Sarah A. Chrisman [ed.] - The Haunted Wheel

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Sarah A. Chrisman [ed.] - The Haunted Wheel: 13 Victorian Stories of Ghosts, Phantoms, Apparitions and Visions from the 19th-Century (Sarah A. Chrisman, n.d., [Sept 2023])

Ada Marie Peck - Ashes of Violets
Jonas Jutton - A True Ghost Story
Gertrude Green - The Fateful Opal
Anon - Did She Dream It?
Frank Lee Benedict - Asleep in the Wood
Anon - The Oak Wood Tragedy
Frank Lee Benedict - The Little Prophetess
Lucy H. Hooper - Bluebeard's Closet
President Bates - The Haunted Wheel
'The Gnome' - The Flying Phantom
Anon - The Spectral Bicycler
John Kendrick Bangs - A Psychical Prank
Tudor Jenks - A Supernatural Swindle: An Experiment in Transcendentistry

Bonus
A Medium - Spiritualist Mysteries Exposed

Blurb:
You are about to embark on an eerie journey to the world of the spirits. Every story in this collection was written by someone who has long-since passed on into the unknown realm which awaits us all. These tales were carefully saved from yellowed volumes of brittle pages and are presented here to give you shivers of delight. Turn out the electric lights and draw close to your candles or oil lamp to read these pages. Just don't look too closely into the shadows behind you or you may find yourself with unexpected company. After all, ghosts love to read their own work — but they need a living hand to open the book …

Thirteen late 19th century American ghost and "ghost" stories plus charming period illustrations, ads and bonus article, compiled by frightfully correct and proper 21st century Victorian gentlewoman, more about whom on her This Victorian Life.com site. Early indications suggest a gore-free zone.

Jonas Jutton - A True Ghost Story: (Godey's Lady's Book, 1890). Ghost of the ship's Jonah returns to rescue a fellow sailor adrift on the ocean, the sole survivor of a blaze aboard the Julia Thomas.

Gertrude Green - The Fateful Opal: (Godey's Lady's Book, March 1890). "Resting upon my shoulder was a hand—a woman's hand small and beautifully formed— it was white, too, but with an indescribable greenish pallor, and great drops of water stood like a death sweat upon it. Seaweed was tangled in the slender fingers, upon one of which was a massive, curiously-graven ring, a huge opal, that gleamed and paled with great throbs, as if it panted at the horror of the thing." Elinor takes to wearing a ring which seemingly appeared from nowhere on her writing desk. Our narrator, her intended, has a morbid horror for the thing. Elinor is wearing the band when they go swimming at the cove ....

President Bates - The Haunted Wheel: (Outing, Nov. 1888). A ghost girl hopping on and off his high-wheel cycle causes a rift between David Dewness and his ill-suited fiancée, May Bentley. Meanwhile, the lovely Miss Daphne Dalrymple lies dangerously ill with fever.

Anon - The Spectral Bicycler: (Bicycle Yarns, 1892). Faly is adamant a spectral giant nightly cycles beside the railway track. This goes down badly with fiancée Nora's father, who refuses to let her marry a "luny." Rationalised.

'The Gnome' - The Flying Phantom: (The Bearings, 26 Aug. 1899). Jack Penton is forced off the road by a shrieking phantom riding on wheels of flame! Could it be the ghost of a year dead bicycle club colleague? A mystery man enters the annual road race ... "Rationalised."

John Kendrick Bangs - A Psychical Prank: (The Water Ghost & Others, 1894). Members of the Boston Theosophical Society inadvertently ruin Willis's chances with Miss Hollister by astral projecting aboard a New York street car.

The Fateful Opal - the miserable one - far my pick of the above. The rest are .... on the flimsy side.

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H. N. Cady

These are more like it.

Ada Marie Peck - Ashes of Violets: (Godey's Lady's Book, Sept. 1889). "I believe that when I die my soul will take the form of a violet, and that I shall live again ... who knows but that in this very guise I shall come to cheer your lonely hours." Alice Gillesby loves Mr. Tavernier, a penniless barrister, but her solicitor father is adamant she wed the son of his business partner. When Alice refuses, father imprisons her in a concealed room until she sees sense. But then ....

Lucy H. Hooper - Bluebeard's Closet: (Peterson's Magazine, 1877). With husband Edmund absent on business, new bride Margaret Temple explores the locked library of their Staten Island mansion. Sharing space with the rare first editions, sensationalist novels and French works "of questionable taste" belonging to the-five-years-dead first wife Edmund never speaks of. Mary Kilvington Temple, a famous beauty, died in mysterious circumstances ....

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Anon [Justin McCarthy] - Did She Dream It?: (Harper's New Monthly, July 1870). Ronald Levett returns from Sicily with a bullet wound to his arm and the tragic news that Lionel Black, his best friend, fellow artist and rival for the hand of Miss Julia Challoner, has been murdered by bandits who'd held both for ranson. Taking Levett at his word, Julia consents to marriage, until a recurring vision casts doubt on his version of events.

Frank Lee Benedict - Asleep in the Wood: (Peterson's Magazine, Jan. 1876). A castle bordering the Black Forest, A.D. 1795. Lady Ermengarde masquerades as the family ghost to save the life of a foolish nephew. Her kindly deed is woefully misinterpreted by her fiery, insanely jealous cousin, Rudolph Falkenstein — with whom she is secretly in love — who swears bloody vengeance on various guiltless parties.

Tudor Jenks - A Supernatural Swindle: An Experiment in Transcendentistry: (Godey's Magazine, Feb. 1896). A ghost pleads to have a troublesome tooth pulled. The dentist wants reassurance he'll not be out of pocket.

A Medium - Spiritualist Mysteries Exposed: (Revelations of a Spirit Medium, 1891). Top tricks of the bogus psychics. The Spirit Bride racket; sham seance; the cabinet of messengers from beyond; fun with your new disembodied arm, etc.

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Anon - The Oak Wood Tragedy: (Peterson's Magazine, May 1883). On reaching her seventeenth birthday, Elsie Graeme is sent to live at Oakwood, the ancestral country mansion of her mysterious guardian, Mr. Neale Rutherford, whom she has feared since infancy. With the master away, Elsie is under the care of his unwelcoming widowed sister, Mrs. de L'Isle. Hardly has she moved in than our heroine catches a first sighting of the resident ghost - that of a young woman in white who haunts the maze and laurel walk. Lengthiest story in book - 50+ pages of Victorian melodrama featuring dastardly villain, tragic heroine, murder, bigamy, an insane family member hidden away from public view ... and yet another blissfully happy ending.

Frank Lee Benedict - The Little Prophetess: (Peterson's Magazine, 1876). A mildly comic morality play. Edward Masters returns from a watery grave, first in spectral form to attend his funeral, then, fully restored to flesh and blood, to heal the various rifts among his grasping relatives now his fortune has been divided between them. His main purpose, however, is to find Miss Maynard, the governess to his little sister, banished from the family pile by his grasping stepmother.

Gloomy pair Ashes of Violets and The Fateful Opal and the expose of phoney mediums are my favourites.