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 & Ramsey Campbell – The Giant Book Of Best New Horror

Stephen Jones & Ramsey Campbell – The Giant Book Of Best New Horror (Magpie, 1993, 1994)

Cover: Luis Rey

Introduction – Stephen Jones & Ramsey Campbell

Robert R. McCammon – Pin
Brian Lumley – No Sharks In The Med
Chet Williamson – … To Feel Another’s Woe
Stephen Gallagher – The Horn
Peter Straub – A Short Guide To The City
Robert Westall – The Last Days Of Miss Dorinda Molyneaux
Ian Watson – The Eye Of The Ayatollah
Cherry Wilder – Alive In Venice
Thomas Tessier – Blanca
Steve Rasnic Tem – Carnal House
Michael Marshall Smith – The Man Who Drew Cats
Thomas Ligotti – The Last Feast Of Harlequin
Donald R. Burleson – Snow Cancellations
J. W. Jeter – True Love
J. L. Comeau – Firebird
Karl E. Wagner – Cedar Lane
D. F. Lewis – Mort Au Monde
Nicholas Royle – Negatives
Richard Laymon – Bad News
Elizabeth Hand – On The Town Route
Alan Brennert – Ma Qui
David J. Schow – Incident On A Rainy Night In Beverly Hills
Kathe Koja – Impermanent Mercies
Ian MacLeod – 1/72nd Scale
Ramsey Campbell – The Same In Any Language
Poppy Z. Brite – His Mouth Will Taste Of Wormwood
Charles L. Grant – Our Life In An Hourglass
Grant Morrison – The Braille Encyclopedia
David Sutton – Those Of Rhenea
Joel Lane – Power Cut
Harlan Ellison – Jane Doe
F. Paul Wilson – Pelts
Jean-Daniel Breque – On The Wing
Douglas Clegg – Where Flies Are Born
Garry Kilworth – Inside The Walled City
Jonathan Carroll – The Dead Love You
S. P. Somtow – Chui Chai
Dennis Etchison – When They Gave Us Memory
Gene Wolfe – Lord Of The Land
Gahan Wilson – Mister Ice Cold
Kim Newman – The Original Dr. Shade

600+ page compilation derived from the first two Best New Horror collections. The customary lengthy introduction and Necrology are missed, but this all-story Best New Horror is possibly my favourite of the entire series to date.

Anon – The Man in Black

Anon – The Man in Black: Macabre Stories from Fear on Four (BBC, 1990)

Foreword – The Man In Black

William F. Harvey – The Beast with Five Fingers
Graeme Fife – Snipe 3909
David Buck – The Dead Drummer (Adapted by Haydn Middleton from an original radio script.)
Stephen Dunstone – Fat Andy
Katherine Nicholas – The Dispossessed Daughter
Stanley Ellin – The Specialty of the House
E. F. Benson – The Face
James Saunders – A Child Crying
Stephen Gallagher – The Horn
W. W. Jacobs – The Monkey’s Paw
Roald Dahl – William and Mary
Bert Coules – Every Detail But One
J. C. W. Brook – The Snowman Killing
Nick Warburton – His Last Card
Bram Stoker – The Judge’s House
Gwen Cherrell – Dreaming of Thee
Stephen Gallagher – By the River, Fontainebleau
Elizabeth Bowen – Hand in Glove
Bert Coules – The Journey Home
Robert Westall – St. Austin Friars
Martyn Wade – Soul Searching
Nick Warburton – Music Lovers
William Ingram – Mind Well the Tree
John Wyndham – Survival
James Saunders – Day at the Dentist’s

I don’t have a copy but a quick scrutiny of the contents suggests this as a thoughtful mix of the new and the over-familiar-but-that-doesn’t-make-’em-bad. Wasn’t the original radio ‘Man In Black’ the super-creepy Valentine Dyall of City Of The Dead/ The Haunting fame? I’m sure Day At The Dentist’s has been favourably remarked on Vault Mk. I and I can vouch for the all round superbness Stephen Gallagher’s superlative The Horn.

