QUIET AS A NUN by Antonia Fraser

I'd read this many, many years ago, and recently I felt an urge to revsiit Fraser's series ,so here we are.

Quiet as a Nun is Antonia Fraser's first mystery; she was already noted for historical biographies so this was something of a departure for her. Her character (and narrator, for this book only) is Jemima Shore, an investigative TV reporter who stumbles into murder and mystery and uses her investigative talents to bring a solution.

In this, Jemima is dealing with a fizzling love affair (with a married MP) and receives word of an old friend's death. Rosabelle Powerstock had been a wealthy heiress, but she had become Sister Miriam at the Convent of the Blessed Eleanor, and had been behaving erratically before she locked herself in a ruined tower and starved to death. Jemima had attended the convent school for a time, and Mother Ancilla, the Reverend Mother, contacts her to come investigate; something is very wrong with Sister Miriam's death, and one of the girls at the school may know something...

For a contemporary setting (published in 1977), it's actually quite Gothic in its atmosphere, with an ancient convent, a ruined tower that may or may not have shielded a scandal in the past, secret passages, disputed wills, and a ghostly nun haunting the convent whose presence presages death. It made for fun reading as a teen, and I enjoyed it again. It's also very visual and dramatic, which made it a natural for a TV adaptation. Britain's ITV adapted it for their "Armchair Thriller" in 1978 and it aired on PBS' "Mystery!" in its 1982-83 season, which was when I saw it.

In fact, the series is still notorious for having what is judged to be one of the most frightening TV moments in British TV history, when Jemima sneaks into the ruined tower and meets the ghostly Black Nun...



It's a tiny bit dated, but still a good fun read, and Fraser handles the Gothic chills well.

There was an entire Jemima Shore series of novels, which I think I'll reread. ITV also aired a 12-episode series, "Jemima Shore Investigates," in 1983 and somewhere I picked up an anthology of stories from the show, so that will be included as well.

Check it out if you happen on it at the library or the used book store; it's good fun.

PROMISE NOT TO TELL by Jennifer McMahon

Promise Not To Tell was a something I'd had recommended to me somewhere (I forget where), and on a recent library run I checked it out. I'm pretty glad I did.

Kate Cypher, divorced, a 41-year-old school nurse, has flown from her job in Seattle to her mother's home in Vermont. Mom has Alzheimer's, and is steadily getting worse; Kate has to arrange a new living situation for her. But the day she arrives in town, a teenaged girl is murdered....in an identical fashion to how a friend of Kate's was murdered 30 years before. Undoubtedly there's a connection...but what?

What makes this different is there's a definite supernatural element. Del Griswold (derisively called "the Potato Girl" due to a constant smell that hung about her) was from a white-trash family, definitely troubled, held back in school, and her murder seems sadly a release from a horrible life with no prospects. But she was desperate for a friend, and young Kate Cypher was willing to play along. Kate, however, was also keenly aware that Del was extremely unpopular, and hanging out with her was social death, so she tried to shrug it off as "we waited at the bus stop, I barely knew her" kind of thing. But when an adult Kate returns, Del shows up in the edges of Kate's vision, and while you might at first think that it's symptomatic of Kate's guilt over her betrayal of Del's trust as a child and her lifelong denial of knowing anything about her after her murder, it turns out that Del really IS coming back, and soon possesses Kate's mother to communicate. It's clear that the ghostly visitations are indeed real.

What did I like? The atmosphere (Kate's mom lived in a failed utopian commune/settlement), the way the supernatural is handled, and how McMahon presents Del as having become a figure of local folklore, somewhere in between Bloody Mary and the Blair Witch. And the ins and outs of Kate's friendship with Del, and her attempts to play the situation to her advantage with the other kids at school, ring true. Childhood can be horribly cruel.

What didn't I like? The solution to the murders is a bit hasty and unsatisfactory. Some plot elements are never explored, like how one of Del's tormentors died, supposedly choking to death on a slice of raw potato; it's mentioned in passing but never developed further. Kate angered me as she persists in hiding things and keeping secrets when she doesn't need to, and there's no sense at the end that's she's learned anything from her experience.

Still, it wasn't overly long; I hate overly padded books. I started it on a Sunday afternoon and finished by bedtime. It moved along briskly and was never drawn-out or dull, and that's pretty damn remarkable.

It was McMahon's first book, and there's a bunch more out there, so I may start looking into them. It's supernatural without real horror; the ghosts are the remains of tragic happenings and circumstances, and the mystery plot is what takes center stage. (There's almost a strain of magical realism here....) So I'm willing to forgive some imperfections for a first novel, especially such a well-paced and atmospheric one. Not bad in the least and worth an afternoon in your reading nook.

THE HOUSE WHERE NOBODY LIVED by Brad Strickland

The next volume of the Barnvelt adventures, by Brad Strickland, The House Where Nobody Lived is a fun little chiller based on some reality, and is also fairly different from the others. Besides that hideous cover painting.

It's sometime vaguely in the 1950s. (By now, Strickland had been pressured by the publisher to "freeze" his characters age-wise and the timeline being just the '50s.) Lewis and Rose Rita, out rambling around town, come across Hawaii House, an isolated building in an odd architectural style that had been built by a sea captain who had first taken American diplomats to Hawaii in the 1800s; the house was in the style of wealthy Hawaiian landowners. (Back then, they had been called the Sandwich Islands, though.) However, there's a gruesome tale of how once people moved in, everyone in the house died in the space of one night, all being found frozen to death. The two hear drumbeats from inside, and see phantom figures, and flee the scene. Time passes.

Later, a family buys the house, and Lewis and Rose Rita befriend the son, David Keller, who has a speech impediment. (Which is handled nicely, and Lewis and Rose are actually realistically sympathetic.) But the family has problems; they never get a decent night's sleep, and dream of drums and phantom figures. David has a haunted aspect about him, and when Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann manage to visit the house, they find weird emanations abounding.

