Stephen Jones (ed.) – Haunts: Reliquaries of the Dead

Stephen Jones (ed.) – Haunts: Reliquaries of the Dead (Ulysses Press, 2011)

what!design

Acknowledgments
Stephen Jones – Introduction: The Restless Dead
Richard L. Tierney – The Revenant (verse)

M. R. James – A Warning to the Curious
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Door
Reggie Oliver – Hand to Mouth
Richard Matheson – Two O’Clock Session
Paul McAuley – Inheritance
Sarah Pinborough – Grandmother’s Slippers
Peter Atkins – The Mystery
Christopher Fowler – Poison Pen
Ramsey Campbell – Return Journey
Lisa Tuttle – Grandfather’s Teeth
Basil Copper – Ill Met by Daylight
John Gordon – The Place
R. B. Russell – The Bridegroom
Kim Newman – Is There Anybody There?
Conrad Williams – Wait
Richard Christian Matheson – City of Dreams
Tanith Lee – A House on Fire
John Gaskin – Party Talk
Simon Kurt Unsworth – The Hurting Words
Robert Silverberg – The Church at Monte Saturno
Neil Gaiman – The Hidden Chamber (verse)
Robert Shearman – Good Grief
Karl Edward Wagner – Blue Lady, Come Back
Michael Marshall Smith – The Naughty Step

About the Editor

Blurb:

The Restless Dead.

Life is over but the dead live on. Within the drafty rooms of an old house, a tarnished locket tumbles to the floor. The haunted souls of the dearly departed are still among us. Ghosts, phantoms, revenants, lost souls — all these troubled spirits have unfinished business on this side of the veil. Doomed to seek out mortal answers, unable to rest until in death they accomplish what they failed to achieve in life.

This hair-raising collection of haunted tales brings together both new writers and celebrated masters — Ramsey Campbell, Christopher Fowler, Neil Gaiman, Richard Matheson, Michael Marshall Smith and others — for the ultimate collection from beyond the grave.

The characters in each chilling tale are spirits, without bodies but still floating in our world. Some are motivated by love, others by loss or guilt. But sometimes they are driven by much stronger emotions, menacing and diabolical motives that take us up from our reading to check the hallways, secure the locks and question how firmly anchored we ourselves are to our world.

 

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!

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!

Anthony Horowitz – The Puffin Book Of Horror Stories

Anthony Horowitz (ed.) – The Puffin Book Of Horror Stories   (Puffin, 1986: Viking 1984)

Illustration: Stephen Player

Anthony Horowitz – Introduction

Pete Johnson – Secret Terror
Stephen King – Battleground
Robert Westall – The Vacancy
Guy De Maupassant – The Twitch (trans Anthony Horowitz)
Laurence Staig – Freebies
Roald Dahl – Man From The South
Kenneth Ireland – The Werewolf Mask
Bram Stoker – Jonathan Harker’s Journal (extract from Dracula)
John Gordon -Eels
Anthony Horowitz – Bath Night

Acknowledgements

Blurb:
Whether it’s vampires, werewolves, ghouls or huge hairy spiders, whatever makes your flesh creep, you’ll find it in this chilling collection of horror stories edited by Anthony Horowitz.

Robert Westall’s ‘The Vacancy’ puts a horrific new perspective on being unemployed and John Gordon’s ‘Eels’ turns those slimy creatures into grisly instruments of torture. Classic horror stories such as ‘Dracula’ and ‘The Twitch’ are combined with contemporary horror from Stephen King, the master himself, to make a collection that lingers in your mind long after the lights go out!

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!

Deborah Shine – Haunting Ghost Stories

Deborah Shine (ed.) – Haunting Ghost Stories: Illustrations by Reg Gray (Octopus, 1980)

A spine-chilling collection of stories by the masters of horror and suspense.

Walter De La Mare – The Riddle
Stanley W. Fisher – The Sybarite
Roger F. Dunkley – Echoes In The Sand
Oliver Onions – The Mortal
Michelle Maurious – Fame
H. Brinsmead-Hungerford – Giovanni Paolo’s Land
H. G. Wells – The Red Room
Paul Dorrell – Lonely Boy
Colin Thiele – The Phantom Horses
Michael Joseph – The Yellow Cat
Stanley W. Fisher – A Little House Of Their Own
E. F. Benson – Expiation
John Gordon – Kroger’s Choice
Saki – Laura
Paul Dorrell – Tea And Empathy
M. R. James – The Haunted Doll’s House
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Brown Hand
W. W. Jacobs – The Well
Robert Arthur – The Haunted Trailer
Walter De La Mare – Bad Company
Lucy M. Boston – Many Coloured Glass
Ambrose Bierce – The Stranger
Edgar Allan Poe – The Tell-Tale Heart
H. R. Wakefield – The Gorge Of The Churels
E. Nesbit – Man-Size In Marble
Brian Alderson – The Wooing Of Cherry Basnett
Ambrose Bierce – A Tough Tussle
W. W. Jacobs – The Monkey’s Paw
Glenn Chandler – The Late Departure
H. R. Wakefield – Damp Sheets
Sorche Nic Leodhas – The Battle With The Bogles
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch – A Pair Of Hands

Another anthology aimed at a young audience which can be enjoyed by all ages. Clung onto a copy of this for years, eventually got rid of it along with most of the young adult books i’d acquired, regretted it ever since. Found this copy in a cardboard box full of old plugs, a computer mouse and a moth-eaten dayglo pink fright wig (i was tempted but didn’t have the £3 to stump up) at the local flea market on Sunday for 50p! With all the books and mags flying around just now, it will probably be a while until i get around to a rematch, but with the likes of John Gordon, Lucy Boston and Robert Arthur fighting it out with acknowledged classics and welcome, less obvious selections from Wakefield and Benson you can hardly go wrong. Minus point for the unnecessary childish doodles repeated on the inside covers (would have been just the thing to put me off the book as a kid), ‘specially after they’d done so well with the skull photo, but otherwise a dead commendable collection!

