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!

Stephanie Dowrick (ed.) – Classic Tales of Horror

Stephanie Dowrick (ed.) – Classic Tales of Horror  (Book Club, 1976; originally Constable, 1976)

Suzanne Perkins

Stephanie Dowrick – Introduction

Edgar Allen Poe – The Black Cat
Charles Dickens – To Be Taken With a Grain Of Salt
Sheridan Le Fanu – Spectre Lovers
Wilkie Collins – The Dream Woman
Mrs. Oliphant – The Open Door
Elizabeth Braddon – The Cold Embrace
Ambrose Bierce – The Moonlit Road
Henry James – The Romance Of Certain Old Clothes
Bram Stoker – The Judge’s House
Guy De Maupassant – The Hand
Robert Louis Stevenson – The Body-Snatcher
Francis Marion Crawford – The Screaming Skull
Charlotte Perkins Gilman – The Yellow Wallpaper
M. R. James – Lost Hearts
Algernon Blackwood – Keeping His Promise
Saki – The Music On The Hill
Hugh Walpole – Tarnhelm

Alan C Jenkins (ed.) – Thin Air

Alan C Jenkins (ed.) – Thin Air   (Blackie, 1966)

Alan C. Jenkins – Introduction
M. R. James- The Treasure of Abbot Thomas
Algernon Blackwood – Running Wolf
Andrew Lang – The Ghost of Glam
S. L. Sadhu – The Haunted Mosque
Oscar Wilde – The Canterville Ghost
Sir Arthur Grimble – The Whistling Ghosts
Elliott O’Donnell – A Ghost in the Ring
Warren Armstrong  – A Phantom of the Seas
Francis Hayley Bell – The Unforgiving Garden
W. W. Jacobs – The Monkey’s Paw
H. G. Wells – The Inexperienced Ghost
W. H. Barrett – The Ghost of a Saint
Rudyard Kipling – My Own True Ghost Story
Charles Downing – The Death Watch
Saki – The Open Window
Guy de Maupassant – An Apparition
Washington Irving – The Spectre Bridegroom
William Fryer Harvey  – Sambo
 Edgar Allan Poe – William Wilson
Richard Middleton – The Ghost Ship
Hugh Walpole – A Little Ghost
Charles Dickens – The Signal-Man
E. F. Benson – The House with the Brick-Kiln
Arthur Quiller-Couch  – A Pair of Hands
Oliver Onions – Phantas
A. E. D. Smith – The Coat
Roger Lancelyn Green – The Story of Admetus
Ambrose Bierce – The Stranger
Geoffrey Palmer & Noel Lloyd – The Haunted Forest
Alexander Woollcott  – Full Fathom Five

Anonymous – Ghost Stories

Anonymous – Ghost Stories   ( Cathay, 1984)

illustrations by Ian McCraig

H. P. Lovecraft – The Music of Erich Zann
Charles Dickens – The Ghost in the Bride’s Chamber
M. R. James – A School Story
Oscar Wilde – The Canterville Ghost
Edgar Allan Poe – The Tell-Tale Heart
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Cat Room
Catherine Crowe – The Monk’s Story
Saki  – Laura
Fritz Leiber – Smoke Ghost
Frederick Marryat – The Phantom Ship
Leon Garfield – An Adelaide Ghost
E. Nesbit – Man-Size In Marble
Hugh Walpole  – A Little Ghost
Rosemary Timperley  – The Mistress in Black
Guy de Maupassant – An Apparition
Penelope Lively  – The Ghost of Thomas Kempe (extract)
Algernon Blackwood – The Occupant of the Room
Jerome K. Jerome  – The Haunted Mill
Elizabeth Le Fanu – The Harpsichord
J. S. Le Fanu – The White Cat of Drumgunniol
W. W. Jacobs – The Three Sisters
Joan Aiken  – Sonata For Harp and Bicycle

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!

Richard Dalby – The Anthology Of Ghost Stories

Richard Dalby (ed.) – The Anthology Of Ghost Stories (Tiger, 1994)