I won't tell much more, but I was happy to see that there's no unnecessary secret-keeping, and the book's menaces are based on Hawaiian mythology, and it's all very nicely handled. In fact, I'd say that while the writing in this isn't brilliant, at the same time it's one of the best structured stories that Strickland had done for the Barnavelt series. I came away without any issues regarding continuity or plot lapses. It may not be art, but it's damned good craft.

So, a solid late entry for the Barnavelt saga, worth reading.

NOT EXACTLY GHOSTS by Sir Andrew Caldecott

"Well, if they're not exactly ghosts, what are they?" I hear you say. To which I reply, "Shut up, smartass, and let me continue with the review."

This is actually a collection of two book, both short story collections, Not Exactly Ghosts and Fires Burn Blue. Andrew Caldecott (1884-1951), the author, was a British colonial administrator who served first in Malaya, then was briefly the governor of Hong Kong, then the governor of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). He retired from service in 1944 and returned to England, living there until his death.

I have to point all this out because his colonial experience comes into play in the stories. About a third of the stories in this book are set in the fictional country of Kongea, which seems to function as an amalgam of Malaya and Ceylon, with dashes of Hong Kong.

His stories are ghost stories, but are rather laid-back in their horrors. They're disquieting rather than terrifying, and sometimes the horrors are mundane in nature. Many have bad people meeting poetic justice by some supernatural agency; a notable one is "Sonata in D Minor," which has an interesting plot device: a recording of a (real) classical piece performed by a duo who hated each other with an insane fury, and which ended in murder. Listening to that particular recording drives men mad....and they do horrible things....

"The Pump in Thorp's Spinney" is one of the more mundane tales, of a curious boy encountering what he thinks is a ghost when he investigates an abandoned pump on an isolated farm. It's only years later that he learns the macabre truth.

His Kongean tales are the most interesting. "Light in the Darkness", the first, has an overzealous missionary going to a sacred cave and trying to discredit local beliefs by showing that a magic glow is merely a luminous mold....only to fall victim to a weird curse. It's got a "respect-the-locals" undercurrent, but also shows a sort of more progressive Kipling element by depicting Westerners in a foreign land, basically occupying it, and running afoul of a culture and traditions that they don't understand. And through them all he seems to be asking...."Do we really belong here?"

It's interesting, seeing someone who came from the colonial, white-man's-burden, to-strive-to-seek-to-find-and-not-to-yield, Victorian/Edwardian mindset seemingly questioning why they're there. Some of his Kongea stories reflect that the "civilization" that Westerners are imposing is merely a veneer that will fall off the minute they relax...and reading between the lines, I got a sense of him feeling, well, maybe we should let it fall off and get the hell out of there. Kongea is seen as a land of weird secrets and mysteries, and Westerners interfere with them at their peril.

Not Exactly Ghosts is not quite Required Reading, and hardly a horror classic, but it does represent an interesting side-road of the macabre, should you come across it in your travels.

Tales of Hoffmann: Automata

"Automata" gives us Hoffmann in what appears to be an experimental mood, and not always succeeding. The story is in several parts, and it can seem as if the parts are greater than the whole.

It opens with the narrator going to visit his friend Vincent who's having a storytelling session. An attendee, named Cyprian (what a great name!) tells a memorably unsettling tale of a haunting which leaves people so traumatized that a teenaged girl is driven mad and now thinks she's a ghost. Some editors have cut that part from the story, and it's good enough to stand on its own, and has no bearing on the rest of the story.

Then another attendee, Theodore (maybe supposed to be Hoffmann himself?) tells a tale of the Talking Turk, a famous touring automaton which is very obviously based on the famous chess-playing Turk (pictured above) which I've written about before.

However, this Turk answers questions in a very macabre manner, and the story is of someone who asks a question, and gets a strange answer, and all sorts of twists and turns of fate that result. The automaton really doesn't play that big a role in the story, and it's more of romance and betrayal and fate...and then it just stops. Little is resolved, plot threads are left hanging, and the automaton's nature is unrevealed.

It's puzzling. The title really comes across as a misnomer. The structure is a bit odd and disjointed. The main story has no real ending and is unresolved.

But...given some thought, and a lot of this is coming to me as I write this, I wonder if this was meant to duplicate the experience of friends getting together and telling stories. Stuff just comes out, and sometimes an intriguing story just peters out because the person telling it doesn't know how it ends, or maybe, as so often in real life, things do just peter out unresolved.

So instead of an botched attempt at a weird tale, this could very well be a bold and experimental tale that prefigures postmodern literature. Damn, that Hoffmann was something else.

More Tales of Hoffmann coming soon!

COUCHING AT THE DOOR by D. K. Broster

Dorothy Kathleen Broster (1878-1950) was best known as a historical novelist, if she was known at all. Her work is largely forgotten today and didn't seem to make much of an impact at the time. However, she published a collection of macabre short stories in 1942, Couching at the Door, which for a very long time was a very expensive and hard-to-find collector's item. Now, thanks to the good people at Wordsworth, it is now back in print.

These stories aren't very antiquarian or Jamesian, but they are interesting and sometimes surprisingly original. They depend a lot on psychology and at times are strongly reminiscent of Ruth Rendell, especially as some of the stories aren't really supernatural, but deal more in a Rendell-like psychological vein when you see a hideous act about to take place.

It's a slim volume, just under 200 pages, and there's only nine stories. The title story is regarded as a minor classic, in which a man who was a long seeker of sensual delights (with hints at participation in black magic), who is haunted by a ghostly feather boa. It seems an almost absurd premise, but there's real menace as the thing keeps showing up, and you can assume it's a spiritual relic of some woman whose death the man was responsible for. He tries to shift the burden to others, and tries to escape, but it always tracks him down. It's a chilling, effective story, all the better for a fresh discovery and not anthologized to death. Familiarity does breed contempt.

