Stephen Jones – Dancing With The Dark

Stephen Jones (ed.) – Dancing With The Dark: True Encounters With The Paranormal By Masters Of The Macabre (Vista, 1997)

Cover by Splash: Photography by Simon Marsden

Stephen Jones – Introduction: Dancing with the Dark

Joan Aiken – My Feeling about Ghosts
Sarah Ash – Timeswitch
Mike Ashley – The Rustle in the Grass
Peter Atkins – Take Care of Grandma
Clive Barker – Life After Death
Stephen Baxter – The Cartographer
Robert Bloch – Not Quite So Pragmatic .
Ramsey Campbell – The Nearest to a Ghost
Hugh B. Cave – Haitian Mystères
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – One-Way Trip
A. E. Coppard – The Shock of the Macabre
Basil Copper – The Haunted Hotel
Peter Crowther – Safe Arrival
Jack Dann – A Gift of Eagles
Charles de Lint – The House on Spadina
Terry Dowling – Sharing with Strangers
Lionel Fanthorpe – Hands on the Wheel
Esther M. Friesner – That Old School Spirit
Gregory Frost – Twice Encountered
Neil Gaiman – The Flints of Memory Lane
Stephen Gallagher – In There
Ray Garton – Haunted in the Head
John Gordon – The House on the Brink
Ed Gorman – Riding the Nightwinds
Elizabeth Goudge – ESP
Simon R. Green – Death is a Lady
Peter Haining – The Smoke Ghost
Joe Haldeman – Never Say Die
James Herbert – Not Very Psychic
Brian Hodge – Confessions of a Born-Again Heathen
Nancy Holder – To Pine with Fear and Sorrow
M. R. James – A Ghostly Cry
Peter James – One Extra for Dinner
Mike Jefferies – A Face in the Crowd
Nancy Kilpatrick – Raggedy Ann
Stephen King – Uncle Clayton
Hugh Lamb – Go On, Open Your Eyes…
Terry Lamsley – Moving Houses
John Landis – Inspiration
Stephen Laws – Norfolk Nightmare
Samantha Lee – Not Funny
Barry B. Longyear – The Gray Ghost
H. P. Lovecraft – Witch House
Brian Lumley – The Challenge
Arthur Machen – World of the Senses
Graham Masterton – My Grandfather’s House
Richard Matheson – More Than We Appear To Be
Richard Christian Matheson – Visit to a Psychic Surgeon
Paul J. McAuley – The Fall of the Wires
Anne McCaffrey – Unto the Third Generation
Thomas F. Monteleone – Talkin’ Them Marble Orchard Blues
Mark Morris – A Shadow of Tomorrow
Yvonne Navarro – The House on Chadwell Drive
William F. Nolan – The Floating Table and the Jumping Violet
Edgar Allan Poe – Mesmeric Revelation
Vincent Price – In the Clouds
Alan Rodgers – Clinic-Modern
Nicholas Royle – Magical Thinking
Jay Russell – De Cold, Cold Décolletage
Adam Simon – The Darkness Between the Frames
Guy N. Smith – The Mist People
Michael Marshall Smith – Mr Cat
S. P. Somtow – In the Realm of the Spirits
Brian Stableford – Chacun sa Goule
Laurence Staig – The Spirit of M. R. James
Peter Tremayne – The Family Curse
H. R. Wakefield – The Red Lodge
Lawrence Watt-Evans – My Haunted Home
Cherry Wilder – The Ghost Hunters
Chet Williamson – A Place Where a Head Would Rest
Paul F. Wilson – The Glowing Hand
Douglas E. Winter – Finding My Religion
Gene Wolfe – Kid Sister

A Spectral vision …. The sound of phantom footsteps … An experiment in astral projection ….. A childhood premonition of disaster …. Possession by a voodoo god ….
An Ouija board that predicted death … A body kept alive by force of will ….. A cursed family name …

Such tales as these are more usually associated with horror books and movies. However, these anecdotes are absolutely true! They are ,just a sample of the real-life experiences recounted by some of the world’s most famous frighteners, from such bestselling authors as Stephen King and James Herbert, to actor Vincent Price and director John Landis.

Collected together for the very first time, many or the most successful and well-known exponents, along with rising stars of the horror field, relate their fascinating encounters with the supernatural, revealing how such unique experiences have affected their lives and influenced their works.

Even for the experts, when it comes to Unexplained phenomena, fact can be much more frightening than fiction …

See also Dancing With the Dark thread on Vault Of Evil

Thanks to Nightreader!

Robert Phillips – Omnibus of 20th Century Ghost Stories

Robert Phillips (ed.) – The Omnibus of 20th Century Ghost Stories (Robinson 1989, 1992, 1996) [US edition titled Triumph of the Night: Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, Carroll & Graf, 1989)

Help cover wanted!

