Vault Advent Calendar 2012

Those of you who’ve yet to investigate the Vault Forum might like to do so now as we’re currently compiling the 3rd Annual Vault Advent Calendar. Stories from a variety of ‘thirties pulp magazines & collections supplemented by works from such contemporary greats as Thana Niveau, John Llewellyn Probert, David. A. Riley, Franklin Marsh, Craig Herbertson, Paul Finch, Ramsey Campbell, James Doig, Johnny Mains, and Charles Black. You’ll need to register to download the stories, but hey, you can always delete your account when you’ve had enough! Many, many thanks to all who’ve given of their time and talent to help.

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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.

Peter Haining – A Dictionary Of Ghosts

Peter Haining – A Dictionary Of Ghosts (New Edition, Robson, 1999: originally [?] Prentice-Hall USA, 1984:)

Blurb from New Edition:

This is a welcome reprint of the hugely successful and comprehensive A-Z reference work on the diverse lore of the spirit world. “A Dictionary of Ghosts” defines all the various types of apparitions and creatures of superstition known through the centuries. Recounting legends of famous hauntings, it introduces you to the many mediums, authorities, and victims associated with ghosts. Now you can learn about the domovoys, noisy Russian spirits who are willing to do household chores; Lord Byron’s encounters with a phantom monk; the Hairy Hands ghost who is said to strangle travellers – along with banshees, poltergeists, exorcism, screaming skulls, UFOs, and all the other intriguing phenomena that have raised hair on the heads of believers and non-believers around the world. What’s more, you’ll find eerie drawings and photographs illustrating these weird mysteries on almost every page. “A Dictionary of Ghosts” is indispensable reading for students of the paranormal, for ghost hunters, and for everyone fascinated by spectres and spirits.

Peter Haining – Nightcaps And Nightmares

Peter Haining (ed.) – Nightcaps And Nightmares (William Kimber, 1983)

cover:iconicus

Peter Haining – Introduction

Thomas Ingoldsby – The Spectre Of Tappington
Charles Dickens – The Lawyer And The Ghost
F. Antsey – The Wraith of Barnjum
Oscar Wilde – The Canterville Ghost
Kenneth Graham – The Ghost Aristocracy
Jerome K. Jerome – The Haunted Mill
John Kendrick Bangs – Ghosts That Have Haunted Me
H G Wells – The Inexperienced Ghost
Ambrose Bierce – The Clothing Of Ghosts
O. Henry – A Ghost Of A Chance
Richard Middleton – The Ghost Ship
Stephen Leacock – Buggam Grange
Robert Benchley – A Trip To Spirit Land
James Thurber – The Night The Ghost Got In
Robert Graves – The White Horse
John Collier – Half-way To Hell
Robert Bloch -The Indian Spirit Guide

In this entertaining collection Peter Haining takes us into the realms where the ghostly is often blended with humour.

Peter Haining – The Mammoth Book of True Hauntings

Peter Haining – The Mammoth Book of True Hauntings (Robinson, 2008)

photo Tony O’Reilly/ Fortean Picture Library: Cover design: JoeRoberts.co.uk

Foreword: I Am A Researcher Of The Supernatural

A Century Of Hauntings: A Chronology from 1900-2000
The Ghost Hunters: Fifty Authentic Supernatural Experiences
Phantoms In The Sky: Ghostly Pilots, Aircraft And Haunted Airfields
Encounters With The Unknown: Eyewitness Stories By Journalists
Haunted Stars: Show Business And The Supernatural
Supernatural Tales: True Ghost Stories By Famous Authors
Phantom Lovers: Sexual Encounters With Ghosts
What Are Ghosts? The Theories Of The Experts
The A-Z Of Ghosts: Phantoms Of The World

Bibliography
Research Organisations
Acknowledgements

Back cover blurb:

Surprisingly, the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have turned out to be the most extraordinary periods in the history of supernatural encounters – with more mysterious accounts of ghosts being reported from all over the world than during any previous era.

This giant survey from the acclaimed investigator, the late Peter Haining, years in the making and now posthumously published for the first time, documents the full spectrum of credible hauntings during the last hundred years or so. It encompasses over 100 first-hand accounts of poltergeists and phantoms, ghostly pilots and haunted airfields, seduction spirits and sexual encounters with ghostly entities – and much more. Also included are the notes of famous ghost hunters such as Hans Holzer, Harry Price, and Susy Smith; and some fascinating analysis by notable experts on what ghosts really are.

How appropriate that, as we approach November 19th and the first anniversary of his untimely death, the legendary Peter Haining should return from the grave with a collection of True Hauntings.

Experts will doubtless be mortified that Peter has exhumed several of these ‘true’ accounts from such reliable resources as The News Of The World and The Sunday People, but he’s also ransacked his library to good effect for accounts from (perhaps!) more credible authorities, several old Vault friends among them: Dennis Wheatley (on the true life incident at boarding school which inspired his big seller, The Haunting Of Toby Jugg), Arthur Machen (versus a Poltergeist infestation), Barbara Cartland, James Herbert, Robert Thurston Hopkins, Fred Archer, Elliott O’Donnell, Peter Underwood and medium to the stars Doris Stokes.

