Mike Ashley [ed.] – The Platform Edge

Mike Ashley [ed.] – The Platform Edge: Uncanny Tales of the Railways (British Library, 2019)

Enrique Bernardou

Mike Ashley – Introduction

Departures in the Light:

Victor L. Whitechurch – The Strange Story of Engine Number 651
Zoe Dana Underhill – The Conductor’s Story
Anonymous – A Desperate Run
W. G. Kelly – A Smoking Ghost
L. G. Moberby – A Strange Night
Huan Mee – The Tragedy in the Train
Mary Louisa Molesworth – The Man with the Cough
Perceval Landon – Tailhead
Edgar Wallace – The Barford Snake
Dinah Castle – A Ghost on the Train

Approaches in the Dark:

Rosemary Timperley – The Underground People
T. G. Jackson – A Romance of the Piccadilly Tube
E. F. Benson – In The Tube
A. J. Deutsch – A Subway Named Möbius
Michael Vincent – The Last Train
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Underground

Return to the Light?

F. Scott Fitzgerald – A Short Trip Home
Ramsey Campbell – The Companion

Blurb:
The Platform Edge is a collection of the greatest stories of strange happenings on the tracks.
In this express service into the unknown, passengers join the jostling of the daily commute, a subway car disappears into another dimension without a trace, while a tragic derailment on a lonely hillside in the Alps torments the locals with its nightly repetition.
From the open railways of Europe and America to the pressing dark of the London Underground, The Platform Edge is the perfect travelling companion for unforgettable journeys into the supernatural.

Anonymous (Margaret Armour) – The Eerie Book

Anonymous (Margaret Armour) – The Eerie Book  (Castle, 1981: originally J. Shiells & Co, 1898)

W. B. MacDougall

Edgar Allen Poe – The Masque Of The Red Death
G. W. M. Reynolds – The Iron Coffin (From Faust: A Romance)
Hans Anderson – The Mother And The Dead Child
Robert Hunt – Tregeagle
Catherine Crowe – The Dutch Officer’s Story
Edgar Allen Poe – The Cask of Amontillado
Anonymous – Earl Beadie’s Card Game
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley – Frankenstein (abridged)
Catherine Crowe – The Garde Chasse
Anonymous – A Dream Of Death
Rev. Bourchier Wrey Savile – The Mysterious Horseman
Catherine Crowe – The Blind Beggar Of Odessa
Robert Chambers – The Story Of Major Weir
Rev. Bourchier Wrey Savile – Marshall Blucher
Baron de la Motte Fouque – Sir Hulbrande’s Wife
Thomas De Quincey – The Masque (extract from Klosterheim: or, The Masque)

Blurb:
Gothic horror at its best! Spanning the mood and style of authors from Hans Christian Anderson to Edgar Allen Poe, The Eerie Book presents 16 terrifying tales of the macabre and supernatural. This reproduction of a turn-of-the-century classic offers to the reader some of the most engrossing stories of menace ever written.

Robert Westall – Ghost Stories

Robert Westall (ed.) – Ghost Stories (Kingfisher, 1993)

Illustrations by Sean Eckett

Franz Kafka – The Knock At The Manor Gate
Gahan Wilson – Yesterday’s Witch
John Hynam – A Legion Marching By
Charles Dickens – The Lawyer And The Ghost
Anonymous (India) – The Ghost Who Was Afraid Of Being Bagged
Psu Sung-Ling (Adapted by Vida Derry) – School For Ghosts
Mary Williams – The Little Yellow Dog
Kenneth Grahame – The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
Alison Prince – The Lilies
Ray Bradbury – The Emissary
Ruth Manning-Sanders – John Pettigrew’s Mirror
Saki – Sredni Vashtar
Philippa Pearce – Miss Mountain
Guy de Maupassant – Was It A Dream?
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch – A Pair Of Hands
Robert Westall – The Boys’ Toilets
John Gordon – Left In The Dark
W. W. Jacobs – The Monkey’s Paw
M. R. James – Lost Hearts
Perceval Landon – Thurnley Abbey
Jean Richardson – Not At Home
Joan Marsh – The Shepherd’s Dog

Blurb:

Haunting! Shiver and shake at these spine-chilling tales of ghosts and ghouls from top authors. Guaranteed to give you goose bumps!