Robert Phillips – Introduction

Elizabeth Bowen – The Demon Lover
Graham Greene – A Little Place Off the Edgware Road
Joyce Carol Oates – The Others
Dylan Thomas – The Followers
Charlotte Perkins Gilman – The Yellow Wallpaper
Louis Auchincloss – The Prison Window
Walter de la Mare – Seaton’s Aunt
George Mackay Brown – Andrina
Barry N. Malzberg – Away
Muriel Spark – The Portobello Road
John Updike – The Indian
Denton Welch – Full Circle
Lynne Sharon Schwartz – Sound Is Second Sight
Jean Rhys – I Used to Live Here Once
Henry James – The Jolly Corner
Elizabeth Spencer – First Dark
Peter Taylor – Missing Person
Gertrude Atherton – The Bell in the Fog
Howard Lewis Russell – The Wedding Cake Couple
Shirley Jackson – The Daemon Lover
Virginia Woolf – A Haunted House
Mavis Gallant – Up North
Tennessee Williams – The Mysteries of the Joy Rio
William Goyen – Ghost and Flesh, Water and Dirt
E. M. Forster – The Celestial Omnibus
Edith Wharton – Afterward
Truman Capote – Miriam

Notes on the Authors

Blurb from 1996 press release:

One of the classiest collections of ghost stories ever published.
Haunted houses, demon lovers, children’s visions, anxious states of mind, revenge, guilt and betrayal from beyond are the themes of the modern ghost story as brilliantly explored by some of the century’s finest writers.
This enthralling and chilling tour of the best in 20th century spectral literature features the work of Graham Greene, Dylan Thomas, Muriel Spark, Truman Capote, Shirley Jackson, Virginia Woolf, Tennessee Williams, E.M. Forster, F. John Updike who are just some of the century’s most prominent writers who have also written ghost stories.

Adele Olivia Gladwell – Blood and Roses

Adele Olivia Gladwell (ed.) – Blood And Roses: The Vampire In 19th Century Literature (Creation Press, 1992)

Introduction : The Erogenous Disease

John Polidori – The Vampyre
Charles Nodier – Smarra (excerpt)
Theophile Gautier – The Beautiful Dead
Edgar Allan Poe – Ligeia
J.M. Rymer – The Feast of Blood (excerpt)
Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre (excerpts)
Charles Baudelaire – The Vampire’s Metamorphosis
Edward Bulwer Lytton – The House and the Brain
Ivan Turgenev – Phantoms
Isadore Ducasse – Maldoror
Sheridan Le fanu – Carmilla
Guy de Maupassant – The Horla
Huysmans – La-Bas (excerpt)
Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray (excerpt)
Arthur Machen – The Inmost Light
Count Stenbock – The True Story of a Vampire
Bram Stoker – Dracula (excerpts)

Thanks to James Doig for providing the cover scan and contents.

Charles Black – Fifth Black Book Of Horror

Out now from Mortbury Press ….

Charles Black (ed.) – The Fifth Black Book Of Horror (Mortbury Press, Sept. 2009)

Illustration: Paul Mudie

Reggie Oliver – Mrs. Midnight
Marcus Gold – The Man With A Hole In His Head
Ian C. Strachan – Starlight Casts No Shadow
Craig Herbertson – Leibniz’s Last Puzzle
Paul Finch – Hangman Wanted: Apply In Writing
Rosalie Parker – In The Garden
David A. Riley – Their Own Mad Demons
Raymond Vaughn – Winter Break
John Llewellyn Probert – De Vermis Infestis
Richard Staines – No Such Thing As A Friendly
Anna Taborska – Schrodinger’s Human
David Williamson – The Chameleon Man
John Llewellyn Probert – Two For Dinner

“Thirteen morsels of the macabre for those with a taste for terror”

Get a blow-by-blow account of the stories on the Vault Of Evil forum’s 5th Black Book Of Horror thread.

Stephen Jones – Mammoth Book Of Wolf Men

Stephen Jones (ed.) – The Mammoth Book Of Wolf Men (Robinson/ Running Press, 2009:  Originally published as The Mammoth Book Of Werewolves, 1994)

Cover:  Joe Roberts

Introduction: Even a Man Who is Pure in Heart – Stephen Jones

Clive Barker – Twilight at the Towers
Scott Bradfield – The Dream of the Wolf
Ramsey Campbell – Night Beat
Angus Campbell (R. Chetwynd-Hayes) -The Werewolf
Michael Marshall-Smith – Rain Falls
Stephen Laws – Guilty Party
Roberta Lannes – Essence of the Beast
Mark Morris – Immortal
Basil Copper – Cry Wolf
Graham Masterton – Rug
Justin Case (Hugh B. Cave) – The Whisperers
David Sutton – And I Shall Go in the Devil’s Name
Peter Tremayne – The Foxes of Fascoum
Karl Edward Wagner – One Paris Night
Brian Mooney – Soul of the Wolf
Gans T. Field (Manly Wade Wellman) – The Hairy Ones Shall Dance
Adrian Cole – Heart of the Beast
Les Daniels – Wereman (aka ‘By the Light of the Silvery Moon’)
Nicholas Royle – Anything But Your Kind
Dennis Etchison – The Nighthawk
David Case – The Cell
Suzy McKee Charnas – Boobs
Neil Gaiman – Only The End Of The World Again
Kim Newman – Out of the Night, When the Full Moon is Bright…

Jo Fletcher – Bright of Moon (verse)

See also Vault’s Mammoth Book Of The Werewolf/ Wolf Men combo thread.