Richard Dalby – Ghosts for Christmas

Richard Dalby (ed.) – Ghosts for Christmas (O’Mara, 1988: Headline, 1989)

Foreword by Richard Dalby

Jerome K. Jerome – Our Ghost party
Charles Dickens – The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton
Mark Lemon – The Ghost Detective
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – The Dead Sexton
Robert Louis Stevenson – Markheim
Sir James M. Barrie – The Ghost of Christmas Eve
Louisa Baldwin – The Real and the Counterfeit
Mrs. B. M. Croker – ‘Number Ninety’
John Kendrick Bangs – Thurlow’s Christmas Story
Elia W. Peattie – Their Dear Little Ghost
Grant Allen – Wolverden Tower
Bernard Capes – A Ghost-Child
Algernon Blackwood – The Kit-Bag
E. Nesbit – The Shadow
Elinor Glyn – The Irtonwood Ghost
E. G. Swain – Bone to his Bone
Algernon Blackwood – Transition
M. R. James – The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance
Marie Corelli – The Sculptor’s Angel
Hugh Walpole – The Snow
‘Ex-Private X’ (A. M. Burrage) – Smee
Marjorie Bowen – The Prescription
J. B. Priestley – The Demon King
H. Russell Wakefield – Lucky’s Grove
George H. Bushnell – ‘I Shall Take Proper Precautions’
Rosemary Timperley – Christmas Meeting
L.P. Hartley – Someone in the Lift
Ramsey Campbell – The Christmas Present
Daphne Froome – Christmas Entertainment
David G. Rowlands – Gebal and Ammon and Amalek

Celebrate the season with spirits of a creepier kind…

Stoke the fire, fill your glass and prepare yourself for an evening of stories from the impressive collection of authors who have turned their hand to the supernatural.

A touch of wit from Charles Dickens as Mr Wardle recounts the mysterious disappearance of Gabriel Grub; a pistol-wielding ghoul from the pen of J.M. Barrie; the shadowy figure of a tall gentleman in a lift from the vivid imagination of L.P. Hartley. These are just a few of the spine-tingling classics, from the historical to the present day, with which to while away the winter hours.

Ghosts for Christmas — the perfect present for those who yearn for a little extra seasonal shiver.

Richard Dalby – Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories Volume 2

Richard Dalby (ed.) – The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories Volume 2 (Robinson, 1991)

Preface by Christopher Lee

Kingsley Amis – Who or what was it?
Robert Arthur – The Believers
Sabine Baring-Gould – A Happy Release
Nugent Barker – One, Two, Buckle my Shoe
E.F. Benson – The Man who went too Far
Ambrose Bierce – The Secret of Macarger’s Gulch
H. T. W. Bousfield – The God with Four Arms
A.M. Burrage – The Shadowy Escort
Bernard Capes – The Widow’s Clock
Robert W. Chambers – A Pleasant Evening
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Elemental
Clare Colvin – Something to Reflect Upon
Basil Copper – The Second Passenger
Ralph Adams Cram – No. 252 rue M. Le Prince
Edmund Crispin – St. Bartholomew’s Day
Charles Dickens – The Ghost in Master B.’s Room
Arthur Conan Doyle – The Brown Hand
H. B. Drake – Yak Mool San
Vivian Edwards – The Spirit of Christmas
Erckmann-Chatrian – Uncle Christian’s Inheritance
John S. Glasby – The Black Widow
William F. Harvey – Across the Moors
Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Gray Champion
Washington Irving – Governor Manco and the Soldier
M.R. James – Rats
Roger Johnson – Mädelein
A.F. Kidd – And Turns No More His Head
Rudyard Kipling – By Word of Mouth
Margery Lawrence – The Curse of the Stillborn
Alan W. Lear – Dance! Dance! The Shaking of the Sheets
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – The Fortunes of Sir Robert Ardagh
L.A. Lewis – Haunted Air
R.H. Malden – The Coxswain of the Lifeboat
Guy de Maupassant – On the River
J.C. Moore – Things
Edith Nesbit – The Ebony Frame
Amyas Northcote – The Downs
Fitz-James O’Brien – The Pot of Tulips
Vincent O’Sullivan – The Burned House
C.D. Pamely – The Unfinished Masterpiece
James Platt – The Witches’ Sabbath
Edgar Allan Poe – Metzengerstein
Kate & Hesketh Prichard – The Story of Saddler’s Croft
Lennox Robinson – The Face
David G. Rowlands – A Fisher of Men
Mark Rutherford – A Mysterious Portrait
Pamela Sewell – Ward 8
A.E.D. Smith – The Coat
Lewis Spence – A Voice in Feathers
Derek Stanford – A Dream of Porcelain
Herbert Stephen – No. 11 Welham Square
Frank R. Stockton – The Bishop’s Ghost and the Printer’s Baby
Bram Stoker – The Secret of the Growing Gold
Mark Valentine – The Ash Track
E. H. Visiak – In a Nursing Home (A Euthanasian Subject)
Edgar Wallace – The Stranger of the Night
Edith Wharton – The Triumph of Night
Mary E. Wilkins – The Hall Bedroom
William J. Wintle – The Ghost at the Blue Dragon

