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Post by dem on Dec 7, 2021 10:41:08 GMT
Dorothy Scarborough [ed.] - Humorous Ghost Stories (Outlook, 2020: Dodo, 2008: originally G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1921) Dorothy Scarborough, Ph.D. - Introduction
Oscar Wilde - The Canterville Ghost
Gelett Burgess - The Ghost-Extinguisher
Ellis Parker Butler - "Dey Ain't No Ghosts"
Frank R. Stockton - The Transferred Ghost
Théophile Gautier - The Mummy's Foot
Brander Matthews - The Rival Ghosts
John Kendrick Bangs - The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall
Anonymous - Back from That Bourne
Richard Middleton - The Ghost-Ship
Wallace Irwin - The Transplanted Ghost
Nelson Lloyd - The Last Ghost in Harmony
Eden Phillpotts - The Ghost of Miser Brimpson
Ruth McEnery Stuart - The Haunted Photograph
Will Adams - The Ghost That Got the Button
Washington Irving - The Specter Bridegroom: A Traveler's Tale
Richard Barham - The Specter of Tappington
Burges Johnson - In the Barn
Elsie Brown - A Shady Plot
Rose Cecil O'Neill - The Lady and the Ghost Picked this up yesterday - too much of Richard Felix's The People's Ghost Stories will do that to a man. Mines is the recent Outlook edition but have posted scan of the Dodo cover instead as at least some effort went into it. 100 years on, and the British Library 'Tales of the Weird' anthologists still favour the same approach - four or five acknowledged "classics" supplemented by relative obscure/ "forgotten" stories. #bookaholism
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Post by dem on Dec 12, 2021 14:49:12 GMT
 Rose Cecil O'Neill The Lady and the Ghost, ( Cosmopolitan #34, Nov. 1902) : ( Tales of Fantasy & Fact, 1886). When Eliphat Duncan, a Yankee of Scots descent, takes his late father's title, he also inherits the family banshee, problematic in that his Salem home is already haunted. As title suggests, the spooks are incompatible. Matters escalate to crisis proportion on the Baron's engagement to Miss Kitty Sutton (aka, "Mother Gorgon's daughter.") Anonymous [Edward Page Mitchell]- Back from That Bourne: ( New York Sun, 19 Dec 1874). Pollock Island, Washington County, Maine. A ghost materialised by a celebrity medium refuses to return to the grave. John Newbegin, alcoholic fisherman, died four years ago aged 48 as a direct result of a marathon brandy binge. Now teetotal, Newbegin is pledged to make amends for the wasted years. Neighbours come to accept that he's not a demon from Hell and leave him to go about his business. Rose Cecil O'Neill - The Lady and the Ghost: ( Cosmopolitan, Nov. 1902). "Life is not, I assure you, all beer and skittles for the disembodied." A chivalrous ghost struggles back from the outer void to catch a glimpse of his soul mate, she sworn to love him forever, come what may, etc. Obviously, she's forgotten he ever existed. Story (and book) bows out on poignant note, as, although their love is rekindled, the gallant must be away with the dawn, leaving the lady brokenhearted as he. |
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Post by helrunar on Dec 12, 2021 16:10:30 GMT
Beautiful drawing, very unusual.
H.
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Post by dem on Dec 13, 2021 16:57:36 GMT
John Kendrick Bangs - The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall: ( Harper's Weekly, June 27, 1891). At twelve midnight every Christmas Eve, the lady with the cavernous eyes and seaweed fingers arrives to torment the master of the house, ruining the decor in process. The current Oglethorpe contrives cunning plan to be rid of the soggy spectre once and for all. Burgess Johnson - In the Barn: ( Century Magazine, June 1920). A tutor reluctantly agrees to attend his pupils' ghost party in a candlelit barn. When the students - all girls - insist he tell them a spooky story, he improvises a haunting involving a usurer, Peter Creed, who murdered a man in this very barn for playing a money-related trick upon him for a laugh. Creed claimed in court that his victim, Turner, the town drunk, hung himself in a fit of depression and the jury saw no reason to believe otherwise. The ghost of the dead man returned to repay him in kind. Evidently the girls find the story suitably frightening as no sooner has he finished than a terrible shriek from the audience ...