4th Vault Advent Calendar

As has maybe been mentioned on here, the Vault forum is where you’ll find the bulk of the contributors to this place, and if you’ve yet to register, now is as good a time as any. At present, we’re currently halfway through our fourth annual advent calendar, a daily treat in the run-up to Christmas featuring horror fiction, old and new, from several of our very favourite authors. Get with it at Vault – Your one-stop shop for festive mirth!

Robert Westall – Ghost Stories

Robert Westall (ed.) – Ghost Stories (Kingfisher, 1993)

Graham Potts

Illustrations by Sean Eckett

Franz Kafka – The Knock At The Manor Gate
Gahan Wilson – Yesterday’s Witch
John Hynam – A Legion Marching By
Charles Dickens – The Lawyer And The Ghost
Anonymous (India) – The Ghost Who Was Afraid Of Being Bagged
Psu Sung-Ling (Adapted by Vida Derry) – School For Ghosts
Mary Williams – The Little Yellow Dog
Kenneth Grahame – The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
Alison Prince – The Lilies
Ray Bradbury – The Emissary
Ruth Manning-Sanders – John Pettigrew’s Mirror
Saki – Sredni Vashtar
Philippa Pearce – Miss Mountain
Guy de Maupassant – Was It A Dream?
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch – A Pair Of Hands
Robert Westall – The Boys’ Toilets
John Gordon – Left In The Dark
W. W. Jacobs – The Monkey’s Paw
M. R. James – Lost Hearts
Perceval Landon – Thurnley Abbey
Jean Richardson – Not At Home
Joan Marsh – The Shepherd’s Dog

Blurb:

Haunting! Shiver and shake at these spine-chilling tales of ghosts and ghouls from top authors. Guaranteed to give you goose bumps!

Michael Sims – Dracula’s Guest

Michael Sims (ed.) – Dracula’s Guest: A Connoisseur’s Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories (Bloomsbury, 2010)

Cover illustration: Victoria Sawdon

Michael Sims – Introduction: The Cost Of Living

Part One: The Roots

Jean-Baptise de Moyer, Marquis d’Argens – They Opened The Graves
Antoine Augustin Calmet – Dead Persons In Hungary
George Gordon, Lord Byron – The End Of My Journey
John Polidori – The Vampyre
Johann Ludwig Tieck (attributed [almost certainly wrongly]) – Wake Not The Dead
Theophile Gautier – The Deathly Lover

Part Two: The Tree

Aleksei Tolstoy – The Family Of The Vourdalak
James Malcolm Rymer – Varney The Vampyre (extract)
Fitz-James O’Brien – What Was It?
Anonymous – The Mysterious Stranger
Anne Crawford – A Mystery of the Campagna
Emily Gerard – Death And Burial – Vampires And Werewolves
Mary Cholmondeley – Let Loose
Eric Count Stenbock – A True Story of a Vampire
M. E. Braddon – Good Lady Ducayne
Augustus Hare – And The Creature Came In
F. G. Loring – The Tomb of Sarah
Hume Nisbet – The Vampire Maid

Part Three: The Fruit

Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman – Luella Miller
M. R. James – Count Magnus
Alice and Claude Askew – Aylmer Vance and the Vampire
Bram Stoker – Dracula’s Guest

Acknowledgements
Bibliography & Further Reading

From the Blurb
Before Twilight and True Blood, vampires haunted the nineteenth century, when brilliant writers everywhere indulged their bloodthirsty imaginations, culminating in Bram Stoker’s legendary 1897 novel, Dracula.

Acclaimed author and anthologist Michael Sims brings together the finest vampire stories of the Victorian era in a unique collection that highlights their cultural variety. Beginning with the supposedly true accounts that captivated Byron and Shelley, the stories range from Aleksei Tolstoy’s tale of a vampire family to Fitz-James O’Brien’s invisible monster to Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s sinister widow Good Lady Ducayne. Sims also includes a nineteenth-century travel tour of Transylvanian superstitions, and rounds out the collection with Stoker’s own Dracula’s Guest – a chapter omitted from his landmark novel.

