Alastair Gunn [ed.] - 12th Wimbourne Victorian Ghost

[dem bones]

Alastair Gunn [ed.] - The 12th Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories (Wimbourne, 2022)

Front. R. H. Barham, by artist uncredited. Back, J. R. Skelton, Christmas Eve in the Haunted Chamber, 1907.

Alastair Gunn - Introduction [incorporates James Hannay, Family Ghosts, from Every Saturday: A Journal of Choice Reading, Jan 1868].

Richard Harris Barham - The Spectre of Tappington
Mark Lemon - The Old Bell-Ringer's Story
James Hain Friswell - The Dead Man's Story
John Berwick Harwood - Horror: A True Tale
William Wilthew Fenn - The Steel Mirror: A Christmas Dream
George Manville Fenn - Haunted by Spirits
Charlotte Riddell - A Strange Christmas Game
Annie Hall Thomas - How We Parted
Eliza Lynn Linton - Christmas Eve at Beach House
Charles Henry Ross - A Three-Cornered Ghost
Theo Gift - Number Two, Melrose Square
Mary E. Penn - Old Vanderhaven's Will
Charlotte Riddell - The Old House in Vauxhall Walk
Robert Louis Stevenson - Markheim
James Matthew Barrie - The Ghost of Christmas Eve
Jerome K. Jerome - The Ghost of the Blue Chamber
John Kendrick Bangs - Thurlow's Christmas Story
Ivy Hooper - The Baron's Room
Elia Wilkinson Peattie - Their Dear Little Ghost
Marie Corelli - The Ghost in the Sedan Chair

Blurb:

Wimbourne Books presents the twelfth in a series of rare or out-of-print ghost stories from Victorian authors. With an introduction by author Alastair Gunn, Volume 12 in the series spans the years 1837 to 1901, contains ghost stories set at or around Christmas, and includes stories from a wide range of authors including Robert Louis Stevenson, Charlotte Riddell and Eliza Lynn Linton.

Readers new to this genre will discover its pleasures; the Victorian quaintness, the sometimes shocking difference in social norms, the almost comical politeness and structured etiquette, the archaic and precise language, but mostly the Victorians’ skill at stoking our fears and trepidations, our insecurities and doubts. Even if you are already an aficionado of the ghostly tale there is much within these pages to interest you.

Wait until the dark of the snowy night (preferably on Christmas Eve), lock the doors, shutter the windows, light the fire, sit with your back to the wall and bury yourself in the Victorian macabre. Try not to let the creaking floorboards, the distant howl of a dog, the chill breeze that caresses the candle, the shadows in the far recesses of your room, disturb your concentration.

James Hannay - Family Ghosts: (Every Saturday: A Journal of Choice Reading, Jan 1868). Non-fiction. Portents of doom, harbingers of misery and gloom, etc. Includes the Phantom Monk of Newstead Abbey, the Little Red Hunchback of the Tuilerioes, murdered drummer boy versus the Ogilvies, the White Lady of the Hohenzollerns, the Monster of Glamis, & Co.

Richard Harris Barham - The Spectre of Tappington: (Bentley's Miscellany, 2. Feb. 1837). Thomas Ingoldsby investigates a trouser-thieving skeleton at the manor house. Peter Haining is another who considered it worth exhuming in Nightcaps and Nightmares.

C. Keene (Illustrated London News, 20 Dec. 1856)

Mark Lemon - The Old Bell-Ringer's Story: (Illustrated London News, 20 Dec. 1856). John Travis recalls a Christmas Eve long ago when a storm obliged him to take refuge in the belfry of Fishertoft parish church. Around midnight, an apparition Travis took to be the ghost of Sir Roger Blunderthorpe, emerged from behind a monument to invite his participation in a drunken debauch. Rationalised, "humorous," etc. Think that's my third Lemon "ghost" story." I've yet to enjoy one.

James Hain Friswell - The Dead Man's Story: (Ghost Stories & Phantom Fancies, 1858). A surgeon fallen madly in love with of ailing patient, Madame P __________, trades his soul in return for her cold hand in marriage. "... There she sat, more beautiful than Beauty's self — chaste as a statue of Diana," three weeks dead, etc. Satan prepares him for the Grand Ball by advising him to wipe a worm from his face. As first revived by our much missed friend, Michel Parry, in Reign of Terror: The 2nd Corgi Book Of Victorian Horror Stories, 1977.

William Wilthew Fenn - The Steel Mirror: A Christmas Dream: (Routledge's Christmas Annual, Dec. 1867). Grim Christmas at the Bower, Dankborough, when the narrator's recall home to London leaves thirteen at table — and the face of the phantom widow taking shape in the glass, foretelling the violent death of the senior male Godfrey.

