Aidan Chambers [ed] - A Quiver of Ghosts

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Aidan Chambers [ed] - A Quiver of Ghosts (Bodley Head, 1987)

Eduard Ordg

John Gordon - The Black Prince
Louise Lawrence - The Silver Box
Jan Mark - Buzz-Words
Joan Aiken - The End of Silence
Ronald Frame - Some Common Misunderstandings about Ghosts
Jill Paton Walsh - Green Gravel
George Mackay Brown - The Tree and the Harp
Aidan Chambers - The Tower

Blurb:

Eight ghost stories by Joan Aiken George Mackay Brown Aidan Chambers Ronald Frame John Gordon Louise Lawrence Jan Mark Jill Paton Walsh.
Aidan Chambers is a popular writer of ghost stories as well as a much-praised compiler of anthologies. In A Quiver of Ghosts he has gathered from some of his favourite writers a collection of new stories which tell unusual tales of the supernatural. From a frightening apparition to a school of haunting children, all are refreshingly different ghosts that tantalize the imagination.

John Gordon - The Black Prince: Mark, bullied by fifteen-year-old toughnut, Arnold 'Duffy' Duffield, dares him to spend a night alone in the museum, as he had searching for his escaped pet beetle. That is, unless he's too scared. Rather than lose face before the other kids, Duffy reluctantly agrees. He is in pieces even before the mummified Egyptian royal leaves her display case ... Very pleased to have a story by this author to add to our mummy biblio.

Ronald Frame - Some Common Misunderstandings about Ghosts : Four vignettes. A friendly phantom Edwardian girl who likes to join in the children's games; fashion-conscious Elizabeth Sizewaggon (died sixteenth century) haunts the with-it Black Tulip disco; in life, great aunt Sedilia Brooke was a stickler for keeping up appearances, and still does so after death; back in the early 1900s, Sally has a vision of her fiancée dead in a trench. Should she marry him?

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Louise Lawrence - The Silver Box: 47 Gossington Square, a Victorian terrace divided into flats. Carole, confined to home by glandular fever, is visited by student psychic researchers from 135 years in the future, who take her for the ghost of a housemaid who took her own life during the First world war.

Joan Aiken - The End of Silence: Following his wife's death in an airport bombing, father packs off his two daughters to boarding school while he resumes a stalled writing career without distraction. Helen and sister return for the hols to learn he's adopted a parrot, Silence, because it reminds him of his late wife. Even the girls, who detest the creepy creature, admit there are vague similarities, though not enough to deter them from planning its death.

Jill Paton Walsh - Green Gravel: A couple view the old school house at Ravensway. It's haunted by the ghosts of a generation of children who never were, the men who'd have fathered them having been killed in the trenches.

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Jan Mark - Buzz-Words: Sebastian's townie father poisons moles, scalds ants and torches trees to clear a hollow for an alpine garden only to come under lethal attack from a phantom swarm of cremated bees. Sebastian is not unduly upset. #The_Spirit_of-the_Hive #Do_worms_have_souls?


George Mackay Brown - The Tree and the Harp: Given her callous treatment of her servants, the will of the late Mrs. Malda, dreadful tyrant of the old hall, astonishes her staff, none more so than that 'slut' Sophia Birsay, who is forever skiving off to climb a particular tree in the garden. It transpires the old bat wasn't always a horror. She never recovered from the accidental drowning of her beloved ward, Sunniva, thirty years ago.


Aidan Chambers - The Tower: Mr Phelps berates son Martin for insisting he climbed to the top of a stone ruin uncharted on the OS map. When the boy goes missing, Phelps learns of a local tragedy. An abandoned teasel tower burnt to the ground with a teenage girl trapped inside. The ghosts of both building and young woman are known to lure unwary strangers.