"From the Abyss" deals with spiritual doubles and predestined doom, and "Clairvoyance" is a very interesting story of a psychic experiment with a Japanese katana...and how the savage personality of the katana's previous owner takes over the mind of the experimenter.

"The Window" is a fairly standard romantic tale of haunting resolved by modern sensitivity. "The Pestering" starts off slow, with a couple purchasing an old home, making a tea-room of it, and being annoyed by a persistent ghost who shows up, trying to get in...but it takes a very dark and macabre black-magic twist at the end that almost makes up for the slowness of all that came before. It's a tale that's far longer than it needs to be and the payoff at the end is almost too late. "The Taste of Pomegranates" is a rather romantic tale of time-slippage.

There's some nonsupernatural tales included..."The Pavement" is a twisted psychological tale of a woman's obsession with a Roman mosaic located on her property, and her sense of stewardship toward it. "Juggernaut" tells a tale of a pusher of wheelchairs at a seaside resort who is haunted by the guilt of a dreadful act he committed. "The Promised Land" is probably her best, a tale of a woman dominated by an overbearing cousin, who finally takes a dream vacation to Italy, only to be still bossed around. It has a classic theme of a woman's desire for self-determination, but there's the conflict with the reality that she's not equipped to deal with things on her own.

This collection has its ups and downs. Some stories, like "The Pestering" and "Juggernaut," are longer than they need to be and sometimes meander unnecessarily. Some are unremarkable and standard, like "The Window" and "The Taste of Pomegranates." But the title story alone is worth the purchase price, and "The Promised Land" is also quite good.

So, it's up to you. Thankfully, it's back in print after being obscure and lost for too long.

SLEEP NO MORE by L. T. C. Rolt

L. T. C. Rolt (1910-1974) is one of those lesser-known writers you wish more people knew about. His ghost stories were a minor part of his literary output; his efforts were mostly spent in writing about waterways, railroads, cars, biographies of civil engineers, industrial history, and travel, and he was a promoter of leisure cruising in Britain's inland waterways. According to some he was also notable early on for his "green" philosophy. He seems like he was quite a guy.

Sleep No More (published 1948) is interesting as many of the stories eschew the usual manor houses and crumbling churches of M. R. James and his school, but embracing Britain's industrial and transit landscape, which makes him a somewhat different voice in the field of English ghost stories.

So, to give you an overview...

"The Mine" tells of subterranean horrors in a lead mine; brief, but with a punch. "The Cat Returns" is lacking punch, being a fairly standard tale of ghostly appearances with a final "surprise." "Bosworth Summit Pound" has a haunting on a ghostly stretch of canal.

"New Corner" is interesting in that it's a ghost story built around auto racing, with a strange series of accidents happening at a newly-developed turning in a racecourse. "Cwm Garon" is the longest tale of the bunch, the most literary, and the most abstract...but at the same time, fascinating. A man visits an isolated Welsh valley and becomes entranced by its beauty, but also feels a sneaking suspicion of some lurking evil in the landscape. It's a great example of the subgenre of "landscape horror" where it's not really an evil house or specific structure, but the land itself that radiates menace.

"A Visitor at Ashcombe" is probably the most Jamesian of the stories, with a nasty haunting in a rural manor house, purchased by a nouveau riche industrialist. "The Garside Fell Disaster" is a cracker, with a railroad accident and hints of an ancient evil in an isolated train tunnel. "World's End" is a brief tale of premonition and death.

"Hear Not My Steps" is extremely brief, a tale of a haunting, but also seems too brief, as if it's an unfinished fragment thrown in to fill out the collection. Or perhaps it's an experiment in the form. This is more horror fiction than ghost story, really. "Agony of Flame" is a tale of a haunting in an Irish castle, but is very interesting for being very traditionally Jamesian in content but also kicking off with a reference to the atom bomb and Bikini Atoll, setting the tale squarely in a post-WWII world.

"Hawley Bank Foundry" is probably the best example of Rolt's style and fascinations, as it deals with hauntings and unholy things in an old foundry re-opened for war work, and is in the halfway mark of the shift from the pre-war "antiquarian" school of ghost story and the post-war "visionary" school of ghost and horror fiction.

"Music Hath Charms" is also an excellent story that tweaks the form. It's got an old house and antiquarian content, with an antique music box having connections with sorcery and possession, but the story structure is much more modern. "The Shouting" is more landscape horror, with ancient evil suffusing the very land itself. The final story, "The House of Vengeance," is well-done enough but a standard story of ghosts replaying a violent scene.

So there you have it. An interesting and fairly unusual voice in ghost fiction, and also in some ways a transitional figure as proper and civilized ghosts of the Victorian and Edwardian period gave way to the more abstract terrors of the postwar era. His deft touch with industrial settings and for landscape horror make this volume (his only supernatural work) a worthy addition to one's library. I wonder about his other works, but they may be hard to get hold of here in the U.S.; I'll have to see.

I read a nice paperback edition from The History Press, now out of print, but the lovely folks at Ash-Tree Press have a very reasonably priced ebook version available.

IN GHOSTLY COMPANY by Amyas Northcote

Amyas Northcote (1864-1923) is an author about whom little is known despite the usual biographical details. Born in England, emigrated to the US in 20s where he was a businessman in Chicago, then returned to England in 1900, eventually becoming a justice of the peace in Buckinghamshire. This, his sole volume of stories and the only writing he seems to have ever done, came out in 1921, and he died 18 months later. No other writings seem to have been found after his death. Not much is really known of his life, or what he did for a living, or what his thoughts and passions were, or why he decided to write ghost stories. But that being said, his stories are pretty darned good.

