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Post by dem bones on Jun 20, 2023 13:34:24 GMT
Alastair Gunn [ed.] - The 13th Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories (May, 2023) Front: Daniel Maclise, portrait of Charles Dickens, circa 1839. Back: E. Evans, The Phantom Fourth, Tinsley's Magazine, Dec. 1868) Alastair Gunn - Introduction [incorporates anonymous essay, On the Threatened Extinction of Ghosts, from Sharp's London Magazine, Jan 1856].
'Dalton' - The Heart and the Key: A Tale of the Fens
'J. A.' - Haunted
Anon - The Demon Spectre: A True Ghost Story of Virginia
Anon - Midnight at Marshland Grange
Anon - Mrs. M.
'M. A.' - "Tremewen Grange"
Anon - An American Ghost
Anon - Mrs. Brown's Ghost Story
Anon - The Phantom Fourth
'A German Physician' - The Dead Sister
Anon - The Tregethan's Curse; or, the Weird Woman
Anon - An Old Woman's Story
'A. C. E.' - The Haunted Mill
'E. C. D.' - Stronger Than Death
Anon - An Extra Passenger
Anon - Faithful Unto Death
Anon - My Uncle's Clock
Anon - The Cupboard at Wyncope Manor
Anon - A Ghostly Adventure on Exmoor
Anon - The Phantom Picture: A Complete Tale Blurb: Twenty ghostly tales from the supernatural masters of the Victorian age.
Wimbourne Books presents the thirteenth in a series of rare or out-of- print ghost stories from Victorian authors. With an introduction by author Alastair Gunn, Volume 13 in the series contains stories published anonymously in America and Britain between 1841 and 1900. Most of these tales are here anthologised for the very first time.
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 stormy night arrives, 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.Anon - Midnight at Marshland Grange: ( Once A Week, 21 Nov. 1863). Dismayed at a lack of ghosts in the capital, the Shoreditch based Supernatural Investigation Society circulate an advertisement for a haunted house. Club secretary A. Wynter Knight is alone invited to spend a miserable night at just such a property on the Essex Marshes. Anon - Mrs. M.: ( All The Year Round, Aug. 1867). As she lies dying following a riding accident during an open day picnic at Goodwood Park, Harriett's spirit travels the astral to visit her sister in Bognor. Maudlin. 'A German Physician' - The Dead Sister: ( Reynold's Miscellany, 30 Jan. 1869). A lecturer at an anatomical school falls for a terminal patient, Elise. Comes the terrible hour when he uncovers the corpse on the dissecting table to recognise his beloved! Her ghost insists that he proceed with his work. "She gives herself to her race; she wills that the secret of the demoniacal disease that destroyed her shall be discovered, that no other girl shall die away from love and lover, and heaven on earth, by means of it." 'M. A.' - "Tremewen Grange": ( Once A Week, 2 March 1867). Uncle Edward recalls his solitary experience of the supernatural, while staying with a young married couple in a Cornish country house on the cliffs. Alice Trenewen did not allow smoking indoors, so husband and guests would retire to a beach hut in the garden. One stormy night, Edward was near scared out of his wits by a ghastly blue drowned face glaring in at the window ...
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Post by Swampirella on Jun 20, 2023 13:47:52 GMT
Midnight At Marshland Grange can be read here:
"Mrs. M" is also the name of a Mongolian rapper, apparently. Don't mix the two up.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jun 20, 2023 19:58:05 GMT
"Mrs. M" is also the name of a Mongolian rapper, apparently. Don't mix the two up. Why not? Could be interesting. |
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Post by Swampirella on Jun 20, 2023 20:03:39 GMT
"Mrs. M" is also the name of a Mongolian rapper, apparently. Don't mix the two up. Why not? Could be interesting. You’re right, come to think of it. |
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Post by dem bones on Jun 21, 2023 18:39:36 GMT
Anon - An Extra Passenger: (Dreamland and Ghostland: Vol. 3, 1887). Dulvitspan, S. Africa. A cart driver murders Jack Rainsford, secretary of the Diamond Mining Company, for his purse, hiding the corpse down a well. On Rainsford's failure to report for duty, he is presumed to have absconded with the company's gems and a warrant is issued for his arrest. Our narrator, a miner taking a ride home from the Kimberley Club, would surely have suffered the same fate had not Rainsford's ghost arisen from the slime to settle the score.