Rosemary Gray – Irish Ghost Stories

Rosemary Gray (ed.) – Irish Ghost Stories   (Wordsworth editions, 2011)

Michael Banim – The Rival Dreamers
William Carleton – The Three Wishes
Daniel Corkery – Eyes Of The Dead
A. E. Coppard – The Gollan
Francis Marion Crawford – The Dead Smile
Thomas Crofton Croker – Master and Man
Thomas Crofton Croker – The Legend of Knockgrafton
Thomas Crofton Croker – The Haunted Cellar
Thomas Crofton Croker – Legend of Bottle Hill
Thomas Crofton Croker – Daniel O’Rourke
Jeremiah Curtain – The Blood-Drawing Ghost
Jeremiah Curtain – St Martins Eve
Anonymous – The Witch Hare
Gerald Griffin – The Brown Man
Douglas Hyde – Teig OKane and the Corpse
Joseph Jacobs – The Field of Boliauns
Hermine Kavanagh – Darby OGill and the Leprechaun
Patrick Kennedy – Hairy Rouchy
Patrick Kennedy – The Ghosts and the Game of Football
J. Sheridan Le Fanu – The Watcher
J. Sheridan Le Fanu – The Spectre Lovers
J. Sheridan Le Fanu – An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street
J. Sheridan Le Fanu – Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess
J. Sheridan Le Fanu – Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter
J. Sheridan Le Fanu – The Fortunes of Sir Robert Ardagh
J. Sheridan Le Fanu – The Dream
J. Sheridan Le Fanu – A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family
J. Sheridan Le Fanu – Narrative of the Ghost of a Hand
D. R. McAnally Jr. – The Sexton of Cashel  
D. R. McAnally Jr. – The Defeat of the Widows
D. R. McAnally Jr. – The Henpecked Giant
D. R. McAnally Jr. – The Leprechaun
Dorothy Macardle – The Prisoner
Letitia Maclintock – Far Darrig in Donegal
Letitia Maclintock – Jamie Freel and the Young Lady
William Maginn – A Vision of Purgatory  
George Moore – A Play-House in the Waste
Rosa Mulholland – The Ghost at the Rath  
Rosa Mulholland – The Living Ghost
Forrest Reid – Courage
Charlotte Riddell – Hertford O’ Donnells Warning  
Charlotte Riddell – The Last of Squire Ennismore
Bram Stoker – The Judges House
Traditional – Daniel Crowley and the Ghosts
Traditional – John Reardon and the Sister Ghosts
Oscar Wilde – The Canterville Ghost

many thanks to caradini for providing the table of contents

Anonymous – Tales Of Horror & Mystery

Anonymous – Tales Of Horror & Mystery (Dean, 1993)

Luis Rey

Horror Stories

Roald Dahl – The Landlady
Walter De La Mare – The Riddle
W. W. Jacobs – The Monkey’s Paw
Ruth Ainsworth – Through The Door
E. Nesbit – Man-Size In Marble
Edgar Allan Poe – The Tell-Tale Heart
Helen Cresswell – A Kind Of Swan Song
Gene Kemp – The Clock Tower Ghost
Robert Arthur – The Haunted Trailer
Ambrose Bierce – The Stranger
Walter De La Mare – Bad Company
Michael Joseph – The Yellow Cat
W. W. Jacobs – The Well
Saki – Laura
Joan Aiken – The Swan Child
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Brown Hand
H. G. Wells – The Red Room

Mystery Stories

Joan Aiken – The Blade
M. R. James – Lost Hearts
Charles Dickens – The Signalman
Oscar Wilde – The Picture Of Dorian Gray (Extract)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Silver Mirror
Bret Harte – The Stolen Cigar Case
Honore De Balzac – The Mysterious Mansion
Nicholas Fisk – Sweets From A Stranger
Roald Dahl – The Hitch-Hiker
Wilkie Collins – The Dream Woman
Edgar Allan Poe – The Masque Of The Red Death
Karen Blixen – The Sailor Boy’s Tale
Guy de Maupassant – The Horla
Theophile Gautier – The Mummy’s Foot

Blurb:
“It is very seldom that one encounters what would appear to be sheer unadulterated evil in a human face; an evil, I mean, active, deliberate, deadly, dangerous.”