First in this edition is the oft-anthologized "Brickett Bottom," a famously unsettling tale of a house that isn't there and disappearances. You'll find it in a lot of "best-ever" or "haunted-house" anthologies, and I've heard it dramatized for radio. It's a remarkably dark, bleak story, and relentlessly macabre. In other words, you HAVE to read it.

Others follow some more of the standard fare. "Mr. Kershaw and Mr. Wilcox" is of a psychic dream. "The Late Earl of D." follows a ghostly re-enactment of a murder. "Mr. Mortimer's Diary" tells of a man hounded by the spirit of someone he deeply wronged. "The House in the Wood" is a very, very standard tale of a child's ghost warning a parent of danger. "The Young Lady in Black" is also very, very standard, of a ghost that returns to fulfill a promise. "The Governess' Story" recounts an auditory haunting that replays a despondent teen's suicide.

However, there are some others that stand out, at least for me.

"In the Woods" is a dark, unsettling tale of a lonely teenage girl who explores the forests on her own, only to find herself under the spell of the resident nature spirits. It's rather Machenesque, and blends Victorian whimsy with dark menace. There's no real plot; it's almost a lengthy vignette, with no real resolution. But it's darn good and worthy of more attention.

"The Steps" concerns itself with a wealthy society girl who turns down a soldier's marriage proposal, twice. He swears to have her, and then is called into action and dies. His steps haunt her and hound her. It's standard stuff, except for its nastiness. The soldier is never depicted as being all that evil or forceful; he's a lonely man, deeply infatuated, and thwarted in love. The girl is never depicted as terribly nasty either, just a normal girl of her class. So her ghostly persecution is not that of a deserved revenge on a heartless person, or even of a psychotic stalker and innocent victim. It has more the feel of a random bit of spectral evil that just happens to happen...and thus is very chilling.

Two stories, "The Downs" and "The Late Mrs. Fowke," are very folkloric. "The Downs" has a man walking across a stretch of land on a night when the spirits of those who died there walk...and it's strange and hallucinatory. "The Late Mrs. Fowke" concerns a clergyman who discovers his wife has dealings with Old Nick. Both have a strong rural atmosphere and are quite fun.

Northcote's stories are generally set in England or America, but "The Picture" is set in Hungary. It's not a great tale, but it is full of menace, where a girl does one of those silly rituals to see the face of her future husband, and later finds that face on a decades-old portrait hanging in a local castle. It has a macabre end, to be sure, but it's never clearly explained WHY it happens, which makes it all the more unsettling.

The last story is also a bit different. "Mr. Oliver Carmichael" is not really a ghost story, but a tale of occultism. A man has a chance meeting with a woman who seems to recognize him, and who takes a malicious interest in him. It turns out she's the reincarnation of a soul that was knit to his, and while his rose to light and goodness, hers sank to evil and darkness. It's actually not a very good story; very little happens. It's quite a bit of buildup and no payoff. But it's interesting because it's got that didactic tone that you normally find in stories written by True Believers, and it makes me wonder if perhaps Northcote had been fascinated by that sort of thing, and if that had something to do with his decision to write ghost stories. Unfortunately I can only conjecture.

This is a handsome, slim paperback from Wordsworth, and with a nice introduction by David Stuart Davies. It's worth picking up if you come across it.

A facsimile of the original dust jacket.

TALES FROM A GAS-LIT GRAVEYARD, edited by Hugh Lamb

Hugh Lamb was a great anthologist and literary historian, and he dug up quite a few previously unknown stories that have now become standards in anthologies and are studied by scholars and students. His many anthologies of Victorian ghost stories are almost required reading among fans of supernatural fiction.

So, let's run through the contents...

"The Haunted Station" is a great story of a haunted hut in the Australian outback, written by Hume Nisbet. It's a gloriously evocative and eerie tale, where the scenery of the outback is as menacing and ghostly as the hauntings themselves. Although the haunting is fairly standard, it's well-written enough to be worth reading on its own.

"The Hour and the Man" is a conte cruel by Robert Barr, reminiscent of "The Torture by Hope" by Villiers de L'Isle Adam. "Nut Bush Farm" by Mrs. Riddell is an OK haunted-house story, centering on a theft and unsolved disappearance. J. H. Pearce's "The Man Who Coined His Blood into Gold" is an interesting folk tale/dark fantasy/adult fairy tale that is unusual for the period; unfortunately, its avant-garde nature probably cost Pearce any fame. Not much is known of him today and his work remains obscure.

Next up is two short-shorts by Lady Dilke, who was involved in a scandal that rocked the Victorian age, and of course is almost forgotten now. "The Shrine of Death" and "The Black Veil" are very Gothic, and seem almost old-fashioned compared to the other stories here. Ambrose Bierce's "The Ways of Ghosts" is a collection of brief essays about ghostly phenomena, in his typical style, always dry and mordantly witty.

"The Fever Queen" by K. and H. Prichard is more of dark irony than ghosts; the same with W. C. Morrow's "The Permanent Stiletto." The former is of an artist who vanishes after his greatest work is a flop...but later it's acclaimed as a masterpiece. The latter is of a man seeking treatment after a murder attempt...and of the fear that leads to his eventual fate.

Richard Marsh's "The Houseboat" is a straightforward tale of a haunted craft and an investigation that leads to its resolution. It's good fun, vividly told. "Dame Inowslad" by R. Murray Gilchrist, one of the Decadents, is a good cruel tale of supernatural vengeance...or is it otherworldly fulfillment? It's a masterful work, and Lamb was responsible for Gilchrist being revived and studied again.

Two fictionalized Spanish legends, "The Mountain of Spirits" and "The Golden Bracelet," are by Gustavo Adolfo Becquer, and are a pleasant dash of dark folkloric fantasy. "The Tyburn Ghost" by The Countess of Munster is a very nicely grisly short piece that prefigures some of Elliott O'Donnell's "true" ghost stories.