A. C. E. - The Haunted Mill: (The London Reader, 14 Feb. 1874). In defiance of father's orders, Helen Hayward keeps a midnight date with the man she loves, the staunch but penniless Lieutant Cavendish, in the shadow of the old tower. Insane with rage, the mad miser surprises them and shoots dead his daughter with a bullet meant for her lover. Their ghosts haunt the ruined mill.
Anon - An Old Woman's Story: (Every Week, 28 June 1871). Emily Romilyn, orphaned following the mysterious drowning of her mother, is raised by her rich uncle Godfrey, an embittered despot who is determined his beautiful niece remain a spinster for life. Imagine his fury on learning that, not only is Emily sneaking out to the haunted graveyard nights to meet a young man, but her sweetheart is the son of his enemy!
Enjoyed The Dead Sister, An Extra Passenger and The Haunted Mill. Not keen on Mrs. M.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 23, 2023 9:29:04 GMT
Anon - A Ghostly Adventure on Exmoor: (Belgravia, July 1891). Lost on the moors after dark, William Hurstwick, heads for a light in the distance. He enters a lonesome chapel to witness the spectral re-enactment of a macabre wedding ceremony. Groom fettered, Bride clearly terrified, her father and three guests armed, altar draped in the skull and crossbones ...
Anon - Mrs. Brown's Ghost Story: (A Stable for Nightmares: Tinsley's Magazine, Dec. 1868). "Go along with your rubbish, as is all impositions, the same as the Cock-lane ghost, as my dear mother remembered well, tho' I must say as in course such things might be, thro' it bein' well known as Lady Marley's ghost was seen to walk every night thro' Cockerton churchyard, and strangled the beadle in 'is cock-'at, as were a- watchin' for 'er in the porch, thro' not a-likin' to be pryed into, as no lady wouldn't in 'er grave-clothes."
Garrulous cockney Mrs. Brown on her friend, Mrs. Padwick's horrible honeymoon at a relative's house haunted by a ghost dripping gore from a severed throat; a ghost hoax in Bonners Field, Hackney; and a terrifying encounter with a hostile damp stocking.
Anon - An American Ghost: (A Stable for Nightmares: Tinsley's Magazine, Dec. 1868). A love triangle ends in murder. Ezekiel Hosmer, a poor young farmer, loves the shopkeeper's daughter, Anne Hudson, his best friend from childhood, but unbeknown to him — and everyone else in the small Connecticut community — she has been entertaining Dick Clapp, a drunken, dissolute, devilishly handsome devil forever up to no good! Exasperated at Dick's latest outrage, Anne gives Ezekiel an ultimatum. Either he marries her this night, or she will never speak to him again.
Two years later, the Hosmer's have settled in the Wisconsin forest, where the land is to be had just for the clearing. Ezekiel has built a charming log cabin, the living is good, but Anne pines for her secret lover. One blessed day, he arrives at their doorstep — carrying an axe ...
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Post by dem bones on Jun 24, 2023 10:44:32 GMT
A wraith of the living, the entitled English boor abroad, a haunted dress and a murdering debauchee they couldn't hang.
J. A. - Haunted: (Sharp's London Magazine, March 1860). George Austin, a philosopher grown reclusive through obsessively seeking to solve the unsolvable, is haunted by the ghost of himself which only he can see. At nine each night, the double materialises in the same fireside chair in the library.
Anon - The Cupboard at Wyncope Manor: (Every Week, 18 Sept. 1889). Mary slips inside the wardrobe during a game of hide-and-seek, only to realise she is sharing with a blood soaked white silk gown. The little girl alerts the household, but ... where's it gone? Years later, she learns of an evil Lord who wed the village beauty against her will, only to murder her on their first anniversary.
Anon - The Phantom Fourth: (A Stable for Nightmares: Tinsley's Magazine, Dec. 1868). A party of three English teetotallers visiting Paris are augmented by a spectral hooligan whose drunken influence lands them in trouble with the authorities.