Robert Aickman – The Unsettled Dust
Louisa Baldwin – How He Left the Hotel
Nugent Barker – Whessoe
E.F. Benson – The Shuttered Room
Ambrose Bierce – An Inhabitant of Carcosa
Charles Birkin – Is there Anybody there?
Algenon Blackwood – The Whisperers
L.M. Boston – Curfew
A.M. Burrage – I’m Sure it was No. 31
Ramsey Campbell – The Guide
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Limping Ghost
Wilkie Collins – Mrs Zant and the Ghost
Basil Copper – The House by the Tarn
Ralph A. Cram – In Kropfsberg Keep
Daniel Defoe – The Ghost in all the Rooms
Charles Dickens – The Bagman’s Uncle
Arthur Conan-Doyle – The Bully of Brocas Court
Amelia B. Edwards – In the Confessional
Shamus Frazer – The Tune in Dan’s Cafe
John S. Glasby – Beyond the Bourne
William Hope Hodgson – The Valley of Lost Children
Fergus Hume – The Sand-Walker
Henry James – The Real Right Thing
M.R. James – The Haunted Dolls’ House
Roger Johnson – The Wall-Painting
Rudyard Kipling – They
D.H. Lawrence – The Last Laugh
Margery Lawrence – Robin’s Rath
J. Sheridan Le Fanu – The Dream
R.H. Malden – The Sundial
Richard Marsh – The Fifteenth Man
John Metcalfe – Brenner’s Boy
Edith Nesbit – Uncle Abraham’s Romance
Fitz-James O’Brien – What was It?
Vincent O’Sullivan – The Next Room
Roger Pater – The Footstep of the Aventine
Edgar Allan Poe – William Wilson
Forrest Reid – Courage
Mrs J.H. Riddell – The Last of Squire Ennismore
L.T.C. Rolt – The Garside Fell Disaster
David G. Rowlands – The Tears of St. Agatha
Saki – The Soul of Laploshka

I’m guessing Tiger were an instant remainder imprint?

If you’re looking for an A-S of great ghost story authors, this is one for you! At first glance a straight reprint of Richard Dalby’s Mammoth Book Of Ghost Stories Vol 1, closer inspection reveals they’d not set aside enough pages so once we’re done with Saki’s story there’s no more room making the reference to Mark Twain on the cover entirely spurious. Worse, the stories gone AWOL include some of the best in the volume:
——————————————–
Sapper – The Old Dining-Room
Montague Summers – The Between-Maid
Mark Twain – A Ghost Story
Mark Valentine – The Folly
H. Russell Wakefield – Out of the Wrack I Rise
Karl Edward Wagner – In the Pines
Manly Wade Wellman – Where Angels Fear
Edward Lucas White – The House of the Nightmare
Oscar Wilde – The Canterville Ghost
William J. Wintle – The Spectre Spiders

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.

The Wordsworth Book Of Horror Stories

The Wordsworth Book Of Horror Stories (Wordsworth Special Editions, 2005)

A. and C. Askew – Aylmer Vance And The Vampire
Honore de Balzac – The Mysterious Mansion
Richard Harris Barham – The Spectre Of Tappington
Ambrose Bierce – The Damned Thing
Miss Braddon – Eveline’s Visitant
A. Clergyman – A Ghostly Manifestation
————-  Correspondence On ‘A Ghostly Manifestation’
Wilkie Collins – A Terribly Strange Bed
Charles Dickens – The Story Of The Bagman’s Uncle
————-  To Be Taken With A Grain Of Salt
————-  The Signalman
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Brazilian Cat
————-  The Ring Of Thoth
————-  The Lord Of Chateau Noir
————-  The New Catacomb
————-  The Case Of Lady Sannox
————-  The Brown Hand
————-  The Horror Of The Heights
————-  The Terror Of Blue John Gap
————-  The Captain Of The Polestar
————-  How It Happened
————-  Playing With Fire
————-  The Leather Funnel
————-  Lot No. 249
————-  The Los Amigos Fiasco
————-  The Nightmare Room
Amelia B. Edwards – The Phantom Coach
Elizabeth Gaskell – The Squire’s Story
W. F. Harvey – The Beast With Five Fingers
R. S. Hawker – The Botathen Ghost
Nathaniel Hawthorne – Young Goodman Brown
W. H. Hodgson – The Gateway Of The Monster
James Hogg – The Story Of Euphemia Hewit
Violet Hunt – The Prayer
W. W, Jacobs – The Monkey’s Paw
Henry James – The Jolly Corner
M. R. James – A School Story
————-  Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook
————-  Lost Hearts
————-  The Mezzotint
————-  The Ash Tree
————-  Number 13
————-  Count Magnus
————-  ‘Oh, Whistle And I’ll Come To You, My Lad’
————-  The Treasure Of Abbot Thomas
————-  The Rose Garden
————-  The Tractate Middoth
————-  Casting The Runes
————-  The Stalls Of Barchester Cathedral
————-  Martin’s Close
————-  Mr. Humphreys And His Inheritance
————-  The Residence At Whitminster
————-  The Diary Of Mr. Poynter
————-  An Episode In Cathedral History
————-  The Story Of A Disappearance And An Appearance
————-  Two Doctors
————-  The Haunted Dolls House
————- The Uncommon Prayer Book
————-  A Neighbour’s Landmark
————-  A View From A Hill
————-  A Warning To The Curious
————-  An Evening’s Entertainment
————-  There Was A Man Dwelt By A Graveyard
————-  Rats
————-  After Dark In The Playing Fields
————-  Wailing Well
————-  Stories I Have Tried To Write
Rudyard Kipling – The Mark Of The Beast
Perceval Landon – Thurnley Abbey
John Lang  – Fisher’s Ghost
D. H. Lawrence – The Rocking-Horse Winner
J. S. Le Fanu  An Account Of Some Strange Disturbances In Aungier Street
————-  Narrative Of The Ghost Of A Hand
————-  Green Tea
————-  Madam Crowl’s Ghost
————-  Squire Toby’s Will
————-  Dickon The Devil
————-  The Child That Went With The Fairies
————-  The White Cat Of Drumgunniol
————-  Ghost Stories Of Chapelizod
————-  Wicked Captain Walshawe, Of Wauling
————-  Sir Dominick’s Bargain
————-  Ultor De Lacy
————-  The Vision Of Tom Chuff
————-  Stories Of Lough Guir
Lord Lytton – The Haunted And The Haunters
Guy De Maupassant – Vendetta
E. Nesbit – Man-Size In Marble
Howard Pease – In The Cliff Land Of The Dane
Edgar Allan Poe – The Tell-Tale Heart
————-  The Black Cat
A. M. Pushkin – The Ace Of Spades
Saki (H. H. Munro) – Laura
————-  Sredni Vashtar
Sir Walter Scott – The Tapestried Chamber
————-  Wandering Willie’s Tale
Robert Louis Stevenson – Markheim
————-  Thrawn Janet
Bram Stoker – Dracula’s Guest
Edmund Lenthal Swifte – Ghost In The Tower
William Makepeace Thackeray – The Story Of Mary Ancel
Hugh Walpole – Tarnhelm
Oscar Wilde – The Canterville Ghost