"Remorseless Vengeance" by Guy Boothby is a cruel little tale from another specialist in Victorian Australia. And the volume is ended with two tales from Bernard Capes. First is "The Green Bottle" which is a pleasantly vivid story of a soul trapped in a bottle. And finally is the now anthologized-almost-to-death "An Eddy on the Floor," which is hardly worth going into as everyone's read it.

There really isn't a bad story in the bunch; every one is worth reading in one way or another. I really liked "The Haunted Station", "The Houseboat," "Dame Inowslad," and "The Tyburn Ghost," and I will keep this handy to refer to them from time to time. This is still in print, both in physical editions and as an ebook. Go get it now.

A MIRROR OF SHALLOTT by R. H. Benson

Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914) was one of the three Benson brothers who wrote ghost stories. The others were Edward Frederic Benson (or E.F.), of Mapp & Lucia fame, and Arthur Christopher, or A.C., Benson. It's also interesting as Edward and Arthur were both very likely gay (not with each other!), and Robert probably was as well, having an intense "bromance" or "romantic friendship" with another man and never marrying. Their father was an Archbishop of Canterbury and their mother was undoubtedly bisexual, known as "Ben" and setting up housekeeping with another woman after her husband's death.

R. H. Benson was a priest in the Anglican church but had a crisis of faith and ended up converting to Catholicism in 1903. He became a priest and also a noted author of the time, although aside from his ghost stories he's largely forgotten today.

A Mirror of Shallott is very, very obviously written by a fervent Catholic, which makes sense as it was published in 1904, a year after his conversion. There's a sort of "born-again Catholic" intensity in this book which is occasionally off-putting. The title is a reference to a Tennyson poem, in which a woman under a curse cannot actually look at the world, but only view it through a mirror. One wonders what sort of reference Benson was making with this...is this a mirror that shows the weird part of the world? Or is it a reference to Catholic priesthood being apart from the world?

The framing device of this collection of short stories is a conference of Catholic clergy, each recounting their adventures with the unknown. And they're not really always ghosts. This is often closer to be a collection of miracle stories rather than actual ghosts, and some are brief and not well resolved.

Monsignor Maxwell tells a tale of a pious man who fears for his brother who is deserting the faith, and eventually dies faithless himself, and possibly possessed. Father Meuron tells of an exorcism where a plate of food turns to worms before his eyes. Father Brent has an encounter with a young boy who may be having prophetic dreams, or visions of the past.

The Father Rector recounts a meeting with an artists whose salvation comes at the expense of his inspiration and talent. (Hardly inspiring!) Father Girdlestone's lengthy tale is of meeting evil spirits in the moors. Father Bianchi's was interesting to me, in which an elderly woman thinks she's having visions of a church's patron saint, but it's really a pagan god over whose temple the church was built. (The story is unresolved, a rather interesting take for such intense faith.) Father Jenks...well, his story rambles and didn't have any impact. Something about a possible ghost and a woman who might be turning her house over to the church.

I could recount more, but you get the idea. Every story has to do with a Catholic priests' work, and all have spiritual implications and sometimes are very moralistic. The final story is of a house haunted by an inexplicable emptiness..."Like a Catholic cathedral in Protestant hands," it's described, which sums up this book's prejudices rather succinctly.

There are print editions out there, but also cheap electronic versions for your Kindle or other e-reader. This isn't very highly recommended, unless you're intensely Catholic, or a Benson Brothers completist, or perhaps simply fascinated by issues of faith in supernatural fiction. The general public might get bogged down by the religiosity so be warned.

THE HOUND OF DEATH by Agatha Christie

"Oh jeez, is he going to start reviewing Christie? Is this turning into another Poirot-worship blog?" I hear you screaming.

Well, I like Poirot, but there's enough about him on the 'net to let other people pick up the slack. I'm not wild for Miss Marple. However, there's some less-known Christie that I'll tackle from time to time.

The Hound of Death is very atypical Christie. It's a short story collection, and while some of it is the usual Christie mystery plotting, mostly it's a departure as it deals with ghosts and psychic phenomena. This is Christie taking a stab at horror writing!

The title story is a very interesting tale of a man's encounter with a traumatized nun from Belgium, a refugee from WWI under the care of a psychologist. The nun has strange memories and appears to have psychic powers. She is telepathic and has visions of a remote "city of circles" which far too many critics maintain is supposed to be a city in the far future, but is very, very, very obviously supposed to be Atlantis. The psychologist wants to tap her hidden power, an ability to call down immense destruction, which she apparently used on a German battalion that attacked her convent; the battalion was destroyed, but so was the convent, leaving her the only survivor...and the wreckage is in the odd shape of a hound...

"The Hound of Death" is odd, somewhat unsatisfying, but at the same time very bloody intriguing.

"The Red Signal" is a tale of twisted emotions and semipsychic warnings. "The Fourth Man" tells of possession...or is it madness? Is a young girl the victim of multiple personalities, or has she been possessed? "The Gipsy" is a very standard tale of love denied and true lovers being united in death.

"The Lamp" is also a rather standard ghost story, but with an added element of a person's deliberate self-sacrifice to bring aid to a lost soul. "Wireless" is a nasty twist tale of a murder plot that ends up going hideously awry, and I found rather reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith or Ruth Rendell. "The Witness for the Prosecution" is obviously the basis of the famous play and movie, and little needs to be said about it other than the ending is a bit different. "The Mystery of the Blue Jar" starts off as a rather eerie ghost story...but ends up something else entirely. "The Strange Case of Sir Arthur Carmichael" is more supernatural hijinx with hints of witchcraft, as a man suddenly seems to develop the personality of a cat.

"The Call of Wings" isn't mystery or supernatural, just a tale of spiritual awakening and self-sacrifice. "The Last Seance" is a harrowing tale of spiritualism, in which a desperate women confronts a medium...whose powers may be real, and may be someone's undoing. The final story, "SOS," is a cute little mystery with overtones of the eerie but all rather mundane at the core.

