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Post by dem on Jul 7, 2020 12:04:05 GMT
Stephen Jones (ed.) - Haunts: Reliquaries of the Dead (Ulysses Press, 2011)  what!design
Stephen Jones - Introduction: The Restless Dead
Richard L. Tierney - The Revenant (verse)
M. R. James - A Warning to the Curious
R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The Door
Reggie Oliver - Hand to Mouth
Richard Matheson - Two O'Clock Session
Paul McAuley - Inheritance
Sarah Pinborough - Grandmother's Slippers
Peter Atkins - The Mystery
Christopher Fowler - Poison Pen
Ramsey Campbell - Return Journey
Lisa Tuttle - Grandfather's Teeth
Basil Copper - Ill Met by Daylight
John Gordon - The Place
R. B. Russell - The Bridegroom
Kim Newman - Is There Anybody There?
Conrad Williams - Wait
Richard Christian Matheson - City of Dreams
Tanith Lee - A House on Fire
John Gaskin - Party Talk
Simon Kurt Unsworth - The Hurting Words
Robert Silverberg - The Church at Monte Saturno
Neil Gaiman - The Hidden Chamber (verse)
Robert Shearman - Good Grief
Karl Edward Wagner - Blue Lady, Come Back
Michael Marshall Smith - The Naughty Step
About the Editor Blurb: The Restless Dead.
Life is over but the dead live on. Within the drafty rooms of an old house, a tarnished locket tumbles to the floor. The haunted souls of the dearly departed are still among us. Ghosts, phantoms, revenants, lost souls — all these troubled spirits have unfinished business on this side of the veil. Doomed to seek out mortal answers, unable to rest until in death they accomplish what they failed to achieve in life.
This hair-raising collection of haunted tales brings together both new writers and celebrated masters — Ramsey Campbell, Christopher Fowler, Neil Gaiman, Richard Matheson, Michael Marshall Smith and others — for the ultimate collection from beyond the grave.
The characters in each chilling tale are spirits, without bodies but still floating in our world. Some are motivated by love, others by loss or guilt. But sometimes they are driven by much stronger emotions, menacing and diabolical motives that take us up from our reading to check the hallways, secure the locks and question how firmly anchored we ourselves are to our world. Reggie Oliver - Hand to Mouth: The author agrees to play live-in caretaker of a sixteenth century château in the Dordogne for his fabulously wealthy cousin, Justin. Beautiful as it is, the place is disliked by the locals on account of an unsavoury reputation. It doesn't take long for Reggie to share their disdain. Château de Bressac is haunted by the several victims of the dowager Countess Eleonora Bartori, who, despite pregnancy, was walled up alive by her son, Count Armand, for the most terrible crimes. According to the historian Henri Fauvinard, the eternally youthful Eleonora was a vampire and cannibal, who feasted upon the flesh and blood of local peasant girls and infants. Can it be true? Reggie will have a better idea if he can only locate the secret room served as her prison. My favourite Countess Dracula story since Roger Johnson's Madeleine/ Love, Death and the Maiden. A bedtime scene early in the proceedings creeped me right out for first time in ages. Sarah Pinborough - Grandmother's Slippers: Terror in Turnham Green. Burning. Drowning. Burial Alive. For all Jason's efforts to be rid of them, his late Gran's slippers always find their way back home to the cupboard under the stairs. Richard Matheson - Two O'Clock Session: (Martin H. Greenberg & William F. Nolan [eds., The Bradbury Chronicles, 1991). Maureen endures yet another hour on the couch of Dr. Volker, therapist to the dead.
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Post by Shrink Proof on Jul 7, 2020 14:42:38 GMT
A very strong line-up here. Will have to move this up the "get off your behind and read these things" pile.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Jul 8, 2020 12:22:08 GMT
A few years back, I saw Haunts in a bookstore and was tempted to buy it. Now I'm tempted again, particularly given the inclusion of stories by Tanith Lee and Basil Copper. Plus a story that genuinely creeped out Dem! Ulysses Press also published Curse of the Full Moon (which I've read), but seems more focused on cookbooks and self-help guides these days. |
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Post by dem on Jul 8, 2020 12:31:30 GMT
For those who like their ghost stories ghastly, this pair should do the trick.