[dem bones]

John Berwick Harwood - Horror: A True Tale: (Blackwoods, Jan. 1861). Meet Rosa, nineteen, the youngest of three wealthy, loving sisters. Beautiful, engaged to the gallant Reginald, due to inherit even greater riches when her decrepit godmother, Lady Speldhurst, does the decent thing, etc. So what if an abundance of Christmas guests obliges our heroine to sleep in the so-called haunted room? It's not like some bestial, sheep-mangling escaped lunatic is likely to climb into bed with her? Another story familiar from Michel Parry's Reign of Terror #2 and Richard Dalby's Chillers For Christmas.

George Manville Fenn - Haunted by Spirits: (Christmas Penny Readings, 1867). Narrator visits Ned and Lilly for Christmas, demands to sleep in the haunted 'Red Room', so named for its localised rains of blood, duelling skeletons, ghastly groans, etc. First read this when I was circa the age of this board (!), the one story I disliked in Hugh Lamb's otherwise exemplary Victorian Nightmares.

Charlotte Riddell - A Strange Christmas Game: (The Broadway Annual, Jan. 1868). Another haunted 'Red Room,' this one at the Martingdale manor House, Beds. Ghost is that of Jeremy Lester who vanished on Christmas Eve following a card game with best pal Mr. Wharley. Forty-one years after his disappearance, the new owners, a struggling artist and his wife, witness a spectral re-enactment of handsome Jeremy's final moments, his betrayal and — murder! Also available in Kathryn Cramer & David G. Hartwell (eds.) – Christmas Ghosts.

[ripper]

I don't have Wimbourne Victorian Ghost Stories Vol 12, but I read The Dead Man's Story in a Black Heath collection of James Hain Friswell's stories. I also really like John Berwick Harwood's Horror: A True Tale. His An Underground Ghost, with its unusual setting of a salt mine, is, I believe, included in one of the other Wimbourne volumes.

[dem bones]

Dec 31, 2022 17:38:01 GMT ripper said:

I don't have Wimbourne Victorian Ghost Stories Vol 12, but I read The Dead Man's Story in a Black Heath collection of James Hain Friswell's stories. I also really like John Berwick Harwood's Horror: A True Tale. His An Underground Ghost, with its unusual setting of a salt mine, is, I believe, included in one of the other Wimbourne volumes.

Happy new year, Rip! Think this is my fourth Wimbourne to date, and as with the others, I'm finding it an entertaining, if uneven, read. This next pair would be my picks to date.

Annie Hall Thomas - How We Parted: (Routledge's Christmas Annual, Dec. 1869). "I will promise to come to you in the greatest trouble in my life". The debutante's ball signals a parting of ways for Annette, our narrator, and her best chum Milly Deane ("she had been Christened Emmeline by a Minerva-Press-loving mother") as the two pair off with their future husbands. Alas, poor Milly loses her heart to handsome-if-sallow Captain Danvers. No sooner are they wed than the couple leave for India — but not before Danvers lets on to beautiful blonde Annette that he'd much rather bed her than his bride! Shortly before the fatal ball, Milly had a premonition featuring Annette dressed in a blue gown trimmed with roses. Now, seven Christmas Eve's later, Annette receives just such a garment to wear to her daughter's birthday party. Milly briefly gatecrashes the event. I liked this one a lot, not least for its villain, a man bereft of empathy, who comes up all smiles at the end.

Eliza Lynn Linton - Christmas Eve at Beach House: (Routledge's Christmas Annual, Dec. 1870). Newly-wed Walter and Alice Grimwood make home on a cliff overlooking treacherous rocks. Local Jem Penreath who has lived there for several years in unofficial caretaker capacity, takes eviction badly and warns that the nameless horror of Beachwood House will make short work of the artist and his foreign (Alice is a Londoner) wife. For that the property is haunted is beyond dispute, though some may suggest the ghost stories are the invention of smugglers and wreckers. Whatever, it's clear this Penreath is not a fellow to trifle with.

"He was known as the most reckless and defying savage of the whole district, and the strongest. Smuggling, drinking, wrecking, or work that would knock up any other man— all came alike to him. He did not seem to value his life more than a rat's or a crow's, and no one's else more than his own. Every one was afraid of him; every one fought shy of him; yet no one knew anything definite against him, or if they did they kept it to themselves. Folks said he had been much worse in these latter times, since Mary Mainfote so strangely disappeared some ten years ago...."