How is it overall? As with any anthology, it has ups and downs. Some stories left me cold, like "SOS" and "The Call of Wings." Nobody can argue that "The Witness for the Prosecution" is a classic; it is. "The Hound of Death" is an intriguing tale with elements I may incorporate into a role-playing game, perhaps. (Yes, I said it.) And I truly loved "The Mystery of the Blue Jar" and "The Last Seance."

Christie was a great technician when it came to plots, but she wasn't always a great stylist. (Exception: The Hollow. Look for it.) She wasn't always great at creating atmosphere, at least in her earlier work. Sometimes in her later years she was good at it. (The stories were written mostly in the '20s, and the collection published in 1933. I found a reference claiming that "The Call of Wings" was one of the first things Christie ever wrote.)

It's actually a little difficult to get this in a physical edition; most of the stories here were republished in other anthologies, but a straight reprint with the stories in original order is hard to find. But it is available electronically; I got the ebook edition from Amazon and it's probably not horribly long until it's in public domain as some of Christie's early work already is.

Worth reading for Christie fans; general fans of supernatural and gothicism might be interested.

The House of Lost Souls by F. G. Cottam

So I got this from the library recently, after Amazon recommended some Cottam works to me. It's pretty interesting.

Set in 1995, The House of Lost Souls is the story of Paul Seaton, a disgraced former journalist who's flailing through life fighting constant despair, and assailed by occasional supernatural hijinks, including a tape player that turns itself on, playing the same song. He's contacted by psychiatrist Malcolm Covey and the mysterious Nick Mason, and asked to join a trip to Fischer House.

It turns out that House is a bit of a cousin to Matheson's Hell House, in that Seaton is the only person to ever visit the house and survive. Mason's sister was part of a college experiment in studying the nature of evil and is now in a mental hospital, in danger of going insane. Mason has been having supernatural visions and wants to get to the bottom of it all. What is it in Fischer House that's causing this?

Much of the novel is spent in a flashback to Seaton's first trip there; he's researching Pandora Gibson-Hoare, a 20's photographer who visited the house with a party including Dennis Wheatley, Aleister Crowley, and Hermann Goring. And something horrible went down there, something that left Gibson-Hoare unable to do more work and somehow led to her death in a canal a decade later, malnourished and with her throat slashed. The diary entries that describe her adventures are very atmospheric and one of the best parts of the book. Seaton, thinking he can find some lost photos of hers in the house (he's doing this as a favor to his girlfriend), explores the derelict building, but barely escapes with his life, pursued by some sort of invisible monster.

Seaton eventually has a breakdown, suffers multiple losses, and lives a haunted life until he finally confronts the evil in the house, and puts a tragedy to rest.

How is it? Overall, quite enjoyable, but flawed. The historic sections depicting the decadent roaring 20s party are great, and Seaton's torment is palpable and realistic. However, much is made of some characters who disappear from the narrative, the reasoning behind some of the haunting is vague and strange, and the finale seems rushed with a solution brought in out of nowhere and seeming a bit deus ex machina.

So, read it? Yeah, I'd recommend it, because the good outweighs the bad. And it was Cottam's first novel, so I'm willing to cut him some slack. Just look past the hurried ending and you'll have a good time.

TALES OF MOONLIGHT AND RAIN by Uyeda Akinari

J-horror was everywhere for a while, and is still an influence, so it's good to look back on some of the sources of it.

Ugetsu Monogatari (translated as Tales of Moonlight and Rain) was first published in a woodblock print in 1776, although it appears to have been complete in 1768 and in the works since 1770. The actual cause of the eight-year gap is unknown and still debated today. It depicts both the yokai (monsters and demons) and yurei (ghosts) of Japanese lore, and is a great read, although some stories aren't all that great.

First up is "Homecoming," in which a man goes on a long trip hoping to make a profit from a business deal, but is kept away from his wife for several years by a war. He eventually makes it home, spends a cozy night with the wife, and wakens alone in a dilapidated ruin. Turns out she's dead, and was waiting for a final reunion. "Bewitched" concerns young Toyo-o who encounters a lovely woman and proceeds to romance her, eventually discovering she's a malicious cobra spirit who will not leave him alone. Almost a case of supernatural stalking.

"Exiled" concerns itself with the conversation between a holy man and the spirit of a former emperor, who has now become a demonlike spirit. "Birdcall" is about a father and son who visit a mountaintop shrine who encounter an army of spirits. "Prophesy" is the most vicious of the tales; a faithless husband is stalked by the insane spirit of his abandoned wife, who won't rest until he pays for his sins against her.

"Reunion" is a tale of loyalty between friends, with one friend making a spectral appearance and the other seeking to right a wrong. "Daydream" is a sort of morality tale in which a holy man has an out-of-body experience and inhabits the body of a fish. "Demon" is interesting, the tale of a priest whose passion for a young acolyte drives him to madness and cannibalism, transforming him into a monster (a sort of gay wendigo), and who is finally redeemed because of a holy man. "Wealth" is a bit of a clinker, an extended conversation between a miser and the spirit of Wealth.

The version I read, borrowed from a local library, is a 1972 edition from Columbia University Press, and contains some of the original woodblock illustrations which lends an air of authenticity to it all. The stories are all based on real Japanese folklore and reference historic events, so you may end up running to do some research as you read. And two of the stories were used to make the 1953 film Ugetsu, now regarded as a masterpiece of Japanese cinema. (It also uses a story by Guy de Maupassant.)

Hunt this down; there are versions in print and it's worth reading for horror fans and those fascinated by Asian culture.

THE SCREAMING SKULLS by Elliott O'Donnell

Elliott O'Donnell is known today as a ghost-hunter; apparently in his day he was a journalist with a strong interest in ghosts and the occult, and he wrote a number of books on the subject.