Stephen Jones & Ramsey Campbell – Best New Horror 4

Stephen Jones & Ramsey Campbell (eds.) – Best New Horror 4 (Robinsons, Carroll & Graf, Nov. 1993)
.

Stephen Jones & Ramsey Campbell – Introduction: Horror In 1992

Scott Edelman – The Suicide Artist
Roberta Lannes – Dancing On A Blade Of Dreams
Clive Barker – The Departed
Poppy Z. Brite – How To Get Ahead In New York
John Brunner – They Take
Lisa Tuttle – Replacements
Graham Joyce – Under The Pylon
Thomas Ligotti – The Glamour
John Gordon – Under The Ice
Joel Lane – And Some Are Missing
Les Daniels – The Little Green Ones
Steve Rasnic Tem – Mirror Man
Sarah Ash – Mothmusic
Karl Edward Wagner – Did They Get You To Trade?
Nicholas Royle – Night Shift Sister
Simon Ings & M. John Harrison – The Dead
Christopher Fowler – Norman Wisdom And The Angel Of Death
Kim Newman – Red Reign
Peter Atkins – Aviatrix
Ian R. MacLeod – Snodgrass
Kate Wilhelm – The Day Of The Sharks
M. John Harrison – Anima
Douglas E. Winter – Bright Lights, Big Zombie
Peter Straub – The Ghost Village

Stephen Jones & Kim Newman – Necrology

In their introduction, the editors refer to 1992 as the year of the vampire but, judged on this selection at least, there was also a trend for festooning your horror fiction with pop culture references. Rog has already tackled several of these on a Giant Book Of Terror thread, but no harm in having another go. As Nemo Skagg would say, “It’s all bollocks anyway”. So, to bollocks.

Douglas E Winter – Bright Lights, Big Zombie: “Miami is gone, carpet-bombed back into swampland … Food riots in Boston and Providence … A news team in Palm Springs got footage of what looks like a zombified Tom Cruise, his buttocks chewed away but otherwise intact ….”

Black Wednesday was the day the zombies rose from their graves to re-enact The Night Of The Living Dead for real, great news for horror fans until all zombie and cannibal films were banned outright by the state, leading to a flourishing underground trade in badly recorded pirate copies of Cannibal Holocaust, Eaten Alive, Trap Them And Kill Them, etc.

We follow the adventures of a horror magazine editor as he and his colleagues try and acquire more stock and keep their glossy going in the face of police harassment. When they’ve bought up everything available, the logical next step is to make their own flesh eating films. How timely that the living dead version of Miranda, the only woman our hero ever loved, should show up as they’re filming a live zombie massacre. Well, she always wanted to be in the movies.

This one references John Lydon, P.I.L.’s This Is What You Want, This Is What You Get, Billy Graham (still leading candlelight prayer vigils!), the Forbidden Planet chain and Oingo Boingo.

Christopher Fowler – Norman Wisdom And The Angel Of Death: “I would like to say that he died in order to make the world a safer, cleaner place, but the truth is that we went for a drink together and I killed him in a sudden fit of rage because he had not heard of Joyce Grenfell. How the Woman Who Won The Hearts Of The Nation in her thrice-reprised role as Ruby Gates in the celebrated St. Trinians films could have passed by him unnoticed is still a mystery to me.”

Stanley Morrison, a Hospital Visiting Friend in the employ of Haringey Council, readies his patients for death by instructing them on the history of radio shows and Brit films from the ‘fifties and ‘sixties and those who starred in them. If that doesn’t bore them into the next word, his tampering with their intravenous drips certainly does. Morrison’s dark secrets are exposed when he takes in the wheelchair-bound diabetic and nosey parker Saskia who, despite sharing his fondness for Norman Wisdom, Tony Hancock, Hattie Jacques, the divine Joyce & co., frowns on his mass murdering tendencies. Do you suppose Harold Shipman added names to his ‘to do’ list on the grounds they weren’t au fait with Carry On Again Doctor? And what did Haringey council ever do to our Chris to upset him so?

Karl E. Wagner – Did They Get You To Change?: Nemo Skagg, former lead singer with hugely influential punk band Needle (Excessive Bodily Fluids, The Coppery Taste Of Blood, etc.), is now a grimy down and out alcoholic, cadging cigs and 10p’s with the best of us. Ryan Chase, a good natured American portrait artist, generously funds their pub crawl from Bloomsbury through to Kensington Market in return from Skagg’s story of “where it all went wrong”. Finally, in the squat-cum-vault that Skagg has made his “home”, Ryan learns that the fallen idol is one star who never forgot his loyal fans, particularly the dead ones.

Name-checks include Sid Vicious & Nancy Spungeon, Betty Page, Brian Jones, Elvis, several dead rock and film stars and Tennant’s Super.

Nicholas Royle – Night Shift Sister: Record shop owner Carl finds a map in the street and is henceforth haunted by a teenage goth whose face is a perfect composite of his heroine, Siouxsie Sioux and his former partner, Christine. She lures him to his doom by means of a white label pressing of … a gasholder in action. Royle works plenty of Banshee lyrics and titles into his prose – “His stomach went into a slow dive. But it was love in a void …” etc – which some may find inspired. My eyes just shot to the ceiling. Intriguing supernatural mystery or smarmy horror with way too many ‘O’ levels? You decide …

See the Vault of Evil Best New Horror 4 thread