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Dec 13, 2021 23:24:05 GMT
"The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall" seems to inspire good illustrations. I also like Fred Banbery's renditions in Alfred Hitchcock's Haunted Houses. |
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Post by dem on Dec 14, 2021 12:00:31 GMT
 Fred Banbery It's a story seems to bring out the best in an illustrator. Only thing I don't like about it is the ending which, when you think about it, isn't particularly "humorous" at all. |
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Dec 14, 2021 12:34:26 GMT
It's a story seems to bring out the best in an illustrator. Only thing I don't like about it is the ending which, when you think about it, isn't particularly "humorous" at all. I felt sorry for the water ghost. Would it have been that difficult for the owners to coexist with her? She only appears once a year, and all she does is douse people. |
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Post by dem on Dec 14, 2021 17:50:08 GMT
It's a story seems to bring out the best in an illustrator. Only thing I don't like about it is the ending which, when you think about it, isn't particularly "humorous" at all. I felt sorry for the water ghost. Would it have been that difficult for the owners to coexist with her? She only appears once a year, and all she does is douse people. Exactly. How hard is it to lay a sheet of tarpaulin across the floor for one hour per year? Eden Phillpotts - Miser Brimpson's Ghost: ( Tales of the Tenements, 1910). Young Jonathan Drake of Dunnabridge Farm, Dartmoor, stubborn as he is proud, breaks off his engagement to love of his life, Hyssop Burges, when he learns that, with monies left her by a relative, his fiancee's wealth far outstrips his own (current balance: £0.00). Miss Hyssop is not one to give up without a fight, and on New Year's night, the "ghost" of Jonathan's grandfather, Miser Brimpson, walks again, leads the mule-headed Romeo to a fortune in Sheffield plate buried in a box beneath the Thorn tree. Wedding bells. |
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Post by helrunar on Dec 14, 2021 19:34:05 GMT
I think the story "The Water-Ghost of Harrowby Hall" by John Kendrick Bangs is being referenced here. There's a very cool recording of this by Vincent Price on the LP "A Hornbook for Witches." I loved how he did the watery voice of the ghost. www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNGz3IYkbb8I miss the artistry, theatricality, and outright genius of Vincent Price. I was privileged to see him portray Oscar Wilde on the stage in the mid 1970s. Although Vincent was nothing at all physically like Oscar, he conjured up the spirit of the Irish poet and raconteur with extraordinary vividness. H. |
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Post by dem on Dec 17, 2021 13:49:18 GMT
Elsie Brown - A Shady Plot : Original to this collection. Ghosts refuse to provide author John Hallock with further plots for his supernatural stories until he persuades wife Lavinia and writing circle to dispose of their ouija boards. Featured spectre, Helen of Troy, New York.
Nelson Lloyd - The Last Ghost in Harmony: (Scribner's, March 1907). "What can't be explained by arithmetic or geography is put down as impossible. Even the preachers encourage such idees and talk about Adam and Eve being allegories. As a result, the graveyard has become the slowest place in town. You simply can't ha'nt anything around here." The spirit of Robert J. Dinkle bemoans his lot as the last ghost standing in a small Pennsylvanian community. Folk are too educated, they just don't believe in the supernatural as they used to. The author agrees to help him put a fright up the Reverend Mr. Stiegelnail. Doesn't work.
Frank Stockton - The Transferred Ghost: (Century Magazine, May, 1882). Ghost scheduled to haunt the country residence of terminally furious Mr. John Hinckman is thwarted when the old tyrant refuses to succumb to fatal illness. Promises to help narrator in his courtship of Hinckman's niece, Madeline, in return for his finding an alternative unclaimed corpse to transfer phantom allegiance.
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Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on Dec 17, 2021 13:52:25 GMT
I wonder, with all your reading of old pulp magazines, if you have ever come across blatant plagiarised stories, where only a few elements, if any, have been changed?
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Post by dem on Dec 17, 2021 14:19:55 GMT
I wonder, with all your reading of old pulp magazines, if you have ever come across blatant plagiarised stories, where only a few elements, if any, have been changed? There are at least two instances I can think of in relation to Weird Tales; Robert Weinberg identified Dana Carroll's The Ocean Ogre as a “paragraph by paragraph paraphrase” of Frank Belknap Long’s The Sea-Thing, and another author submitted entire chapters of Clyde Burt Clason's Lochinvar Lodge to same publication as their own original story - can't recall who it was, but once alerted, Farnsworth Wright never published him/ her again. The editor of the Gothic Society's Udolpho magazine once very publicly exposed a contributor who tried to pull a similar fast one.
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