thanks to Severance of Vault for typing the contents!

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!

Anon – Fifty Masterpieces Of Mystery

Anon – Fifty Masterpieces Of Mystery (Odhams, nd.  [1937])

Crime Stories

Dorothy L. Sayers – The Learned Adventure Of The Dragon’s Head
Austin Freeman – The Magic Casket
H. C. Bailey – The President Of San Jacinto
Anthony Berkeley – Outside The Law
The Baroness Orczy – The Regent’s Park Murder
Margery Allingham – They Never Got Caught
J. J. Connington – Before Insulin
Stacy Aumonier – The Perfect Murder
G. K. Chesterton – The Shadow Of The Shark
O. Henry – The Marsonettes
F. Britten Austin – Diamond Cut Diamond
Augustus Muir – Murder At The Microphone
Milward Kennedy – Death In The Kitchen
Freeman Willis Croft – The Vertical Line
Edgar Wallace – The Clue Of Monday’s Settling
Gerard Fairlie – The Ghost Of A Smile
Bertram Atkey – Sons Of The Chief Warder

Strange And Horrible Stories

Seamark – Query
Ralph Straus – The Room On The Fourth Floor
A. E. W. Mason – The Wounded God
Lord Dunsany – The Electric King
A. J. Alan – Charles
John Metcalfe – The Funeral March Of A Marionette
W. W. Jacobs – The Interruption
C. D. Heriot – Nobody At Home
Agatha Christie – The Blood-Stained Pavement
Mrs. Belloc Lowdnes – St. Catherine’s Eve
F. Marion Crawford – The Screaming Skull
Joseph Conrad – The Idiots
Sydney Horler – The Vampire
Saki – The Interlopers
L. P. Hartley – The Travelling Grave
E. A. Poe – The Tell-Tale Heart
H. Spicer – The Bird Woman
W. Fryer Harvey – The Dabblers

Ghost Stories

Vernon Lee – Marsyas In Flanders
Eleanor Scott – The Room
Marjorie Bowen – Florence Flannery
Ernest Bramah – The Ghost At Massingham Mansions
Norman Matson – The House On Big Faraway
Naomi Royde-Smith – Madam Julia’s Tale
L. A. G. Strong – Sea Air
Ann Bridge – The Buick Saloon
May Sinclair – The Token
Oliver Onions – The Cigarette Case
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch – A Pair Of Hands
H. R. Wakefield – Blind Man’s Buff
Algernon Blackwood – The Man Who Was Milligan
Richard Hughes – The Ghost
A. M. Burrage – The Room Over The Kitchen
J. S. LeFanu – Mr. Justice Harbottle
Anonymous – The Dead Man Of Varley Grange

Includes:

Eleanor Scott – The Room: “I’m not going to try and tell you what it was … I’d as soon try to describe the most loathsome surgical operation or the most indecent physical illness. And if I wanted to, I couldn’t. Thank Heaven, we haven’t made the word for what I saw.”

