton – The White Train
Rudyard Kipling – .007
Richard Peyton – The Black Train of Lochalsh
Elliott O’Donnell – The Haunted Curve
Richard Peyton – The Phantom Locomotive of Stevens Point
August Derleth – Pacific 421
Richard Peyton – The Ghost on Platform Two
Alfred Noyes – Midnight Express
Richard Peyton – The Lyonshall Mystery
Robert Aickman – The Waiting Room
Richard Peyton – The Footsteps of Doom
Peter Fleming – The Kill
Richard Peyton – The Spectre of Shake City
Ray Bradbury – The Town Where No One Got Off
Richard Peyton – The Woman in the Red Scarf
A. M. Burrage – The Wrong Station
Richard Peyton – The Night Flyer of Talylln
John D. Beresford – Lost in the Fog
Richard Peyton – The Bedraggled Soldier
Sir Andrew Caldecott – Branch Line to Benceston
Richard Peyton – Joe Baldwin’s Eerie Lamp
Stephen Grendon – The Night Train to Lost Valley
Richard Peyton – The Ghost of the Subway
Allison V. Harding – Take the Z Train
Richard Peyton – Underground Phantoms
John Wyndham – Confidence Trick
Richard Peyton – The Barkston Spectre
Charles Dickens – The Signal-Man
Richard Peyton – The Navvy in the Tunnel
L. T. C. Rolt – The Garside Fell Disaster
Richard Peyton – The Phantom Driver of Dunster
Richard Hughes – Locomotive
Richard Peyton – The Ghost of ’Hayling Billy’
John Newton Chance – Mourning Train
Richard Peyton – Railroad Bill
Robert Bloch – That Hell-Bound Train
Richard Peyton – Voices in the Fog
Henry L. Lawrence – A Journey by Train
Richard Peyton – The Woman in Black
Eden Phillpotts – The Astral Lady
Richard Peyton – Beware: Ghosts Crossing
Algernon Blackwood – Miss Slumbubble – and Claustrophobia
Richard Peyton – The Phantom on the Flying Yankee
F. Scott Fitzgerald – A Short Trip Home
Richard Peyton – The Dead Man of Glendive
William F. Nolan – Lonely Train a’ Comin’
Richard Peyton – The Shortest Railway Ghost Story in the World Blurb More than any other form of transport, the railway has attracted ghosts. For more than a hundred years tales have been told of ghost trains, haunted stations, phantom railwaymen and unearthly passengers. Even with the coming of high-speed locomotives and underground railways criss-crossing major cities, the legends have continued in both fact and fiction.
Historical records include numerous accounts of these phantoms, and in turn have inspired a whole genre of fictional tales, from the strange to the horrific, written by the world's greatest story-tellers. Ranging from Rudyard Kipling and F. Scott Fitzgerald to Ray Bradbury and John Wyndham, some of the best of these have been gathered together in this unique collection, intermingled with factual accounts of railway hauntings on both sides of the Atlantic.
This feast of the supernatural offers hours of spooky enjoyment. And, after reading it, no railway journey will ever seem quite the same again.Arnold Ridley – Journey into Fear: John, a London barrister travelling to the Pennines, finds himself aboard a phantom express as it hurtles toward its appointment with catastrophe on a collapsed bridge. In a later incarnation, author and radio broadcaster Mr. Ridley played Private Godfrey in Dad's Army. Elliott O’Donnell – The Haunted Curve: Chartered accountant George K. Cary misses last train to Wadeney and opts to take a short cut home along the tracks. Arriving at an abandoned signal-box, he stops inside to rest. He is not alone for long. Another fatal train crash and a sleeping signalman so overcome with remorse he slit his throat. "The Waiting Room" is a ghost story so conventional that it boggles the mind. You try to tell yourself that there must be some subtle other point to it that you are just not seeing---this is Aickman, after all---but there really is none. : Edward Pendlebury falls asleep on the last train and misses his stop. There's nothing for it but to spend the night in the waiting room at Casterton, though the guard, who has an unnerving facial twitch, advises against it. The station was built on the site of the old gaol, and the room is directly atop its burial ground. Victorian singing sensation Lily 'The Beautiful Nightingale' Torelli is among the many whose troubled bones lie beneath. Henry L. Lawrence - A Journey By Train: ( Tales Of Fear, 1934). An underwhelming selection from Charles Birkin's Creeps series. Passenger shares a carriage with a man who insists he is dead. It transpires that this fellow slit the throat of the woman he loved when she married his friend. Then he drowned himself. August Derleth - Pacific 421: ( Weird Tales, Sept. 1944). Weak-hearted he may be, but mean old Philander Colley is taking far too long to die for his grasping stepson's liking. So when Albert Colley learns that his land is haunted by a phantom express, he invites the cantankerous old git to spend the weekend. The train does its worst, but things do not work out how Albert intended. Very E.C. comic.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 28, 2014 7:49:50 GMT