Review by Ripper of Vault Of Evil.

Well, nobody can say that you don’t get your money’s worth when you buy a “Mammoth.” And when the book’s editor is Richard Dalby you can expect stories that aren’t so widely known in general. Even the obligatory M.R. James piece is one from his “2nd eleven” in terms of popularity, but certainly not quality. As with the first volume, the collection spans many styles and presents both classic authors and those more familiar to fans of the small press. Malden, Wintle, Rowlands and Johnson are back again, and I repeat that where else are you likely to see work by them in an easily-accessible mass-market book? A good companion to the first volume, great to read on stormy winter nights.

Tim Haydock – Mammoth Book Of Classic Chillers

Tim Haydock (ed.) – The Mammoth Book Of Classic Chillers (Robinson, 1986)

Evelyn Waugh – The Man Who Liked Dickens
Edgar Allan Poe – The Case Of M. Valdemar
Martin Armstrong – The Pipe-Smoker
H. G. Wells – The Red Room
William Hope Hodgson – The Derelict
Bram Stoker – The Judge’s House
Blanche Bane Kuder – From What Strange Land
Honore de Balzac – El Verdugo
Elizabeth Bowen – Telling
M. R. James – The Treasure Of Abbot Thomas
Hilda Hughes – The Birthright
Guy Endore – Lazarus Returns
William Hope Hodgson – The Island Of The Ud
Guy de Maupassant – Fear
Charles Whibley – Twelve O’Clock
Edgar Allan Poe – A Descent Into The Maelstrom
Ambrose Bierce – The Stranger
Basil Tozer – The Pioneers Of Pike’s Peak
John Russell – The Fourth Man
Bram Stoker – Dracula’s Guest
Edgar Allan Poe – The Fall Of The House Of Usher
M. R. James – A Warning To The Curious
A. M. Burrage – Nobody’s House
Frederick Marryat – The Werewolf
Honore De Balzac – The Mysterious Mansion
Charles Dickens – The Signal-Man
W. W. Jacobs – The Monkey’s Paw
Henry James – The Turn Of The Screw
Sir Walter Scott – Wandering Willie’s Tale
Guy De Maupassant – The Horla
E. Bulwer Lytton – The Haunted And The Haunters
J. S. Le Fanu – Carmilla
Robert Louis Stevenson – The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde

One of the earliest in Robinson’s welcome attempt at reviving the Century … books from the ‘thirties, and the editor seems to have taken the “revival” aspect a little too literally. Here he’s cherry-picked the best from Wheatley’s A Century Of Horror and Hugh Walpole’s two volumes of …. Creepy Stories! Still, you certainly get your money’s worth, considering The Turn Of The Screw and The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde are short novels. The Pioneer’s From Pike’s Peak is a Victorian take on the eternal humans versus giant creepy crawlies conflict, first published in The Strand (Sept. 1897).

