Alastair Gunn [ed.] - Wimbourne Victorian Ghost 10

[dem bones]

Alastair Gunn [ed.] - The Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories: Volume 10 (2021)

Front: Hubert von Herkomer, portrait of William Waldorf Astor: Back. Unattributed, Squire Mark's Ghost, 1868.

Alaistair Gunn - Introduction [incorporates anonymous essay, The Latest Thing in Ghosts, from Once A Week, Jan. 1862].

J. Sheridan Le Fanu - The Ghost and the Bone-setter
William Mudford - The Banquet-Hall of Death
Mary Ann Bird - A Tale Told by the Fireside
Ellen Wood - A Mysterious Visitor
Margaret Verne - The Haunted House
Mary Elizabeth Braddon - Eveline’s Visitant
Samuel Williams - Hu Hirwan’s Ghost
Harriet Beecher Stowe - The Ghost in the Mill
Amelia B. Edwards - Sister Johanna’s Story
James Grant - The Veiled Portrait
Frederick George Lee - The Beresford Apparition
Brander Matthews - The Rival Ghosts
Edith Nesbit - The Ebony Frame
Thomas Nelson Page - Her Great-Grandmother’s Ghost
William Canton - The Invisible Playmate
Hume Nisbet - The Phantom Model
William Waldorf Astor - The Ghosts of Austerlitz
Margaret Oliphant - The Library Window
Emma Frances Dawson - A Sworn Statement
Rosa Mulholland - The Lady Tantivy

Blurb:

Twenty ghostly tales from the supernatural masters of the Victorian age.
Wimbourne Books presents the tenth in a series of rare or out-of-print ghost stories from Victorian authors. With an introduction by author Alastair Gunn, Volume 10 in the series spans the years 1838 to 1898 and includes stories from a wide range of authors; English, Irish, Scottish and American, Includes tales by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edith Nesbit and Margaret Oliphant.
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.


Hume Nisbet - The Phantom Model: A Wapping Romance: (The Haunted Station & Other Stories, 1894). Algar Gray, a young painter of promised, is bewitched by his pick-up model, a stunningly attractive if otherwise vile 22-year-old consumptive Ratcliffe Highway prostitute. When Beatrice dies, her ghost entices the artist into the river at Wapping Old Stair. As earlier revived by Hugh Lamb in Gaslit Nightmares.

J. S. Le Fanu - The Ghost And The Bonesetter: (Dublin University Magazine, Jan. 1838). An extract from the papers of Rev. Francis Purcell of Drumcoolagh in Southern Ireland. Squire Phelim's castle is haunted by possibly the most hard-drinking spectre of all time. Each night this thirsty spook steps out from his portrait to drain every bottle he can get his ghostly lips around. The involuntary watch for the night, Terry Neil, the bone-setter, is obliged to straighten the resident revenant's gammy leg. Haunting ceases when ghost drinks something it ought not.

William Mudford - The Banquet-Hall of Death: (Bentley's Miscellany, Jan. 1842). "The world itself is nothing but one huge charnel-house, for, for every created being that moves upon its bosom, a million lie beneath." During the party at Blakesley House, Mr. Carliel volunteers "a nice ghost story" concerning Sir Lindley de Breton's eventful night in a forsaken castle. The guests should have lynched him on the spot.

Margaret Verne - The Haunted House: (Ballous Pictoral Drawing-Room Companion, Sept. 1859). Narrator Agatha Miller is compelled to visit the abandoned mansion, once home to Sir Richard Mordaunt, who late in life, wed an Italian beauty young enough to be his granddaughter. Inez, infinitely fonder of her husband's riches than of him, took a lover. One morning she awoke to find said lover's severed body parts strewn across the bed. Sir Mordaunt was never seen again and Inez returned to her homeland a gibbering lunatic, leaving behind an infant daughter ...

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Ellen Wood - The Mysterious Visitor: (Bentley's Miscellany, July 1857). The original, explicitly violent version, all the more harrowing for its topicality. Illness obliges Mrs Louise Ordie to return home to England while husband, George, an Army Captain, remains behind in India. On the night of 11th May 1857 she catches sight of him in full regimentals on the pathway of Enton Parsonage, although how he could have entered via lock gates is puzzling. A month later, a church missionary arrives back from Delhi with dreadful news of the mutiny ... A masterpiece of Gothic horror.

Another from the same bloody uprising;

James Grant - The Veiled Portrait: (London Society, Christmas 1874: Strange Secrets Told by A. Conan Doyle & Others, 1889). An abandoned wife trails her bigamist husband from to Meerut where, having confronted him, she expires on the spot. Far worse is to befall the Major's second wife and their baby. As earlier revived by Allen Grove in The Valancourt Book of Victorian Ghost Stories: Vol 2.

Samuel Williams - Hu Hirwan’s Ghost: (Overland Monthly, Jan 1869). North Wales. When Hirwan the mad miser is murdered, Dick "the foolish" Wirion, public nuisance, makes for a convenient scapegoat, his guilt confirmed when the corpse spurts blood in his presence. Wirion duly swings on the gallows, whereupon Hirwan belatedly vacates his grave to identify the real culprit.

Mary Ann Bird - A Tale Told by the Fireside: (London Journal, May 1849). Our narrator returns home from Vienna to attend his father's funeral, only for a snowstorm to delay his arrival. His younger sister, Sophia, can barely conceal her contempt at his tardiness, but there's clearly something else troubling her; why does she flinch from Bettina, the elder sister, as if from a thing unclean and evil? A voice from the tomb warns the brother that his sweet Bettina died within hours of their father, and that which prepares food for he and Sophia is a demon-revived corpse!