 A. R. Tilburne: Isle of White. When a small local railway service is discontinued, the villagers, led by a crazy drunk sewage digger, stage a mock funeral procession. In the ensuing chaos, the train runs out of control. Newly redundant engine-driver Old John leaps aboard to avert disaster. A. M. Burrage - The Wrong Station: Travelling on the Great Western, Harry steps off at the wrong station and finds himself in a made to measure Paradise replete with gorgeous soul mate and beautific surrounds. But his loving dream-wife informs him that he has arrived too soon and must return to Willesden to live out his life of drudgery and disillusion. Man, is that harsh. Stephen Grendon (August Derleth) - The Night Train To Lost Valley. ( Weird Tales, Jan 1948). Mr. Wilson, travelling salesman (another one!) finds himself in the wrong New Hampshire outback on the wrong Walpurgisnacht. Allison V. Harding - Take The Z Train. ( Weird Tales, March 1950). Henry Abernathy shares his subway ride home with a plethora of doppelgängers and all-time most despised employers. |
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Post by ripper on Sept 28, 2014 19:21:13 GMT
I re-read some of this one several weeks ago. For the most part it is a fun selection and I like the mingling of fiction with supposed factual accounts. It's not a bad place to start if you want to read some railway-based supernatural stories.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 29, 2014 9:13:59 GMT
I re-read some of this one several weeks ago. For the most part it is a fun selection and I like the mingling of fiction with supposed factual accounts. Yeah, that format is also used to good effect in Paul Finch's Terror Tales series (and of course, it's predecessor, the Fontana 'Tales Of Terror' paperbacks). Haining obviously had an affinity for macabre railway tales as he also edited Mysterious Railway Stories (as 'William Pattrick") for Star and Murder On The Railways for the instant remainder outfit, Bounty. There may even have been more?  H. Sharp: ( Fantastic, July/August 1953). Likely inspiration for Dr. Terror's House Of Horrors' framing story. Mr. Henry Baider avoids travelling home by tube during the rush hour as he has a morbid fear of confinement among his smelly contemporaries who all smoke too much. Tonight, however, there is no help for it. "Never again" he gripes as the carriage fills to bursting - and, but for the intervention of a laid back, atheist fellow passenger Mr. Christopher Watts, he'd be right as this is the Central Line train from Bank station to Hell. Also along for the death trip, animated mink coat Mrs. Barbara Branton, arch Tory bore Mr. Robert "tradition must be observed!" Forkett, and Miss Norma Palmer who once stole a pair of nylons and is fretful that Doris will make off with her bloke if she misses their date at Alexander Palace.  NEL, 1973 |
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Post by ripper on Sept 30, 2014 9:08:08 GMT
I had not realised this one was edited by Peter Haining until I saw it in the list of his anthologies--not really sure why he didn't just use his own name. Dem, do you know if he used the same format i.e. fiction followed by fact in any of his other anthologies? I've not come across it in any of the other hainings I own.
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Post by Shrink Proof on Oct 20, 2014 15:15:22 GMT
Anyone who enjoyed this collection would do well to check out Paul Screeton's "Crossing the Line - Trespassing on Railway Weirdness" which collects and discusses railway folklore. Everything from the world of gricers to haunted engines to the strategic steam reserve (that's the urban legend that circulates in railway circles that not all BR's steam locos went to the breaker's yard, actually a secret fleet of them was spirited away and is hidden somewhere (Box Tunnel?) to be resurrected for use in time of war when imported diesel dries up and electricity can't be generated and/or distributed for these new-fangled engines) to the "maniac on the platform"...
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Post by ripper on Oct 21, 2014 9:11:39 GMT
Thanks for the information, Shrinkproof. I've read one or two books on railway ghosts and weirdness but that one is new to me and sounds very interesting.
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Post by clarence on Feb 25, 2015 16:34:39 GMT
Whilst having a post retirement sort-out, I came across my copy of this book - it does contain some excellent work.
I also came across "Shadows in the Steam" by Brandon and Brooks (History Press, 2009) which contains a Chapter
'The Haunted Underground and Literature'. Some of these seem well worth looking out for - one in particular being
'South Kentish Town' by none other than Sir John Betjeman !!!
Clarence
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Post by Shrink Proof on Feb 25, 2015 20:20:33 GMT
I thought "Shadows in the Steam" was sort-of OK, but contained loads of padding.
Even worse is "Railway Ghosts & Phantoms" by W B Herbert. Some years after it was published he admitted that he'd been unable to find enough tales from railwaymen and rail enthusiasts to fill the book, so just made a stack of them up and pretended they were tales from the tracks....
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Post by ripper on Feb 26, 2015 12:00:52 GMT
I have Shadows in the Air, which I thought was okay, but haven't come across the others in the series yet. I did read a railway ghosts factual book a few years ago, which I quite enjoyed, but for the life of me I can't remember its title and author.
With regard to the A.M. Burrage story, when I first read the book I thought the man who alights at the wrong station dies at the end of the story, but to my surprise on re-reading it recently, he is alive and well at the conclusion. I don't know whether there is a similar story and I am confusing the two, but I thought he was found dead at the end.