Lisa Tuttle - Grandfather's Teeth: Grandfather is a sweet old guy until dementia got him and he set fire to the house, whereupon he was carted off cursing to a nursing home to die. After the funeral, his worldly goods are collected in a cardboard box and presented to only daughter. "Do they really think anyone would want a dead man's dressing gown, or his ancient underwear?" The box is destined for the municipal dump, but young Dougie, for whom the dead man's dentures have long held an erotic fascination, can't resist a crafty pilfer.
Christopher Fowler - Poison Pen: When Albert Beyer is diagnosed with cancer, he and solicitor Lycus Gerolstein go to extraordinary lengths to ensure his grasping family do not live to enjoy his wealth. Mansions burn. Top of the range cars and motorbikes crash. Speedboats sink. In short, the beneficiaries of old Man Beyers will are fast wiped out in a succession of freak gory 'accidents' directly connected to the treasures bequeathed them. Everyone finds it odd that he left nothing to the one relative he liked, nephew Mark, especially as he'd promised the young man something really special. All is made clear when Lycus finally reveals the nature of the rare artefacts he and Albert had amassed over the decades.
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Post by dem on Jul 9, 2020 7:01:20 GMT
John Gaskin - Party Talk: (Rosalie Parker [ed.], Strange Tales III, 2009). Northumberland. The occasion is the Selwood's lunch party and the narrator, an author of supernatural fiction, is lumbered with an "old lady" who insists on relating her own ghost story, concerning a young woman's grim revenge on a serial rapist. Another I liked a lot. Author makes excellent use of his Churchyard setting.
Richard Christian Matheson - City of Dreams: (Dystopia: Collected Stories, 2000). A screenwriter is convinced that his reclusive new neighbour can only be Hollywood Royalty. He eventually gets to meet the very beautiful Aubrey when, in response to cookies and a greeting card, she invites him over for drinks. After a blissful evening, the young woman hands him a gift with instructions not to open it until the following day when he's alone. As he does so, two stony-faced police officers arrive on his doorstep investigating a "break in." All eyes are drawn to his gift - a vintage movie poster. Much more interesting than my dreary commentary suggests.
Kim Newman - Is There Anybody There?: (Maxim Jakubowski [ed.], The New English Library Book of Internet Stories, 2000). Jan 2Oth 2001. An internet scammer who targets the bank accounts of the elderly, somehow hacks into medium Madame Irena's seance of three quarters of a century earlier. Irena's command of the spirit world proves superior to 'Master Mind's technological know-how.
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Post by Shrink Proof on Jul 9, 2020 13:47:06 GMT
I read "Party Talk" some while back in John Gaskin's collection "The Master of the House", and seeing this reminded me to go and re-read it (and it's pretty rare that I re-read anything - life is too short to manage even a fraction of the stuff out there once). The man can really write; Jamesian and modern at the same time.
