I own an old sailboat that I bought used. I sail at night and sleep on it occasionally. After reading "South Sea Bubble", I thought it would be fun to re-tell Hammond Innes' tale, but substitute my boat and locale in the retelling. I am so amazed at how pulled in the listener becomes, that I almost hate to have to break the spell and tell them nah, it's just an adapted ghost story I borrowed from Hammond Innes. I call the escaped convict the "Pirate" because he always wore his Pittsburgh Pirate hat. When I tell the part where I'm dreaming of a rowboat approaching and bumping my anchored boat and that I awake and see a skeleton face wearing a Pirate cap brandishing a winch handle, I usually get a scream or two. The man could tell a story! ( )

Another collection of stories that I've read - but ages ago and October is a good time for a reread. Another great purchase from a used bookstore. Most of these stories are often used in other anthologies, but there are only a few I'll skip or skim. (Like The Monkey's Paw - I really think I've read that enough in my lifetime at this point. But ones like The Upper Berth I can always read again.) No introduction - just the contents and the stories. (I always wonder how they were chosen if there's no information about that. Because I'm one of those people that always has to read introductions in hope of some fun bit of trivia or personal story.) Here and there you can tell that there's been a lack of editing - a wrong letter or wrong word used, nothing horrific, but it does happen at least every other story a time or two.

Still, there are lots of great story choices. For the amount of stories and their quality this is a great buy if you can hunt down a copy. Mine was about $5, and I really can't quibble with that.

You really can't say much about short stories - too risky for spoilers.

[*** is for myself, so I remember a particular one]

Contents:

Robert Aickman - Ringing the Changes
[Extremely creepy, don't know how I forgot about this one.]

A. J. Alan - My Adventure in Norfolk
[Ah ha, I wondered where this one was hiding. Has the car breakdown scenario I once had a conversation/questions about - the "do not add snow to empty radiator" issue.]***

S. Baring-Gould - The Leaden Ring
[Really need to read the Baring-Gould that are free on internet, I do like what I've read so far]

E. F. Benson - The Bus Conductor
[Very familiar to a "real life" story that wasn't really, I think I once blogged about it, urban legend, must research later. ...Here we go, see this review, under How He Left the Hotel by Louisa Baldwin - not the same story exactly, but similarities.]

Ambrose Bierce - The Middle Toe of the Right Foot
[Memorable, had to reread even though I remembered it. And it was better than I remembered.]

Charles Birkin - Little Boy Blue
[Sad, but then child ghosts do that to me]

Algernon Blackwood - Keeping His Promise
[Another one in many anthologies, for a reason]

Marjorie Bowen - Kecksies
[Very creepy, high marks, look up more by author]

D. K. Broster - Couching at the Door
[Another one I'd give high marks, intended to look up more by author]

John Burke - Don't You Dare
[Evil wife, a nasty piece of work. But then not just her...]

Thomas Burke - The Hollow Man

A. M. Burrage - Browdean Farm
[Haunted rental house]

R. Chetwynd-Hayes - A Vindictive Woman
[Grim, very creepy, high marks]

Hugh Crawford - The Ghoul
[Didn't remember this one. Annoying scientist alert.]

Adrian Cole - The Horror Under Penmire
[Had many Lovecraft was here" moments for me]

F. Marion Crawford - The Upper Berth
[Haunting on a ship. Still excellent.]

Mary Danby - The Engelmayer Puppets
[It's always satisfying when you hate the victim - deserving/evil victim!]

Charles Dickens - The Signal-Man
[Haunting at the railway.]

William Croft Dickinson - The House of Balfother
[Didn't remember this one. Tapers off unsatisfying way at end]

Arthur Conan Doyle - The Brown Hand
[Facepalm over "wrong hand" part.]

Amelia B. Edwards - The Phantom Coach
[Much anthologized, and worth it. Good old fashioned tale]

Celia Fremlin - Don't Tell Cissie
[Everyone knows a Cissy.]

Davis Grubb - The Horsehair Trunk
[Another ominous trunk in ghost story! Oddly trunk isn't as vital as ones in other stories like Hand in Glove (Elizabeth Bowen) or The Romance of Certain Old Clothes (Henry James)]

John Halkin - Bobby
[Car accident, more modern feel than most, very creepy]

Pamela Hansford-Johnson - Ghost of Honour

L. P. Hartley - Monkshood Manor
[House party weekend with ghost]

W. F. Harvey - The Ankardyne Pew
[Didn't remember this one. Nice vagueness in what was going on.]

Dorothy K. Haynes - Those Lights and Violins
[Very good, creepy description of hotel on the rock. Must check out more by author]

O. Henry - The Furnished Room
[Search for missing loved one ends in disappointment. Sort of.]

William Hope Hodgson - The Whistling Room
[Ghost detective. Slooooow to end itself.]