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Post by michaelscollins on Apr 24, 2015 16:13:52 GMT
I have Shadows in the Air, which I thought was okay, but haven't come across the others in the series yet. I did read a railway ghosts factual book a few years ago, which I quite enjoyed, but for the life of me I can't remember its title and author. With regard to the A.M. Burrage story, when I first read the book I thought the man who alights at the wrong station dies at the end of the story, but to my surprise on re-reading it recently, he is alive and well at the conclusion. I don't know whether there is a similar story and I am confusing the two, but I thought he was found dead at the end. Despite being a Burrage fan, I hadn't read the story. Having a glance at it in the Francis Chard ebook, it reads remarkably similar to the Twilight Zone episode A Stop at Willoughby, one of Serling's favourite episodes. Only Serling's version adds on the downbeat ending you recall. There is apparently also a variation on the same theme by Caldecott, Branch Line to Benceston, from the 1940s. |
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Post by ripper on Apr 26, 2015 7:55:09 GMT
Hello Michael and welcome to the Vault.
It may have been the Caldecott story. I think the last time I read 'The Ghost now Standing...' I skipped several stories, including the one by Caldecott, so I will re-read it and see if it was that one I was getting mixed up with Burrage's tale.
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Post by michaelscollins on Apr 26, 2015 16:21:09 GMT
Hello Michael and welcome to the Vault. It may have been the Caldecott story. I think the last time I read 'The Ghost now Standing...' I skipped several stories, including the one by Caldecott, so I will re-read it and see if it was that one I was getting mixed up with Burrage's tale. Thanks! Long time reader of the forum (where else would one find folks views on LP Hartley's horrors, for example!). Caldecott's story, much to my surprise, I had actually read and entirely forgotten about. Its more about the portrayal of a chap whose dreams seem to correspond with events in reality. The train has more presence in the Burrage (and Serling). I have the vaguest inkling it should remind me of a similar, more famous, story from the time period, about a dreamer being in two places at once. |
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Post by ripper on Apr 26, 2015 18:53:01 GMT
Just read the Caldecott story. I am not sure it was the one that I was confusing with Burrage's 'The Wrong Station.' I thought the protagonist died in his sleep rather than in an accident as in the Caldecott story. I'll have to have a good look through my books to see if anything jumps out at me.
Michael, I think that the really great thing about Vault is that one can seamlessly move from a discussion of obscure Victorian writers of supernatural fiction to, say, the relative merits of the Timothy Lea and Jonathan May 'Confessions' series in a couple of mouse clicks :-).
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Post by dem bones on Apr 27, 2015 8:54:21 GMT
Caldecott's story, much to my surprise, I had actually read and entirely forgotten about. Its more about the portrayal of a chap whose dreams seem to correspond with events in reality. The train has more presence in the Burrage (and Serling). I have the vaguest inkling it should remind me of a similar, more famous, story from the time period, about a dreamer being in two places at once. Hi Michael. I'm sure you are right, and there are surely a number of stories built around that theme, but offhand can't think of a single one (!). Caldecott references John Metcalfe's The Bad Lands* in the text, but that's not the example that would most readily come to mind. Eden Phillpotts – The Astral Lady: Throttled, stuffed in the crawl space beneath the seats, and hovering on the brink of death, the ghost of the Honourable Adela Bertram appears to Sir John Belhaven who, until that moment, thought himself alone in the railway carriage. Sir John's struggle to revive the young woman is finally rewarded. As an encore, Belhaven lays a trap for Adela's would-be murderer and his accomplice. John D. Beresford – Lost in the Fog: Narrator falls asleep aboard the Felthorps train, misses his stop, and winds up stranded on the platform of fogbound Burden station, alone but for a morose signalman. Burden isn't the most cheerful village, not least, the signalman tells him, for a land-grabbing problem family who have incited bloody conflict. A pretty blatant, suitably despondent allegory for the senseless slaughter of the first World War. Sir Andrew Caldecott – Branch Line to Benceston: Adrian Frent, absent-minded music publisher, railway enthusiast and sometimes scientist, has had enough. No longer will he tolerate despised business partner Paul Saxon and his fondness for vulgar jazz over his own beloved classical compositions. The publishing company, began by his own father, can go to hell. damn it all, how he wishes Saxon would die! Frent gets his wish. The enemy is stricken with pnuemonia and does not recover ("By the way, Saxon's funeral was this afternoon. Hope they didn't jazz the Death March"). Which is when Frent takes a fatal detour on his commute and his world falls apart. In a parallel world, he is sentenced to death for Saxon's murder - he pushed him from a cliff at Benceston - and is due to hang at 8.a.m. the following morning. Back home in Brensham, Frent gathers his few friends about him. Can they see him safely through the fatal hour. *'Have you by any chance got a book called The Bad Lands?' he replied.
'I'm afraid not: but I remember reading a short story under that name: by John Metcalfe, I think.'
Frent seemed quite excited.
'Was it about a fellow being in two places the same time, and doing something criminal in one of them while he thought he was doing good in the other?'
"I don't think,' I protested, 'that the author would appreciate such a crude summary! The tale was extraordinarily well and carefully written.' |
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