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

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

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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.

 

Paul Kane & Marie O’Regan – Mammoth Book Of Body Horror

Paul Kane & Marie O’Regan – The Mammoth Book Of Body Horror  (Robinson, 2012)

Cover design: Carlos Castro

Stuart Gordon – Introduction

Mary Shelley – Transformation
Edgar Allan Poe – The Tell-Tale Heart
H. P. Lovecraft – Herbert West: Re-Animator
John W. Campbell – Who Goes There?
George Langelaan – The Fly
Richard Matheson – ‘Tis The Season To Be Jelly
Stephen King – Survivor Type
Clive Barker – The Body Politic
Robert Bloch – The Chaney Legacy
Ramsey Campbell – The Other Side
Brian Lumley – Fruiting Bodies
Nancy A. Collins – Freaktent
Richard Christian Matheson – Regions Of The Flesh
Michael Marshall Smith – Walking Wounded
Neil Gaiman – Changes
James Herbert – Others
Christopher Fowler – The Look
Alice Henderson – Residue
Graham Masterton – Dog Days
Gemma Files – Black Box
Simon Clark – The Soaring Dead
Barbie Wilde – Polyp
David Moody – Almost Forever
Axelle Carolyn – Butterfly
Conrad Williams – Sticky Eye

Back cover blurb:
25 horrific tales of TRANSFORMATION, MUTATION and CONTAGION

This truly disturbing collection of ‘body horror’ ranges from Mary Shelley’s revelatory ‘Transformation’ to H. P. Lovecraft’s ‘Herbert West: Re-Animator’, brought to a new audience by the success of Stuart Gordon’s film ‘Re-Animator’, to George Langelaan’s ‘The Fly’, filmed most recently by David Cronenberg, and a chilling story by Lovecraft’s disciple, Robert Bloch, best known as the author of Psycho.

The term ‘body horror’ has long been used to describe films such as The Thing, based on John W. Campbell’s ‘Who Goes There?’, which is reprinted here, and most recently District 9, but the subgenre did not begin with film.

Here you will find profoundly unsettling stories spanning the entire history of the subgenre by the very best writers of horror ….

Fred Pickersgill – And Graves Give Up Their Dead

Fred Pickersgill (ed.) – And Graves Give Up Their Dead (Corgi, 1964)

Photograph: Dunstan Pereira

William Link & William Levinson – Top Flight Aquarium
Gerald Bullett – the Elder
Roald Dahl – Royal Jelly
Charles Beaumont – Miss Gentilbelle
Richard Matheson – Girl Of My Dreams
Ambrose Birece – An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge
Robert Arthur – Death Is A Dream
Richard Davis – the Female Of The Species
John Collier – De Mortius
Wilbur Daniel Steele – Footfalls

Peter Haining – Death on Wheels

Peter Haining (ed.) – Death on Wheels (Souvenir 1999)

Introduction – Peter Haining

1. Auto Mania: The Machinery of Death

Trucks – Stephen King
The Dust-Cloud – E. F. Benson
Second Chance – Jack Finney
Used Car – H. Russell Wakefield
Duel – Richard Matheson
Who’s Been Sitting in My Car? – Antonia Fraser
Not from Detroit – Joe R. Lansdale

2. Motorway Madness: Murder in the Fast Lane

Never Stop on the Motorway – Jeffrey Archer
The Death Car – Peter Haining
Night Court – Mary Elizabeth Counselman
Accident Zone – Ramsey Campbell
The Last Run – Alan Dean Foster
The Hitch-Hiker – Roald Dahl
Crash – J. G. Ballard

3. Chrome Killers: The Future Autogeddon

The Racer – Ib Melchior
Along the Scenic Route – Harlan Ellison
Auto-da-Fé – Roger Zelazny
Violation – William F. Nolan
Thy Blood Like Milk – Ian Watson

Thanks to Steve Goodwin for providing the table of contents!

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!