Predictably, the NOTW is the source for much of the Phantom Lovers: Sexual Encounters With Ghosts section which reads for the most part like a series of plot-outlines for Benny Hill sketches as the country’s struggling pubs are besieged by randy Royalists, Peeping Toms, Phantom Bottom-pinchers – the whole gamut of sex pests from beyond the grave. Typical of these “Grinning Ghouls”, the spectre in the changing room of The Disco Bar, Newcastle who so put the willies up go-go dancer Maggie in 1974, and an incorrigible old rascal who conducted his reign of terror in The Knights Lodge Inn near Corby during the ‘eighties. “I’ve seen him and he’s a big robust chap – a cavalier who carries an ostrich feather. He uses the feather to lift the ladies’ skirts and tickle them – he must have been a real Casanova when he was alive” deadpans a handy ‘Psychic Investigator’, Jean Cooksley. The vast majority of these encounters feature male spooks mithering Miss GB contestants and dolly birds, although The Sun (who else?) can provide a “scantily clad” (what else?) female phantom who steals the discarded clothing of courting couples should they frolic in her Hertfordshire field.

Spectre smitten, pop chanteuse Lynsey De Paul: Her Eurovision Song Contest hopes hit “Rock Bottom” in spooky circumstances!

As those of us who’ve been terrified out of our wits by The Weekend Book of Ghosts & Horror will know to our cost, saccharine-coated songstress Linsey de Paul is arguably the most haunted women in the history of pop and here we learn of another chilling episode in her troubled career – the case of the haunted headphones that so disrupted the fabled Rock Bottom sessions. Another haunted celebrity is William Shatner – and not just by his inspired incursion into the music world, The Transformed Man. Here he recalls his brush with death on a motorcycling tour where it could well have been all up for him had it not been for the intervention of a phantom biker.

I’ve only had the book a day and, doubtless, will have some more woeful comment to make as I progress, but it’s proving a most diverting read. One to file alongside his outrageous but scandalously entertaining ‘non-fiction’ accounts of The Legend & Bizarre Crimes of Spring-Heeled Jack and The Mystery & Horrible Murders of Sweeney Todd!

Evening Standard Second Book Of Strange Stories

Anon – The Evening Standard Second Book Of Strange Stories (Hutchinson, 1937)

Grateful thanks to Marijke Van Duyn for providing the cover scan and contents!

G. B. Stern – The Hazard Of The Spanish Horses
Ring W. Lardner – Man Not Overboard
Lloyd Hooper – All Fools’ Court
Simpson Stokes – Air Lock A.G. 75
Sheik A. Abdullah – The Shrine Of The Holy Fir
Alexandre Dumas – My Adventure At Soissons
P. C. Wren – The Statue And The Bust
Phyllis Bentley – Conversion
Richard Carol – The Magic Of Hussein
Frederic Boutet – Lenger And Keller
A. M. Pushkin – The Queen Of Spades
C. Patrick Thompson – The Shuttlecock Of Ritz-Ritz
Alfred de Sauviniere – The Raise Of Spectres
John Talland – Reincarnation
Rearden Connor – Rats
Saki – Gabriel-Ernst
Eric Ambrose – The Man Who Died
H. A. Manhood – Wish Me Luck
James Hilton – Lives Of Men
Edgar Wallace – White Stocking
Kathleen Warren – Remnant Of ’22
George R. Preedy – The Anecdote
Eric Walrond – Inciting To Riot
John Collier – The Right Side
Dorothy L. Sayers – Maher Shalal Hashbaz
R. N. Currey – The Black Dog
Sheridan Le Fanu – Wicked Captain Walshawe
Eric Ambrose – Carlton’s Father
Ivan Turganev – The Adventure Of Second Lieutenant Bubnov
Anon – A Ghost Story Of Long Ago: The Suitor Of Selkirk
D. Kosztolanyi – The Honest Finder
Agatha Christie – The Veiled Lady
Francis Stuart – Love Or Money
E. M. Forster – Coordination
T. H. White – Shining Hat At Tarring Neville
Selma Robinson – The Departure
John Brophy – Mr. Langpool’s Buffalo
D. Wilson MacArthur – The Chasm
Howard Jones – Marriott’s Monkey
M. R. James – A School Story
John Gloag – Galley Trot Blind
Michael Kent – Supper At Borgy’s
Eric Bennett – Postscript
Albert Halper – Going To Market
Erskine Caldwell – The First Autumn
Louis Bromfield – The Urn
Norman Matson – Death On The Straightaway
Ralph Straus – Horse Of Death
Gouverner Morris – Derrick’s Return
Peter Fleming – Felipe
Phyllis Bottome – Spellbound
Eric Linklater – Country Born
Helena Lefroy Caperton – Oblivion
Hugh Walpole – The Snow
Manuel Komroff – So You Won’t Talk
Jack Lindsay – Judgement In The Underworld
Peter Cheyney – Nice Work
Louis Golding – Painted Love
Michael Fessier – Over The Hill
Herman B. Deutch – Doo-Doom Got To Hang
Post Wheeler – The Diviner And The Poor Woman
Walter R. Brooks – Like A Diamond In The Sky
Manuel Komroff – Siamese Hands
Thomas Burke – The Horrible God
Michael Joseph – The Yellow Cat
G. B. Stern – Quiet Corner
Storm Jameson – Murder
Henry Peterson – Lum Lo’s Idol
Marcel Ayme – The Dwarf
T. O. Beachcroft – The Ringed Word
John Hastings Turner – The House In The Wood
Marjory Bowen – The Pleasant Husband
Thomas Burke – The Shadow And The Bone
Pansy Pakenham – The Cook’s Room
Mrs. Violet Campbell – Lady Harpton’s Garden Party
L. Biro – Doctors
Lord Dunsany – A Drink From A Running Stream
Elizabeth Irons Folsom – Towers Of Fame
Philip Curtiss – The Resurrection Of Chilton Hills
Alexandre Arnoux – The Late Bernard
Fritz Hopman – The Bearer Of The Message
Edward Acheson – Hide Your Eyes
Oliver La Farge – Haunted Ground
Dana Burnet – Beauty In His Brain