Mike Ashley – Mammoth Book of Short Horror Novels

Mike Ashley (ed.) – The Mammoth Book of Short Horror Novels (Robinson, 1988)

Introduction – Mike Ashley

Stephen King – The Monkey
Arthur Conan Doyle – The Parasite
Russell Kirk – There’s A Long, Long Trail A-Winding
Algernon Blackwood – The Damned
David Case – Fengriffen
A. C. Benson – The Uttermost Farthing
Oliver Onions – The Rope In The Rafters
T. E. D. Klein – Nadelman’s God
John Metcalfe – The Feasting Dead 
Lucius Shepard – How The Wind Spoke at Madaket

Aidan Chambers – Ghosts 2

Aidan Chambers (ed.) – Ghosts 2 (MacMillan: Topliner, 1972, 1974)

Seeing Is Believing – as Pamela Lockwood learned to her horror.
We’ll Always Have Tommy – or so Len and his wife thought, till Tommy had them.
Last Respects – when a man visits his dead relation. Or was he dead after all?
The House Of The Skull – a place once peaceful, but peaceful no more. The skull saw to that and grinned.
Dead Trouble – for a ghost out haunting. Not funny for him, poor spook, but side-splitting for everybody else.

Aidan Chambers – Last Respects
Aidan Chambers – Seeing Is Believing
Aidan Chambers – Nancy Tucker’s Ghost
Aidan Chambers – Dead Trouble
Aidan Chambers – The House Of The Skull
Brian Morse – We’ll Always Have Tommy
Aidan Chambers – The Ghost, The Girl And The Gold
Aidan Chambers – Murder Will Out
Brian Morse – The Haunted Honeymoon

Aidan Chambers – More Ghost Stories

Aidan Chambers (ed.) – More Ghost Stories (Kingfisher, 2004)

Tim Stevens

August Derleth – The Lonesome Place
Lance Salway – Such A Sweet Little Girl
Mark Twain – A Ghost story
Robert Arthur – Footsteps Invisible
Jan Mark – The Gnomon
Edward Bulwer-Lytton – The Haunted and The Haunters (abridged)
John Gordon – If She Bends, She Breaks
Aidan Chambers – Room 18
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – Brownie
Agatha Christie – The Lamp
Robert Westall – The Haunting Of Chas McGill
Edgar Allan Poe – The Tell-Tale Heart
William Trevor – The Death Of Peggy Morrissey
Catherine Storr – Christmas In The Rectory
Oscar Wilde – The Canterville Ghost

For young adults. Footseps Invisible, Room 18, The Haunted and The Haunters, The Canterville Ghost and The Tell-Tale Heart had all appeared in the earlier Ghosts ed Aidan & Nancy Chambers (Topliner, 1969) which also included Chetwynd-Hayes’s Housebound.

Room 18 is credited in Ghosts as by ‘Malcolm Blacklin’.

Aidan & Nancy Chambers – Ghosts

Aidan & Nancy Chambers (eds.)- Ghosts (MacMillan: Topliner , 1969, 1970, 1978)

Blurb:

The Haunted and the Haunters – the terrifying story of a night in a house which its owner refuse to enter …
Housebound – a blood-chilling tale of diabolical possession ….
Room 18 – where a man sees Something in a mirror ….
Footsteps Invisible – an embodiment of barbaric evil tracks a doomed man across the world …

Theses are only a few of the tales of terror in GHOSTS. A book definitely not to be taken at bedtime

Edward Bulwer Lytton – The Haunted And The Haunters
R. Chetwynd Hayes – Housebound
Malcolm Blacklin – Room 18
Robert Arthur – Footsteps Invisible
Anon – The Restless Dead (Blackwoods, 1892)
Rudyard Kipling – The Mark Of The Beast
Edgar Allan Poe – The Tell-Tale Heart
Oscar Wilde – The Canterville Ghost

Peter Haining – The Ghouls

Peter Haining (ed.) – The Ghouls: The Stories Behind The Classic Horror Films: Book 1 (Orbit, 1974, 1976)

Foreword – Peter Haining
Introduction – Vincent Price

Francis Oscar Mann – The Devil In A Nunnery (filmed as “The Devil In A Convent”)
Edgar Allan Poe – The System Of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether (“The Lunatics”)
Nathaniel Hawthorne – Feathertop (“Puritan Passions”)
Gaston Leroux – Phantom Of The Opera
Somerset Maugham – The Magician
Tod Robbins – Spurs (“Freaks”)
Richard Connell – The Most Dangerous Game
Bram Stoker – Dracula’s Guest (“Dracula’s Daughter”)
Steven Vincent Benet – The Devil And Daniel Webster (“All That Money Can Buy”)