Thanks to John Mains for the cover scan!

Stephen Jones & Ramsey Campbell – Best New Horror

Stephen Jones & Ramsey Campbell (eds.) – The Best New Horror (Robinson, 1990)

Les Edwards

Introduction: Horror in 1989 – Stephen Jones & Ramsey Campbell

Robert R. McCammon – Pin
Cherry Wilder – The House On Cemetery Street
Stephen Gallagher – The Horn
Alex Quiroba – Breaking Up
Ramsey Campbell – It Helps If You Sing
Laurence Staig – Closed Circuit
Steve Rasnic Tem – Carnal House
Kim Newman – Twitch Technicolor
Gregory Frost – Lizaveta
Donald R. Burleson – Snow Cancellations
Nicholas Royle – Archway
Thomas Ligotti – The Strange Design Of Master Rignolo
Chet Williamson – …To Feel Another’s Woe
Robert Westall – The Last Day Of Miss Dorinda Molyneaux
Brian Lumley – No Sharks In The Med
D. F. Lewis – Mort au Monde
Thomas Tessier – Blanca
Ian Watson – The Eye Of The Ayatollah
Karl Edward Wagner – At First Just Ghostly
Richard Laymon – Bad News

Necrology: 1989 – Stephen Jones & Kim Newman

includes:

Stephen Gallagher – The Horn: Three strangers, Mick, Dave and the narrator, are marooned inside a hut during a snow blizzard. The cabin is base to the clean-up team who attend the grim business of scraping up accident casualties and one wall is plastered with newspaper accounts of this stretch of motorway’s greatest hits.

“Entire families wiped out. A teenage girl decapitated. Lorry drivers crushed when their cabs folded around them like stepped-upon Coke cans ….. an unwanted mistress dumped, Jimmy Hoffa-style, into the wire skeleton of a bridge piling that had been boxed-up ready to take concrete the next morning. ENTOMBED ALIVE! the headline said, but even that looked kind of pale next to the disaster involving the old folks’ outing and the pet food truck full of offal.

When their gas cylinder – the only source of heat – conks out, the men have an unpleasant decision to make. Stay here and probably freeze to death, or head out into the snowstorm, make for the huge articulated rig about half a mile on and sit it out in the warm cabin. Mick volunteers to go on ahead and give them a blast on the horn once he’s got the heater going.

But a murderous something else has beaten him to it ….

Michael Marshall Smith – The Man Who Drew Cats: One day old Tom just blew into Kingstown, stepped into The Hogshead Bar and the locals – unusually for them – took to the quiet fellow straight away. A quiet and private man, he makes his living from the extraordinary paintings he tosses off for tourists and sometimes when the mood takes him, he chalks his more complex designs on the pavement. But when he befriends little Billy and his mom and learns that her nogoodnik, drunken husband regularly beats the shit out of them both, he draws something really terrifying.

Chet Williamson – …To Feel Another’s Woe: The beautiful Sheila Remarque is a stage actress of exceptional ability but her gift is not for acting: she vamps the emotions of all those who come in close contact with her, draining them until they are little more than zombies.

Robert McCammon – Pin: The psychotic Joey Shatterly stands before the mirror diving the pin through each of his pupils in turn prior to stepping out with his rifle and seven bullets …

Nicholas Royle – Archway: From the day she moves into her North London flat, Bella is haunted by the scornful laughter of an old, grey faced tramp she’s see on the street. She is unfairly dismissed from her job, encounters the red-tape horrors of the DSS and faces eviction. Finally …

***

Several of these stories, along with selections from vols. 2 and 3, were resurrected in The Giant Book Of Best New Horror (Magpie, 1993, 1994)

Continues on the Vault Of Evil Forum: Best New Horror 1