Peter Haining – Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories

Peter Haining (ed.) – The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (Robinson, 2007)

Cover: Joe Roberts

Elizabeth Albright & Ray Bradbury – The Haunted House

Peter Haining – Foreword: I Live In A Haunted House

Haunted Places: Stories Of Fact And Fiction

E. Bulwer Lytton – The Haunted and the Haunters
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – An Authentic Narrative of a Haunted House
Algernon Blackwood – A Case of Eavesdropping
Virginia Woolf – A Haunted House
H. Russell Wakefield – Ghost Hunt
William F. Nolan – Dark Winner

Avenging Spirits: Tales Of Dangerous Elementals

Charlotte Riddell – The Old House in Vauxhall Walk
Ralph Adams Cram – No. 252 rue M. Le Prince
Mary Eleanor Freeman – The Southwest Chamber
W. W. Jacobs – The Toll-House
L. P. Hartley – Feet Foremost
Ian Watson – Happy Hour

Shadowy Corners: Accounts Of Restless Spirits

W. F. Harvey – The Ankardyne Pew
Louisa Baldwin – The Real and the Counterfeit
Richard Hughes – A Night at a Cottage…
Thorp McClusky – The Considerate Hosts
Basil Copper – The Grey House
Fay Weldon – Watching Me, Watching You

Phantom Lovers: Sex And The Supernatural

Richard Dehan – A Spirit Elopement
Herbert de Hamel – The House of Dust
A. E. Coppard – The Kisstruck Bogie
Norah Lofts – Mr. Edward
Robert Bloch – House of the Hatchet
Ramsey Campbell – Napier Court

Little Terrors: Ghosts And Children

M. R. James – Lost Hearts
Ellen Glasgow – The Shadowy Third
Hugh Walpole – A Little Ghost
Nigel Kneale – The Patter of Tiny Feet
Penelope Lively – Uninvited Ghosts

Psychic Phenomena: Signs From The Other Side

Arthur Conan Doyle – Playing with Fire
William Hope Hodgson – The Whistling Room
E. F. Benson – Bagnell Terrace
Joan Aiken – The Companion
James Herbert – Ghost Hunter
Ruth Rendell – Computer Séance

Houses Of Horror: Terror Visions Of The Stars

Gaston Leroux – In Letters of Fire
Bram Stoker – The Judge’s House
McKnight Malmar – The Storm
A.M. Burrage – The Waxwork
H.G. Wells – The Inexperienced Ghost
E.M. Delafield – Sophy Mason Comes Back
Stephen King – The Boogeyman

Peter Haining – Appendix: Haunted House Novels – A Listing

Expanded and with great new stories, this is the biggest and best anthology of ghostly hauntings ever. Over 40 tales of visitation by the undead – from vengeful and violent spirits, set on causing harm to innocent people tucked up in their homes, to rarer and more kindly ghosts, returning from the grave to reach out across the other side. Yet others entertain desires of a more sinister bent, including the erotic. This new edition includes a selection of favourite haunted house tales chosen by famous screen stars Boris Karloff, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Plus a top ranking list of contributors that includes Stephen King, Bram Stoker, Ruth Rendell, and James Herbert – all brought together by an anthologist who himself lives in a haunted house.

Something unspeakable lurks in a Connecticut apartment closet, in Stephen King’s ‘The Boogeyman’; An Irish castle holds something truly horrifying in wait, in ‘The Whistling Room’ by William Hope Hodgson; The lecherous old ghost of a Georgian country house eyes up his latest tenant, in Norah Lofts’ ‘Mr Edward’; An ancient mansion on a shelf of rock previously occupied by a doomed castle, in ‘In Letters of Fire’ by Gaston Le Roux; The hunter is hunted in James Herbert’s tale of nineteenth-century country mansion, ‘The Ghost Hunter’;

Psychic phenomena and poltergeists, avenging spirits and phantom lovers – curl up and read on, but never imagine you are safe from a visit…