'Dalton' - The Heart and the Key: A Tale of the Fens: (Bentley's Miscellany, July 1841). The razor murder of Squire Wilderspin coincides with the disappearance of his son-in-law, George Elliott. It seems an open and shut case. Earlier in the Blue Boar, a drunken Elliott had threatened to kill the old miser. Alas for the local population, the entire estate passes to the Squire's nephew, Richard, aka 'Wild Dick' Wilderspin, leader of the Merry Devils, a Cambridge equivalent of the Hellfire Club similarly devoted to Bacchanalian orgies and hooliganism.
Eighteen years pass. Elliott learns that the son born after his moonlight flit to America has earned a University place and returns home, only to be recognised and arrested for Wilderspin's murder. It looks all up for him until the Squire's ghost terrifies Wild Dick's accomplice, Bosky Bean, to unburden his soul, confess what really happened that night.
"The report that Mr. Wilderspin was the assassin of his uncle spread like wildfire through the village, where he was already sufficiently unpopular. Returning home, he was dragged from his horse by an infuriated mob, composed chiefly of the tender sex, who seemed inclined to relieve the county of the expense of prosecution by the more economical plan of tearing him to pieces ..."
Tod Slaughter would have had great fun with a stage adaptation.
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Post by Swampirella on Jun 24, 2023 10:54:53 GMT
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Post by dem bones on Jun 25, 2023 16:17:14 GMT
Anon - The Demon Spectre: A True Ghost Story of Virginia: ( Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 2 March 1861). Guests invariably insist on sleeping in the haunted room — but one night is all it takes before they seek to switch to the barn outside. Ghosts of a murdered young woman, a dead baby and a maggot-dripping skeletal mess in a winding sheet. Another decent story murdered by dreadful pay off. Anon - The Tregethan's Curse; or, the Weird Woman: ( Bow Bells Annual, Dec. 1871: Hugh Lamb [ed], Terror by Gaslight, 1975). Tradition has it that no two adult Tregethan's can live together at Holme Grange, North Wales, without one murdering the other. By the terms of misanthropic Jaffery Tregethan's will, his orphan nephews, Oswald and Frank, must reside there a month with their fair cousin, Cicely, or forfeit their share of his inheritance. Frank, the first to arrive, has not even unpacked before the banshee shrieks her death warning. Anon - The Phantom Picture: A Complete Tale: ( The London Journal, 22 Sept. 1900). Smith hands himself in at the Honey Hill village gaol, demanding to be locked up because "I deserve it." Dodge, the kindly keeper, obliges. The prisoner pays for oils, chalks, easel and canvas, spends the next three months perfecting a portrait so terrifying it has to be kept away from women and children.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 26, 2023 12:23:18 GMT
Anon - My Uncle's Clock: (Macmillan's Magazine, Jan. 1888). The old gentleman, who collected ghosts as others might collect relics, antique furniture, or disreputable paperbacks, left it unwound for good reason. The narrator, who inherits, demands of Timpkins the butler that he set the magnificent timepiece in motion. Consequently, the house is over-run by the phantoms Uncle amassed over a lengthy career.
E. C. D. - Stronger Than Death: (The Argosy, Feb. 1876). Dorie, convalescing in Minnesota with her sister and husband, pines for the spring when she can rejoin fiancé Jaspar in Washington. One night during a snow storm, his sad apparition appears before her. Dorie believes him dead, but Mrs Verner assures her it was only a bad dream brought on by exhaustion. Hadn't she fallen asleep fully dressed? The old lady then confides a secret from her youth. Before meeting her husband, she fell in love with a handsome cavalier who swore his love for her was so strong that, should he
precede her to the grave, his ghost would return to say farewell. He died, thrown from his horse, soon afterward. He's yet to keep his promise ...
Anon - Faithful Unto Death: (The Argosy, Jan. 1887). Grace is joyfully engaged to marry Lionel Payne, civil engineer, until beautiful, gold-digging cousin Eva gets her claws into him. Lionel reassures Grace that they oath they swore still stands, "faithful unto death", that should either party break it, bad luck will be their lot.
Lionel's work takes him to Sweden. Grace is romanced by David Malcolm, a handsome heir to a fortune — but, despite her on-off fiancé's betrayal, she dare not break the vow that has made two lives miserable.
Think this is the fifth of the Wimbourne's I've read and — for the most part — enjoyed. Even the forgotten stories that got that way for good reason have something almost magically terrible about them.
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