This anthology contains more than thirty spine-chilling stories by contemporary and classic writers, drawing us into a world of ghosts, demons and horrific happenings.

In Walter de la Mare’s Bad Company who is the evil-looking stranger on the Underground who leads us to a frightening discovery? And in Roald Dahl’s The Landlady what sinister secret is the mysterious proprietress of the guesthouse witholding from her unsuspecting guest?

These startling and compelling stories by some of the world’s greatest writers will enthrall readers to the very last page.

‘C.J. T.’ – THE BEST TERRIBLE TALES

‘C.J. T.’ (ed.)  – THE BEST TERRIBLE TALES. (Gibbings, London, 1891: Reeves, London, 1912)

Originally published by Gibbings of London in 1891 with the editor given as ‘CJT’, the Reeves editions of 1912 retitle each volume The Best Terrible Tales Of … and lack even this helpful attribution. None of the authors are credited, but i’ve tried to identify the most likely suspects. For the curious, Hugh Lamb exhumed The Mountain Of Spirits and The Golden Bracelet for Tales from A Gaslit Graveyard (W. H. Allen, 1979: Coronet, 1980)

TERRIBLE TALES From The GERMAN. (Gibbings, London, 1891: Reeves, London, 1912)

Anon – The Crystal Dagger.
Anon – A Strange Bride. (aka ‘The Death-Bride’)
Anon – The Host of “The Sun.”
Baron De La Motte Fouque -The Crazy Half-Heller.
Anon – The Goldsmith of the Rue Nicaise.

TERRIBLE TALES From THE ITALIAN. (Gibbings, London, 1891: Reeves, London, 1912)

Anon – The Bridal Wreath
Anon – Domenico Matteo
Anon – The Betrothed.
Anon – The Story of the Lady Erminia.
Anon – The Brigands.
Anon – The Village Priest.
Anon – Eurispe.
Anon – Lanucci.
Anon – The Lovers.
Anon – The Unlucky Fortune.

TERRIBLE TALES From THE FRENCH (Gibbings, London, 1891: Reeves, London, 1912)

Erckmann-Chatrian – The Mysterious Sketch.
Anon – The Weaver of Steinbach.
Anon – The Lyons Courier.
Erckmann-Chatrian – The Cabalist.
Erckmann-Chatrian – The Citizen’s Watch.
Anon – A Scene in the Desert.
Erckmann-Chatrian – Cousin Elof’s Dream.
Anon – A Legend of Marseilles
Erckmann-Chatrian – The White and the Black
Anon – Lex Talionis.

TERRIBLE TALES From THE SPANISH. (Gibbings, London, 1891: Reeves, London, 1912)

Anon – The Golden Bracelet.
Anon – The Mirror of Friends.
Anon – The Green Eyes.
Anon – Jose Maria.
Anon – The Passion Flower.
Anon – The Thirteenth.
Anon – The Effect of being Unde­ceived.
Anon –  The White Doe.
G. Bequer – Maese Perez, the Organist.
Anon – Dorido and Clorinia.
Anon – The Moonbeam.
Anon – The Mountain of Spirits.

Rosemary Gray – Gripping Yarns

Rosemary Gray (ed.) – Gripping Yarns (Wordsworth Special Editions, 2008)