This one is a collection of short stories describing various "true" hauntings that he'd investigated first-hand or otherwise researched in some way. While I seriously doubt any of them are really true, it's still an entertaining read.

Each of the stories is brief, something that might make a reasonable magazine article, so there's not always a lot of background, but O'Donnell's journalist creds show through as he makes the most of what he writes. He doesn't waste much time on purple prose and long descriptions.

Some of the tales, like "The Screaming Skulls of Calgarth Hall," are little more than retellings of popular ghost stories. This is also true of "The Legend of Cooke's Folly", "The Phantom Drummer of Cortachy", and "Pearlin Jean of Allanbank." No real investigation going on there, except perhaps for him cracking open a book or listening to someone else's tales of the haunting.

Some are those he claims to have investigated personally. One of my favorite tales from the book, "The Grey Horror," actually takes place in the US, and tells of a grisly ghost that supposedly haunted a dreary location in the Hudson River valley. It's a sort of grey ghoul that rose from a reportedly bottomless pit to roam the valley at night, especially focusing its haunting energies on an abandoned house. Of course, by the end the pit is filled in and the haunting ends, with no real explanation other than that it must be some sort of infernal elemental.

Another good one, "The Phantom Clock of Portman Square," is naturally about a house haunted by the sound of a ghostly clock that strikes thirteen...and then strikes again to indicate the number of days before death strikes a member of the household. Another tenant claims that upon sleeping in a haunted chamber, he has a vivid dream of being taken down to a chamber deep underground, where he meets the spirits of others who met their deaths because of the clock, and all now under the sway of some sort of half-human, half-animal entity that is sheer and utter malignance.

That's one of the fun things about O'Donnell; his ghosts aren't just the spirits of the dead, but also spirits that were never alive, "elementals," forces of nature themselves. (In other works he classifies them; he gave the term "Vagrarian" to a sort of wandering nature-spirit, and I liked it so much I've adopted it as my online moniker.)

But O'Donnell's descriptions of hauntings are vivid and sometimes almost cinematic. Murders are re-enacted and ghosts take on bizarre forms. Sometimes it gets a bit repetitive; there's two cases of ghosts of women drowning their unwanted babies. But the titles of the articles/stories are all wonderfully lurid: "The London Villa of Ghostly Dread", "The Man in Boiling Lead," "Ghosts and Murder," and "The Castle Terrors" all promise enjoyable shudders.

It's a good for bedtime, for the commute, or even the bathroom. The short, compact stories all have good shudders. Just take 'em with a grain of salt...if even half these stories are true, then we live in a world overflowing with supernatural terrors. And I haven't seen 'em.

THE WEAVER AND THE FACTORY MAID by Deborah Grabien

I somehow found out about this author recently, and got the first in her series from interlibrary loan.

THE WEAVER AND THE FACTORY MAID is set in contemporary England. Hero Ringan Laine (folk musician and historic preservationist) receives a lovely cottage as payment for a restoration job, and upon moving in discover that the cottage, and a nearby barn (which Ringan hopes to convert to a studio) are haunted...and it turns out the specters are the subject of a ballad Ringan and his group have performed...

How is it? Well, Grabien's grasp of setting is great, and the ghostly scenes are ghostly enough, but overall...it left me cold. As a ghost story it's fairly average but as a mystery (which it's supposed to be) it's really flat. Much is spent on introducing the characters (which include his girlfriend Penny, who manages a theatrical troupe, and his benefactor, Albert) and describing the cottage and environment (near Glastonbury), and establishing the haunting, that there's not much real oomph. The characters don't succeed much in uncovering the ghosts' secret; in the end, the ghosts themselves tell the mortals who they are and how to put them to rest.

But for me, the biggest issue is that there's no plot in the mortal world to act as a counterpoint. Even a murder is revealed as solved the minute it's uncovered. Among my guilty pleasures are the gothic romantic suspense works of Barbara Michaels, and she always has some sort of human drama going along with the ghost story, whether it's solving a murder or other crime, or simply negotiating a rocky path to romance. That's something that's lacking here. Laying the ghosts is hardly essential; Grabien presents them as being more nuisances than actually menacing. It would have been more pressing if the ghosts had been possessing people, or if the real murderer remained to be discovered. There's no Big Secret to be uncovered here, no threat to the living to be dealt with.

However, it seems this did successfully kick off a series, and I'm sufficiently intrigued to be motivated to check out the others. Given some more fleshing-out of the stories, this could be a fun series. (There's five of them, and Grabien appears to have moved on as the last one came out in 2007.) So in the future I'll be checking them out...

MONSIEUR MAURICE by Amelia B. Edwards

The very name of "Amelia B. Edwards" summons up an image of a prim Victorian lady, and the above photo kinda reinforces that idea. However, it seems she was quite an interesting lady. Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards (1831-1892) was a novelist, poet, journalist, suffragette, travel writer, amateur archaeologist, and passionate advocate for the preservation of Egyptian monuments. She published her first full-length novel at the age of 24, and in 1864 scored a big success with BARBARA'S STORY, a tale of bigamy, and later with 1880's LORD BRACKENBURY, her last novel, that was a runaway bestseller.

She was well-regarded in her time as a social and domestic novelist, but of her fiction, her ghost stories are the most remembered works these days. And gives us the third of Bleiler's collection, FIVE VICTORIAN GHOST NOVELS, although MONSIEUR MAURICE is really more of a novella, or extended short story, than a real novel.