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Post by andydecker on Jul 10, 2020 19:49:37 GMT
Reggie Oliver - Hand to Mouth: The author agrees to play live-in caretaker of a sixteenth century château in the Dordogne for his fabulously wealthy cousin, Justin. Beautiful as it is, the place is disliked by the locals on account of an unsavoury reputation. It doesn't take long for Reggie to share their disdain. Château de Bressac is haunted by the several victims of the dowager Countess Eleonora Bartori, who, despite pregnancy, was walled up alive by her son, Count Armand, for the most terrible crimes. According to the historian Henri Fauvinard, the eternally youthful Eleonora was a vampire and cannibal, who feasted upon the flesh and blood of local peasant girls and infants. Can it be true? Reggie will have a better idea if he can only locate the secret room served as her prison. My favourite Countess Dracula story since Roger Johnson's Madeleine/ Love, Death and the Maiden. A bedtime scene early in the proceedings creeped me right out for first time in ages. The story is included in one of the Oliver collections. I love Oliver's work unconditionally - except his attempts at SF which don't work for me at all - and I have to say that the scene is really memorable. It is a well realized story; the different parts come together. The escape from the secret room is claustrophobic, and the twist unexpected. |
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jul 10, 2020 20:02:21 GMT
The story is included in one of the Oliver collections. Which collection, please? |
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Post by andydecker on Jul 10, 2020 20:07:51 GMT
Flowers of the Sea.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jul 10, 2020 20:10:29 GMT
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Post by dem on Jul 11, 2020 5:16:54 GMT
I read "Party Talk" some while back in John Gaskin's collection "The Master of the House", and seeing this reminded me to go and re-read it (and it's pretty rare that I re-read anything - life is too short to manage even a fraction of the stuff out there once). The man can really write; Jamesian and modern at the same time. also featured in Mammoth Book of Best New Horror # 21John Gordon - The Place: ( The Spitfire's Grave & other stories, 1979). On the eve of their wedding, he makes a clean breast of things to fiancee. Their house, which originally belonged to his late first wife, is haunted. Phantom footsteps, urgent rapping on the window, an unseen someone lifting the telephone handset. Yet still she is enchanted by the house on the Fens and delighted to move in. Will history repeat? Michael Marshall Smith - The Naughty Step: Your companion in disgrace has been stuck here forever and still their father won't allow them back downstairs. |
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Post by dem on Jul 19, 2020 8:53:28 GMT
Basil Copper - Ill Met by Daylight: (Cold Hand on My Shoulder: Tales of Terror & Suspense, 2002). GREAT THOUGH IT IS TO LIE IN DARKNESS EVEN MORE GLORIOUS IS IT TO WALK ABROAD AT THE NOONTIDE HOUR. Extensive restoration work at St. Ulrich's church disturbs the remains of Jedediah Briggs (d. 1770), an upper class hooligan who fell on hard times and hung himself in the churchyard. Strangely, his relatives were granted permission to build him an ostentatious tomb, which has since fallen into neglect. When the burial grounds receive their six-monthly weeding, Grant, an architect at the heart of the restoration project, is drawn to investigate the Briggs crypt ... Basil does MRJ.
Ramsey Campbell - Return Journey: (Pete Crowther [ed.], Taps and Sighs, 2000). "All change for nowhere." Hilda, a war baby, takes a journey aboard the OLD TIMES LINE for a themed WWII journey complete with passengers in period costume, camouflage, NAAFI, sirens sounding the all-clear, an animated rotting corpse adjusting its gas-mask ....
Peter Atkins - The Mystery: (Angus MacKenzie [ed.]. Spook City, 2009). A park in South Liverpool. Ghost-hunter investigates alleged haunting of the men's bog by paedophile sprung from urban legend. "After he's bummed you, he crushes your bollocks."
I always seem to get more from Stephen Jones' theme anthologies than the 'Best New Horrors. ' Haunts is showing no sign of bucking that trend.
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Post by dem on Jul 20, 2020 16:12:01 GMT
R. B. Russell - The Bridegroom: Nine months on from Nicholas's fatal heart attack, Juliet Hyland pays her annual visit to the Albert Hotel, Peacehaven, scene of their most treasured moments over twenty years of happy marriage. The only sour note is an older guest, Harriet Dot, has decided she and Juliet are great mates and won't leave her alone. A raucous wedding party book in. Theirs is a reception with a difference in that even as the dancing begins, the groom has yet to take a bride. Both Juliet and Harriet are caught up in the gaiety of the moment.
To elaborate further would ruin it though it's not unlikely you'll immediately identify the attractive guy in the classy black suit for who/what he is.
Robert Shearman - Good Grief: David Reynolds loses wife Janet in a car accident caused by a woman who'd been drinking. Both were killed outright. The culprit's husband, Alex, who reads gas-meters for a living, seeks David's forgiveness. Alex is not the most stable of characters. Typically unsettling, off kilter, and even upsetting - not sure I quite 'got' the ending, but have yet to read a Rob Shearman story didn't make me feel a little seasick.
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Post by samdawson on Aug 16, 2020 18:23:41 GMT
Bought this based on the recommendations here, and it didn't disappoint. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the MR James story (A Warning to the Curious) stood up against some of the best modern genre writings; it appears that his stories really are timeless. I particularly liked Grandmother's Slippers, for its humanity and ability to confound expectations.
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