Peter Haining [ed] - Ghost Tour

[dem bones]

Peter Haining [ed] - Ghost Tour: An Armchair Journey through the Supernatural (William Kimber, 1984)

Ionicus

Peter Haining - Introduction
Acknowledgements

M. R. James - A Warning to the Curious
Dennis Wheatley - In the Fog
Kingsley Amis - Mason's Life
Robert Louis Stevenson - The Tale of Tod Lapraik
John Buchan - Skule Skerry
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu - The Sexton's Adventure
Lord Dunsany - The Banshee
Arthur Machen - The Children of the Pool
Richard Hughes - The Ghost
Gaston Leroux - In Letters of Fire
E. T. A. Hoffmann - The Doppelganger
Gustav Meyrink - The Man on the Bottle
Henry James - The Ghostly Rental
Fritz Leiber - Richmond, Late September
Ray Bradbury - The Hour of Ghosts

Blurb:
Over the years Peter Haining has travelled extensively throughout Britain, Europe and America in search of tales of ghostly dread. This collection contains the very cream of his discoveries.

Ghost Tour provides a fascinating armchair journey around some of the most famous fictional hauntings in the western hemisphere, conjured up by some of the finest ghost story writers.

On the surface, one of Haining's less inspired selections from middling Kimber period, though I thought as much about Tune In For Fear and that turned out a neat read. Will see how we get on.

Dennis Wheatley - In The Fog: (Gunmen, Gallants & Ghosts, 1943). Furious that family friend and fellow officer Eric Martin has seduced and potentially ruined his cousin, Reeves instinctively pushes the heartless fellow under a bus approaching through thick Mayfair fog. Years later, an eerie reunion in similar conditions enables crushingly anticlimactic twist ending.

Kingsley Amis - Mason's Life: (Brian W. Aldiss, Harry Harrison [eds.] Best SF: 1973, 1974). Daniel Pettigrew's exploits in dreamland spell bad news for those he meets there.

Richard Hughes - The Ghost: After the brutal hammer assault she pursues him to the police station determined that he face justice for what he's done. Short, skewed and brilliant as Wheatley's contribution is woeful.

Ray Bradbury - The Hour Of Ghosts: (Playboy, Dec. 1969). Soon the new technology will enable us to summon three-dimensional holograms of all our favourite fiction spectres into our homes at will. Bradbury, pining for the past even as he's looking to the future but in this instance his possibly rose-tinted nostalgia less nauseatingly than is sometimes the case. A neat one to end on.

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Gustav Meyrink - The Man on the Bottle (Der Mann auf der Flasche): (1904). At the culmination of the masked ball, an entertainment devised by his Highness, Prince Mohammed Darasche-Koh, who has discovered that the Count de Faast has been playing fast and loose with his wife. The audience find the Count's performance most amusing ... until they realise they are witnesses to sadistic murder. Really liked this one. Very nasty.

Lord Dunsany - The Banshee: (The Man Who Ate the Phoenix, 1949). "God knows where we should all be without whiskey." Mike Kineham is denied permission to build a labourer's cottage on Lord Monaghan's land, obliging him to call off his impending marriage. Paddy O'Hone, who acts as intermediary between men and the immortal powers, braves the many terrors of the ancient abbey to consult a banshee. Would this harbinger of doom be kind enough to put a scare up his Lordship that he might change his mind?

J. S. Le Fanu - The Sexton's Adventure: (Dublin University Magazine, Jan. 1851). When his friend and generous patron, publican Phil Slaney, put a gun in his mouth and blew off the top of his skull, Bob Martin, sexton, notorious blaggard and boozer, turned over a new leaf and swore off the bottle. His resolve is tested one night when, passing the late Phil's pub on his way home from the curate's, he's waylaid by a shadowy figure waving a whisky bottle in his direction ...

[dem bones]

Bill Baker

Fritz Leiber - Richmond Late September: (Fantastic, Feb. 1969). Edgar Allan Poe picks up a black clad woman on the street and ushers her to a tavern. By way of chat up, Edgar provides thumbnail sketches of his many morbid masterpieces. At mentions of The Raven, the woman, 'Berenice', enthuses that her twin brother, Charles Baudelaire, is a huge fan! Poe, by now fall down drunk, sees through the lie - but why should she try to deceive him? Enchanted by her beauty, He begs to see her again tomorrow. Alas, Berenice claims she will be sailing for home, though she promises to catch up with him in Baltimore at a later date.

Arthur Machen - The Children of the Pool: (The Children of the Pool and Other Stories, 1936). While holidaying at a farmhouse on the Welsh border, James Roberts defies his landlady's advice and spends a morning beside the greasy black pool in the woods. So begins his persecution by woman unseen who threatens ruination by exposure of his guilty secret. As a seventeen year old boarding in North West London, Roberts slept with the landlord's daughter (their affair was exposed by the girl's jealous teenage sister)! The narrator, Meyrick, who knows Roberts from the city, packs his friend off back to England and explores the pool for himself. His conclusion. The disembodied voice denotes a fairy/ elemental/ other supernatural entity exploiting Roberts' deep shame for no other reason than sheer malice.

[Swampirella]

"Children of the Pool" can be read here: gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0606961h.html