Anonymous – One Night Of Horror
————- The Pipe
————- The Puzzle
————- The Closed Cabinet
————- The Alibi
Stacey Aumonier – Miss Bracegirdle Does Her Duty
————- A Source Of Irritation
————- Where Was Wych Street?
Harold Auten – a Fight To The Finish
Etienne Barsony – The Dancing Bear
Jorgen Wilhelm Bergsoe – The Amputated Arms
Ambrose Bierce – The Moonlit Road
————- A Tough Tussle
————- A Jug Of Syrup
————- The Middle Toe Of The Right Foot
————- John Bartine’s Watch
Algernon Blackwood – a Silent Visitation
————- The Wood Of The Dead
————- A Suspicious Gift
————- Skeleton Lake : An Episode In Camp
George Brame – On The Belgian Coast
John Buchan – The Wind In The Portico
————- The Loathley Opposite
George Washington Cable – The Young Aunt With White Hair
Egerton Castle – The Baron’s Quarry
Wilkie Collins – The Dream Woman
Joseph Conrad – The Secret Sharer
————- A Smile Of Fortune
————- The Black Mate
A. R. Cooper – With The Foreign Legion In Gallipoli
Stephen Crane – Manacled
————- An Illusion In Black And White
————- Twelve O’Clock
F. Marion Crawford – By The Waters Of Paradise
Guy De Maupassant – The Wreck
————- The Terror
John Charles Dent – Gagtooth’s Image
Thomas De Quincey – The Avenger
Arthur Conan Doyle – A Foreign Office Romance
————- The Striped Chest
————- The Croxley Master
————- The New Catacomb
————- The King Of The Foxes
————- The Green Flag
————- The Lord Of Chateau Noir
————- The Three Correspondents
————- The Debut Of Bimbashi Joyce
————- The Doings Of Raffles Haw
Arthur Elck – The Tower Room
A. J. Evans – Exploits Of The Escaping Club
J. S. Fletcher – The Lighthouse On Shivering Sand
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman – The Shadows On The Wall
E. W. Hornung – The Wrong House
————- The Rest Cure
————- A Bad Night
————- The Spoils Of Sacrilege
Bernard Severin Ingemann – The Sealed Room
Maurus Jokai – Thirteen At Table
Rudyard Kipling – My Own True Ghost Story
————- Bubbling-Well Road
————- At The End Of The Passage
————- The Return Of Imray
————- The City Of Dreadful Night
Leoplod Lewis – A Dreadful Bell
Jack London – Siwash
————- The Man With The Gash
————- Where The Trail Forks
Anselme Marchal – Hoodwinking The Germans
Ferenc Molnar – The Living Death
Frank Norris – A Memorandum Of Sudden Death
————- The Ghost In The Crosstrees
Fitz-James O’Brien – My Wife’s Temper
David Phillips – At A Sap-Head
William Pittinger – The Locomotive Chase In Georgia
A. O. Pollard – I Charge!
Saki – Sredni Vashtar
————- The Hounds Of Fate
Mary Shelley – The Mortal Immortal
Robert Louis Stevenson – The Pavilion On The Links
————- The Sire de Maletroit’s Door
Anthony Trollope – The Man Who Kept His Money In A Box
Edgar Wallace – The Lone House Mystery
————- The Dark Horse
————- Clues
————- Romance In It
————- A Certain Game
————- The Swift Walker
————- Nine Terrible Men
————- The Sickness-Mongo
Edith Wharton – A Bottle Of Perrier
————- The Lady’s Maid’s Bell
————- The Bolted Door
John Taylor Wood – Escape Of General Beckinridge
Walter Wood – How Trooper Potts Won The V.C. On Burnt Hill
E. D. Woodhall – Secret Service Days

Blurb
For those who sometimes long to escape the strictures of modern life or to inject a little more drama and excitement into their workday world, the remedy could be the collection of stories you hold in your hand. Here for the taking are tales of high adventure and low intrigue from masters of the genre like John Buchan and Robert Louis Stevenson, classics of crime and detection from veteran thriller writers like Edgar Wallace and Arthur Conan Doyle, spine-chillers from the pens of Ambrose Bierce and other purveyors of suspense and horror, and true accounts of courage and survival from heroic and intrepid individuals caught up in the rigours and insanity of war or battling against the elements on gruelling expeditions of discovery and exploration. Between the covers of this crowded volume, Wordsworth Editions has assembled from the work of famous, less well-known and totally unsung writers a treasure trove of rattling good yarns to fire the imagination, chill the blood and perhaps awaken (or reawaken) the spirit of adventure in any reader who dares to plunge in!