Miss Mainforte, the undisputed village beauty, who detested her unwonted admirer, was last seen in the company of a handsome stranger one Christmas Eve. As the anniversary approaches, Alice is troubled by a recurring nightmare featuring the bloodied ghost of her long-lost father, a golden-haired girl, and a mad-eyed killer .....

Charles Henry Ross - A Three-Cornered Ghost: (Routledge's Christmas Annual, Dec. 1870). Slight, 'humorous' story of Dobson, the phantom skinflint of the Inn of Taffy Lodging House, Holborn, who determined that, living or dead, he'd never be parted from a farthing of his fortune. Editor informs us that Ross, a famous cartoonist in his time, is the man who gave the world the Ally Sloper cartoon strip, though it was his wife did the bulk of the illustrating.

[ripper]

Happy new year to you, Dem, and all on the forum. Yep, uneven is a good description of the stories in these Wimbourne collections. So many of the tales and authors are unknown, so it's hard to know what to expect. I have never come away from a collection feeling anything less than entertained and having gotten my money's worth. I also like the pieces that Gunn reprints in his introductions taken from Victorian magazines.

[dem bones]

Jan 3, 2023 11:50:38 GMT ripper said:

I have never come away from a collection feeling anything less than entertained and having gotten my money's worth. I also like the pieces that Gunn reprints in his introductions taken from Victorian magazines.

Agreed they'e a definite plus. James Hannay's piece on Family Ghosts gets twelve off to a lively start. I wonder how the readership would react were he to compile a volume entirely from similar articles?

[jamesdoig]

Jan 3, 2023 20:04:47 GMT dem bones said:

James Hannay's piece on Family Ghosts gets twelve off to a lively start. I wonder how the readership would react were he to compile a volume entirely from similar articles?

I'd buy it - I wish more publishers would bring out more of that kind of thing.

[toff]

If Gunn did a non-fiction collection regarding ghost stories, that could be interesting.

For my own part, I could see doing a Christmas ghost story study that also included some non-fiction Victorian writing on the subject in its entirety. Probably pretty niche audience for that, wonder if it would have to be self-published print-on-demand.

I liked Fenn's "Haunted by Spirits" up to the end, which was I think already a clichéd one by that time. Probably one could do a whole collection just taking stories let down by bad endings but then writing new ones for them that give them the endings they should have had.

[dem bones]

Jan 4, 2023 16:32:09 GMT toff said:

If Gunn did a non-fiction collection regarding ghost stories, that could be interesting.

I like that, on this occasion (possibly others?), he opts for an essay on 'true' ghosts - I'd love to see a volume comprising a mix of contemporary articles on Victorian supernatural fiction and factual ghost stories.

Theo Gift - Number Two, Melrose Place: (All the Year Round, Dec, 1879). Narrator, a translator whose work requires she live local to the British Museum, rents a furnished house in Bloomsbury on outrageously generous terms. You'll not need me to tell you that something horrible happened there one Christmas, something that Mrs. Cathers, the sinister housekeeper, is being well paid by the owner to keep to herself. Don't look in the summer house! Another best-of-book contender, also available in Allen Grove's Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories: Volume Two (2017), as is Christmas Eve at Beach House. Evidently the Wimbourne series is bent on cannibalizing every Christmas Ghost series known to man.

[toff]

I'd love to see a volume comprising a mix of contemporary articles on Victorian supernatural fiction and factual ghost stories. 

---

Not a mix, but might be of interest to you:

Spectral Edition: Ghost Reports from U.S. Newspapers, 1865-1917 and The Victorian Ghost Hunter's Casebook by Tim Prasil. I have not read them. He has a blog at brombonesbooks.com and I have commented there.

"Ghosts of the Past: Historic News Reports of Victorian Hauntings." www.findmypast.com/blog/discoveries/ghosts-of-the-past-historic-news-reports-of-victorian-hauntings

Cannibalizing: that may be, though over the whole book series there seem to be a lot of stories Gunn found that others have not anthologized? I'd seen an anthology by someone else that seem to be entirely cannibalized from Gunn and Black Heath. 

[dem bones]

Jan 5, 2023 23:51:13 GMT toff said:

Cannibalizing: that may be, though over the whole book series there seem to be a lot of stories Gunn found that others have not anthologized? I'd seen an anthology by someone else that seem to be entirely cannibalized from Gunn and Black Heath. 

I really should have worded that better. It wasn't intended as a dig.