Robert Holdstock - Magic Man
[Here's a different setting - cave painter and tribe.]

Tom Hood - The Shadow of a Shade
[A woman's fiance travels to the North Pole on expedition, with a shipmate who is a bit too fond of the man's intended.]

Richard Hughes - A Night at a Cottage
[Insanely short, like just over a page]

Hammond Innes - South Sea Bubble
[Why it's a bad idea to buy really, oddly inexpensive boats.]

Washington Irving - The Spectre Bridegroom
[Melodrama, mildly amusing]

W. W. Jacobs - The Monkey's Paw
[In many anthologies]

M. R. James - Lost Hearts
[One of James' more bloody ones, but it's James so the gore is plot important.]

Gerald Kersh - Carnival on the Downs
[I am so slow, I completely didn't see the ghosts - well, where they ended up coming into the story. ...And can't really say more than that.]

Rudyard Kipling - The Mark of the Beast
[Much anthologized]

Nigel Kneale - Minuke
[I should make a list of "reluctant real estate agent" stories. This one is particularly good. ...Ah ha! This is the Kneale who wrote the Quatermass books that I've been meaning to read! Explains why this story reads very cinematic - unless there actually has been a movie made of it and I can't place it.] ***

J. Sheridan LeFanu - An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street
[More people should chat with their housekeeper/cleaning lady before deciding which room to sleep in. This seems to happen often, so just making a note of that.]

Key Leith - For the Love of Pamela
[Another house that has it in for the tenants - especially female tenants.]

H. P. Lovecraft - The Moon-Bog
[I do have a soft spot for Lovecraft and his male narrators who faint.]

Roger Malisson - A Fair Lady
[Not so innocent country town. Was a movie made of this? Feels so familiar.]

Joyce Marsh - The Master of Blas Gwynedd
[Dog story, but well told - I do like a conversational narrator]

Guy de Maupassant - Who Knows?
[Note to self - this is the de Maupassant story you could never remember the name of, and possibly didn't recognize in the collected stories because of a different translator. For everyone else - this story of...mental issues shall we say, is even more disturbing when you read the author's biography. There, now it's even creepier, isn't it?!] ***

Daphne du Maurier - The Apple Tree
[Older, unhappy couple, neither of them very nice]

E. Nesbit - John Charrington's Wedding
[Much anthologized, always find that the story seems particularly unfair for the bride.]

Alfred Noyles - Midnight Express
[Circular story, about an odd book. Book stories usually interest me - this one, somehow not so much.]

Roger B. Pile - Mary
[Parents and child story - sad]

Edgar Allen Poe - The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
[Another highly anthologized, mesmerism and the dead]

V. S. Pritchett - A Story of Don Juan
[Much anthologized. Oddly have never looked up more by author, should check on that]

Saki - The Open Window
[Read back in high school English lit. Insanely short and for the amount of text, a lot is described.]

William Samsom - A Woman Seldom Found

Robert Louis Stevenson - The Body-Snatcher
[Another highly anthologized, but still really damn creepy]

Bernard Taylor - Travelling Light

Rosemary Timperley - The Deathly Silence

Mark Twain - A Ghost Story
[Famous ghost story with the Twain humor. Helps to know this history. Now wondering where I first heard of that history, I know I have some sort of history and hoaxes book somewhere, maybe on P. T. Barnum?]

Tim Vicary - Guest Room
[So damn sad, and outside of setting that claims it for particular time period. Dammit book, you're supposed to creep me out not make me cry.]

H. Russell Wakefield - The Triumph of Death
[Excellent and can't remember reading it before. Also sad, in a way, but high level of creep.]

Hugh Walpole - Mrs. Lunt
[Creepy, and about bookish sorts of folk, for which I give it extra points.]

Elizabeth Walter - The Hollies and the Ivy
[More things to consider if renovating an old house.]

H. G. Wells - The Red Room
[A ghost story, yet not a ghost story.]

Edith Wharton - All Souls
[Very good up until the end, when there's a little bit too much explanation. Which doesn't really explain it, but still. Not the best end Wharton has done.]

Dennis Wheatley - The Case of the Long-Dead Lord
[Psychic Holmes and Watson]


( )

A good collection of classic horror. If you want to see where horror started then this is a good book for you to read. ( )

Most of the contributors are British and from before the first half of the 20th century. Only one story was completely unreadable to me, and that was Mary Danby's "Keksies," propablly because she wrote in the pre-Elizabethean style (Chaucerian). ( )