Afterword – Christopher Lee
Cast And Credits

The Ghouls: The Stories Behind The Classic Horror Films: Book 2 (Orbit, 1974 )

Foreword – Peter Haining
Introduction – Vincent Price

Robert Louis Stevenson – The Bodysnatcher
W. F. Harvey – The Beast With Five Fingers
Ray Bradbury – Foghorn (“The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms”)
George Langelaan – The Fly
Nikolai Gogol – Viy (“Black Sunday”)
Ambrose Bierce – Incident At Owl Creek Bridge
H. P. Lovecraft – The Colour Out Of Space (“Monster Of Terror”)
Robert Bloch – The Skull Of The Marquis De Sade (“The Skull”)
Edgar Allan Poe – The Oblong Box

Afterword – Christopher Lee
Cast And Credits

The Ghouls was first published as a single hardcover collection by W. H. Allen, 1971,

Peter Haining – Christmas Spirits

Peter Haining – Christmas Spirits: Ghost Stories Of The Festive Season (William Kimber, 1983)

 

Introduction: Peter Haining

Charles Dickens – The Goblins Who Stole A Sexton
Ch-r-s D-c-k-n-s – The Haunted Man
George Cruickshank – Frights!
John Kendrick Bangs – Thurlow’s Christmas Story
Jerome K. Jerome – Our Ghost Party
J. M. Barrie – The Ghost Of Christmas Eve
Bret Harte – The Ghosts Of Stukely Castle
Elinor Glyn – The Irtonwood Ghost
Alfred Noyes – The Lusitania Waits
H. P. Lovecraft – The Festival
Eden Phillpotts – Grimm’s Ghost
Stephen Leacock – The Christmas Ghost
M. R. James – The Story Of A Disappearance And An Appearance
A. N. L. Munby – A Christmas Ghost
Algernon Blackwood – S.O.S.
John Dickson Carr – Blind Man’s Hood

Peter Haining – The Vampire Hunters Casebook

Peter Haining (ed.) – The Vampire Hunters’ Casebook (Warners, 1996)

Introduction-Peter Haining
Preface: Bram Stoker (extract from “Dracula”)

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – Carmilla [extract]
Arabella Kennealy – The Beautiful Vampire
Alice and Claude Askew – Aylmer Vance and the Vampire
Uel Key -The Broken Fang
Seabury Quinn -The Man Who Cast No Shadow
Sydney Horler – The Vampire [extract]
Manly Wade Wellman – The Last Grave of Lili Warren
Peter Haining – The Beefsteak Room
Jeff Rice – The Night Stalker [extract]
Karl Edward Wagner – Beyond Any Measure
Robert Bloch – The Undead
Anne Rice – The Master of Rampling Gate
David J. Schow – A Week in the Unlife
Peter Tremayne – My Name Upon the Wind

Blurb

The Vampire Hunter is one of the most most courageous figures to stalk horror fiction’s bloody pages. Venturing into the world of the Undead armed only with a crucifix, wooden stake, garlic and a bottle of holy water, he dares the impossible – to end the existence of those already dead. And while Count Dracula is assured his place as the father of all vampires, so his nemesis in Bram Stoker’s seminal creation, Professor Abraham Van Helsing has his own immortality guaranteed within the pantheon of honor.

From its first incarnation in nineteenth-century melodrama to the works of more recent masters of the supernatural, such as Anne Rice and Robert Bloch, Peter Haining’s new anthology of short stories traces the fictional history of the Vampire’s greatest foe. Including the vampire hunter’s earliest appearance in Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla’ – with one of the most gruesome scenes in all of vampire literature – Van Helsing’s shadow casts an unmistakable presence over a diverse range of authors.

Prefaced by an extract from Dracula guiding the uninitiated into the vampire hunter’s arts, the good doctor from Amsterdam is resurrected in three stories: Robert Bloch’s ‘The Undead’, Peter Haining’s own ‘The Beefsteak Room’ and Peter Tremayne’s finale, ‘My Name Upon The Wind’ (written especially for the anthology), a truly chilling tale in which Van Helsing  is transplanted to present-day Ireland.

Staking a persuasive claim for these unsung heroes of the night, THE VAMPIRE HUNTERS’ CASEBOOK is a collection to fire the imagination and curdle the blood; but one word of warning – only in daylight should it be opened