Thank you for the recommendations. Of the Tim Prasil books, its Certain Nocturnal Disturbances: Ghost Hunting Before the Victorians interests me the most. As to the wonderful Illustrated Police News, I particularly enjoy their accounts of ghost hoaxes and those tragic misunderstandings which result in the shooting dead of an innocent "spectre." Anyway, please let us know if you decide on your own POD compilation of essays on the fictional (as opposed to factual/ "factual") variety.

Robert Barnes

Mary E. Penn - Old Vanderhavens Will (The Argosy, Dec. 1880). "Artists who are worthy the name have my admiration and respect. I only despise those shallow pretenders who make art an excuse for idleness and affectation; for wearing abnormal coats and beards ..."

Nicolas Vanderhaven threatens grandson Bernhardt with disinheritance should he pursue his current, selfish course in painting stupid pictures instead of knuckling down to a real job in finance. Worse, the young upstart has lost his heart to some pauper floozie! It is this Annette selflessly persuades Bernhardt to forego a fortune, leave Bruges for Rome, and conquer all with his talent. When Vanderhaven belatedly realises his grandson is no self-deluded, pretentious phoney but a genuinely gifted artist, he relents, offers Annette a generous wage to become his carer, and writes a new will, leaving all bar the family business to Bernhardt. Alas, the old man dies before he can tell Annette where the precious document is concealed! Bernhardt returns home for Christmas to find his grandfather dead in a chair and his grasping cousin determined to claim the deceased's every asset!

Charlotte Riddell - The Old House in Vauxhall Walk: (Weird Stories, 1882) Commented this one not long ago when it showed up in Elizabeth Dearnley's Into the London Fog. Another case of smashing story murdered at the last.

[dem bones]

Robert Louis Stevenson - Markheim: (Unwin's Annual for 1886). A career criminal fatally stabs an antique dealer on the night of Christmas Eve. A sinister stranger appears in the doorway and encourages Markheim to make the best of the situation, kill the old man's serving maid so he can loot the premises at leisure. Dualism of man, Dr. Jekyll & Mister Hyde Mk. I, etc. See also Richard Dalby's Ghosts For Christmas.

James Matthew Barrie - The Ghost of Christmas Eve: (St. James' Gazette, Jan. 1889). Author debunks recent report in Society of Haunted Houses Monthly claiming the the phantom lovers and a spectral steward have returned to a certain Yorkshire mansion. Also available in Haining's Christmas Spirits, Dalby's Ghosts For Christmas

Jerome K. Jerome - The Ghost of the Blue Chamber: (Told After Supper, 1891). Author demands of his Uncle that he be allowed to spend Christmas Eve in the haunted chamber. His persistence is rewarded with a midnight visitation from the ghost of "the old sinner," the serial murderer of carol singers, German trombonists, muffin men, the little Italian barrel organist, and similar pests. Or is it? Could it be that, like George Manville Fenn before him, JKJ is "Haunted by Spirits."

[dem bones]

John Kendrick Bangs - Thurlow's Christmas Story: (Harper's Weekly, 15 Dec. 1894). Struggling to meet the deadline for his Christmas ghost story, Thurlow accepts an MS from a mysterious fan, who insists that, if the author likes it, he claim it as his own work. The story is the equal of a Poe classic. Thurlow can only resist temptation for so long before he signs his name at the bottom. Also available in Richard Dalby's Ghosts For Christmas.

Ivy Hooper - The Baron's Room: (Lucifer, Feb. 1896). To the astonishment of fellow Henshaw House guests, Colonel Vansittart declines a jokey invitation to spend the night in the "haunted chamber" on account of he admits to being terrified of ghosts. His fear stems from a holiday in France, when, meeting with a fellow Old Harrovian, Vansittart arranged for them to spend the night at an empty house on the outskirts of Vouvray. The place has an evil name on account of a Baron De _________ who sawed through his own throat with a knife. His mean-spirited ghost entices those at a low ebb to follow his example.

Refreshingly bloodthirsty, which is just as well, because volume twelve concludes with;

Elia Wilkinson Peattie - Their Dear Little Ghost: (The Outlook, Oct. 1898). A fey child returns at Christmas to open her presents. Elspeth is playing autoharp with the angels now. Sob, blub, "Oh God, take-me-instead!," etc.

Marie Corelli - The Ghost in the Sedan Chair: (A Christmas Greeting, 1901). Acquired at auction, the chair comes complete with phantom "Old-fashioned-girl," who returns at Christmas to bemoan the passing of the "good old days" before all this progress, education, women painting their faces and riding bicycles ....

[Swampirella]

The Baron's Room can be listened to here:  www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbUgpx7313c