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Mary Elizabeth Braddon - Eveline’s Visitant: (Belgravia, Jan. 1867). "I will be with you when you least look to see me — I, with this ugly scar upon the face that women have praised and loved. I will come to you when your life seems brightest. I will come between you and all that you hold fairest and dearest. My ghostly hand shall drop a poison in your cup of joy ..."

Hector de Brissac slays cousin André in a fairly contested duel. As he lies dying, Andre vows vengeance. Hector inherits the château at Puy Verdum and takes a bride, Eveline Duchalet, the most beautiful creature ever to walk God's earth and utterly devoted to her husband. Shortly into their marriage, however, she becomes aware of a stranger in purple hunting attire - handsome, but for an unsightly facial scar - lurking in the grounds .....

Frederick George Lee - The Beresford Apparition: (A Glimpse of the Supernatural, 1875). As promised, as the first to die, Lord Tyrone's appears to Lady Beresford to confirm Christianity, not the Deism in which they were raised, is the true religion. He also reveals the day on which she will pass from this life to the next. To prove this is no dream, his Lordship lays his icy hand upon her wrist, withering the flesh which he insists she conceal beneath a band of black silk until death as "To see it is sacrilege." Editor Gunn confirms in his introduction that the author was a theologian and priest, whose historical non-fiction "are often inaccurate and inappropriately coloured by his Religious views."

E. Nesbit - The Ebony Frame: (Longman's Magazine, Oct. 1891). Devigne retrieves two canvases nailed face to face in the attic of his late Aunt's Chelsea residence. The first is a portrait of a beauty in black velvet gown, the second, why, but for the Cavalier attire it bears an uncanny resemblance to himself. In fiancée, Mildred's absence, he idolises the enchantress in the ebony frame. "I wish, Oh how I wish, you were a woman, and not a picture. Come down! Ah, come down."

[dem bones]

Oldtown Fireside Stories, 1872.

Harriet Beecher Stowe - The Ghost in the Mill: (Atlantic Monthly, June 1870: Hugh Lamb [ed] Gaslit Nightmares, 1988; Richard Dalby [ed.], Mammoth Book of Victorian & Edwardian Ghost Stories, 1995). Boston, Mass. When Jehiel Lommedieu, a travelling salesman especially popular with the ladies, goes AWOL, it's assumed he's chickened out of his impending marriage to fiancée Phebe Ann Parker who, undeterred, weds another. That winter, Captain Eb, a friend of the narrator, is caught in a snowstorm. Arriving at the mill, he's invited to stay overnight by owner Cack Sparrock, a fierce drinker. Late in the night they are visited by Kentury, an ancient Native American rumoured to traffic with the Evil one. Cack is terrified of her, and with good reason. Captain Ed watches transfixed as Kentury summons forth the ghost of the murdered salesman, whose bones are stuffed up the chimney. Cack lives long enough to confess to concealing Lommedieu's corpse after his late father killed him for his purse.

Rosa Mulholland - The Lady Tantivy: (Temple Bar, Jan. 1898). "The happiest days of my short life were spent in this garden" Wetherwilder Hall will pass to a conniving distant relative unless the century-lost title deeds are recovered. All seems lost — until a four-in-hand coach carrying a very gorgeous young passenger arrives unannounced. The mystery girl instructs the caretaker to prepare a room should she wish to learn something to the family's benefit.

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Amelia B. Edwards - Aunt Johanna's Story: (All the Year Round Extra Christmas number, Dec. 1872). Love, treachery and tragedy at St. Ulrich, a village noted for it's wood-carving families. Ulrich Finazzer, the finest of these craftsmen, is engaged to wed Katrine until his brother, Alois, an artist, returns home from Venice. Alois invites Katrina to sit for his Saint Catarina. Ulrich is so engrossed in perfecting his gift to the community - a larger than life Christ for the parish church - that it never crosses his mind his fiancée may not be faithful.

Emma Frances Dawson - A Sworn Statement: (The Wasp, December 1881). Mr. Audenreid, a poet of Rincon Hill, San Francisco, is stalked from house to house across several states by the infatuated ghost of a woman from his Christmas Eve's past. An unrequited love gone lethal.

Brander Matthews - The Rival Ghosts: (Harpers New Monthly, May 1884). When Eliphat Duncan, a Yankee of Scots descent, takes his late father's title, he also inherits the family banshee. This proves problematic as his Salem home is already haunted by a veiled spectre. As title suggests, they are incompatible. Matters escalate to crisis proportion on the Baron's engagement to Miss Kitty Sutton (aka, "Mother Gorgon's daughter.")

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Thomas Nelson Page - Her Great-Grandmother’s Ghost: (Harpers New Monthly, Nov. 1893). A colonial mansion house in Gloucester County, Virginia, unlived in save by its ghosts. The lady of the house steps down from her portrait to sit in the rosewood rocking chair. She is attended by a phantom butler.

William Canton - The Invisible Playmate: (The Invisible Playmate: a Story of the Unseen, 1896). Having lost his wife and their baby daughter to tragedy, he obsesses over a second little girl born nine years later to a new love. Initially he's amused when the child takes an imaginary playmate — a sister she wheels around in a pram. Fictional account of the author's own unbearable losses.

William Waldorf Astor - The Ghosts of Austerlitz: (Pall Mall, Dec. 1893). In his dream, Captain Blythe is ordered by the Czar to oversee a phantom re-enactment of the Battle of Austerlitz, using his expertise to reverse the outcome. When the conflict again ends in a French victory, Blyth is sentenced to death. He awakens in his armchair, only to suffer a fatal heart attack.