A room in Massingham’s house has the reputation of being haunted, so when five of his friends answer his invitation to stay with him, naturally they decide to each take a turn at spending a night in the creepy chamber and “do down the spook!” By the time Amery the Parson gets to take his turn, it’s clear from the state of Grindley and Vernon that whatever is in there is far more powerful and evil than a mere ghost. By the following morning, the Parson is a broken man, but Reece, the ‘simple’ little curate, is insistent that he’s not going to be denied the experience. Although we’re never told outright what each man endured in the room – the closest we get is with Amery who is confronted by the past crimes of his Church – it hardly makes the goings-on any less unsettling. Not quite as striking as Randall’s classic Celui-La but very deserving of your attention i’d have said. “There must be an amazing amount of goodness somewhere when here is such a quantity of unspeakable evil in men like us, who thought ourselves decent fellows enough.”

John Metcalfe – The Funeral March Of A Marionette: On a snowy, bitterly cold November 4th, budding entrepreneur Alf and little George drag a trolley along the Millbank, collecting a small fortune in coppers from admires of their uncannily lifelike Guy. Unfortunately, old Gus the tramp isn’t equip to handle the sub-zero temperatures ….

A. M. Burrage – The Room Over The Kitchen: A weary rambler arrives in Penhiddoc, his one thought to get a room at the inn for the night. In the doorway, he’s accosted by a fellow who he takes to be the local harmless lunatic who implores him not to take the room over the kitchen. It transpires that twenty years ago, four Oxford students stayed at the inn. For a chuckle, a trio of these fellows, in cahoots with the landlord, convinced the nervous young Mr. Farney that his room was haunted. They pushed the joke too far ….

C. D. Heriot – Nobody At Home: Frank and Maurice have drifted out of each others lives since Oxford, and now the former, learning his old pal has fallen on hard times, is keen to put the friendship back on course. Maurice has tried to make a go of it as a poet, but as soon as he arrives at the decrepit old schoolhouse that serves as his home, Frank realises it’s gone very badly for him. At first, Frank is angry that he may have made a wasted journey as no-one replies to his knocks at the door. But when he takes a look through the letterbox ….

Henry Spicer – The Bird Woman: A young lady answers an advertisement for a position as carer to “an invalid, infirm or lunatic person” at a dingy-looking house which has the reputation of being haunted. “Having little fear of anything human and none at all of apparitions” she’s confident that she’ll be able to cope with her charge – until she actually claps eyes on the owl-like travesty she’s expected to look after.

Sydney Horler – The Vampire: Two Roman Catholic priests discuss the case of a man of whom everyone seemed to have an “instinctive horror”. When a terrible murder is committed, leaving the victim minus most of her throat, the shunned individual confesses to Father ——, who, of course, he is powerless to pass on the information to the police. Sometimes published as The Believer

Richard Hughes – The Ghost: Told from the perspective of Millie, who’s just had her head bashed in by cheating husband Johnny. Having spent her life terrified of ghosts, now she’s evidently one herself Millie intends to haunt the murderer, especially as he doesn’t seem the least perturbed about what he’s done.

H. R. Wakefield – Blind Man’s Buff: Aylesbury, Herts. Mr. Cort learns why none of the locals will approach Lorn Manor after nightfall. In pitch darkness, He loses himself within a few feet of the front door and is pursued about the old house by unseen entities.

W. W. Jacobs – The Interruption: With his wife dead at last Spencer Goddard can get his hands on all of her lovely money! How happy he is! For all of twenty seconds. Hannah, his cook, wastes no time in letting on that she knows more about her late mistress’s “illness” – and his part in it – than he’d prefer and neither is she slow in turning the situation to her advantage. Should she die suddenly – like poor Mrs. Goddard for example – she’s left a letter with her sister , the contents of which he should regret being made known to the police. Now he must think of a way to save his neck and see hers stretched he opts for a high risk solution …

Anonymous – The Dead Man Of Varley Grange: Westernshire. When young Henderson takes over the Grange, he unwisely invites eight friends to spend the Christmas holiday with him. Prior to his arrival the property had remained vacant for years due to the dreadful family curse as it is reputed that, some centuries ago, Captain Varley murdered his sister after she fled the Convent and ran off with her lover. Now their phantoms stalk the Grange and if you’re unfortunate enough to see the dead nun’s face you die within the year!