Edwards' work as a domestic novelist shows in this. It's narrated by Gretchen Bernhard, in a flashback back to when she was six years old, shuttling from an unlikable aunt in Nuremberg to living with her father, an official at the Electoral Residenz at Bruhl in 1819. There, in the midst of the Napoleonic wars, she becomes friends with a civilized prisoner there, the gentleman of the title. He's actually a very nice man, a polymath who's knowledgeable about the arts and sciences (his furniture includes a telescope and microscope), and serves as a sort of tutor to the girl. As years pass, there's an escape attempt, and then a poisoning attempt following the revelation of a plot, and both times Maurice's life is saved by the ghost of a faithful Indian servant. Eventually, the Elector uncovers that his imprisonment was wrongful, and he is released.

Sounds rather blah, but Edwards gives it enough detail and charm to be entertaining without being overly cloying. The story of Gretchen's friendship with the French prisoner is actually fairly pleasant reading, but one does get impatient for the supernatural content...and when it shows up, it's blink-and-you'll-miss-it, which is the problem. Being part of a collection of "Victorian ghost novels," one expects more ghosts. There's not much of a presence of the supernatural here; it just shows up when it's needed, and life gets back to normal. MONSIEUR MAURICE is probably the most stereotypically Victorian of the novels here, with its ordered content and the ordered lives of its protagonists.

So it's not great as a horror story, but works as a pleasant kindasorta coming-of-age tale with guest appearances by a ghost.

Edwards, however, got more interesting. Shortly after publishing MONSIEUR MAURICE in 1873, she embarked on a tour of Egypt, which resulted in her bestselling travel book A THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE, and Edwards devoted the rest of her life and work to Egyptology, receiving three honorary degrees and endowing England's first chair in Egyptology, which appropriately went to her friend, Flinders Petrie, who defended her when she was being edged out of archaeology by sexism. And in the late 20th century, she inspired Elizabeth Peters' lady archaeologist, Amelia Peabody.

Edwards never married, and did her traveling with a female companion. (Can't help but wonder...) She actually made enough from her writing to be self-sufficient after her parents' deaths, so she didn't need to marry, but still, makes me a bit curious.

Anyway, MONSIEUR MAURICE is an OK story, but the story of its author is fascinating.

THE BEST GHOST STORIES OF H. RUSSELL WAKEFIELD

Sorry for the long break. I've had a wild month...work pressures, the death of an aunt, and the back-to-back blizzards that hit the DC area that caused the work pressures to get even worse. And I'm reading a lot of random stuff that doesn't quite qualify for this blog, and doing some other writing here and there.

So...anyway...getting back to Wakefield.

This collection, from Academy Chicago, is a great sampling of Wakefield, and far better than the collection I reviewed earlier. It's got a brief biographical note at the beginning, and samples work from various stages of Wakefield's career.

It opens with his first published story, "The Red House," which is reportedly based on a real-life haunting. It's basically a chronicle of a family that rents the titular house, only to slowly fall prey to the ghosts that haunt it. This story pretty much sets forth a lot of Wakefield's themes...the supernatural that is not easily categorized and understood, and that is rarely defeated. Often, in Wakefield's stories, the supernatural evils win at the end, or else the main characters are lucky to escape with their lives. The ending of "The Red Lodge" is a great, memorable thump that will linger in the reader's mind. It's no surprise this is regarded as his best work and is frequently anthologized.

"He Cometh and He Passeth By" is a kissing cousin to M. R. James' classic "Casting the Runes," both of which have a central character locked in a black-magic struggle with a Crowleyesque figure. This time, it's the oddly-named Oscar Clinton, who has a habit of using sorcery to kill anyone who gets in his way, even in minor ways. The main weakness in reading this today is that Wakefield's either too prudish or too snobbish to really hint that much at Clinton's depradations. He takes drugs, and at one point makes an offhand remark about how his practices may require him to "sleep with a Negress." The shock! The horror! Is that as far as it goes? I guess perhaps that would have been disturbing at one point, but not anymore. Of course, he's dealt with using the same principles as how M. R. James dealt with his Karswell, and it's hard not to see the inspiration.

"Professor Pownall's Oversight" is a rather average tale of ghostly revenge...until the closing pages which put an entirely different aspect on it and give it a nice ambiguity that's rather inventive. Next is a longtime favorite of mine, "The Seventeenth Hole at Duncaster." The manager of a seaside golf course deals with a series of gruesome deaths at the newly-developed seventeenth hole, that may be the result of an ancient evil that's been disturbed. A touch I really liked is how the main character has dreams that announce the deaths...he hears a tolling bell, then an evil voice announcing, "Sacred to the name of Cyril Ward, who screamed once in Blood Wood," and then is followed by "a discordant chorus of vile and bestial laughter." No reason is given for the premonitions, they just happen, which I found to be marvelously unsettling. (I first read this decades ago, in an Arkham House anthology entitled WHO KNOCKS?, and illustrated by Lee Brown Coye.)

The next two, "Look Up There" and "Blind Man's Buff," both cover haunted-house territory. Again, it's never specified what's haunting these houses, or why. They're simply haunted by something incredibly evil that you simply need to stay away from, period. "Look Up There" tells us a tale as a flashback from a traumatized survivor of a ghostly holocaust in an evil mansion. "Blind Man's Buff" is basically the arrogant citified owner of a country house being confronted by the forces that inhabit it.

"Day-Dream in Macedon" is a wartime tale of psychic visions and presentiments. "Damp Sheets" demonstrates Wakefield starting to sink into a pattern, a nasty person being the victim of ghostly revenge; in this case, a ruthless woman who murdered her husband's wealthy uncle.

"A Black Solitude" is a return to haunted-mansion territory, but is a cut above because Wakefield gives his narrator real personality. Told by a staffer for a nouveau riche businessman, managing the stately home he purchased, it's a usual tale of a haunted room, with hints of black magic practiced in ages past. And interestingly, it includes another Crowleyesque figure, although this time actually well-meaning and sympathetic. It's resolved a bit too quickly but also throws in some wartime realities that give it a bit of oomph.

"The Triumph of Death" is quite nasty, in which a malignant woman tortures her servant by forcing her to deal with the ghosts in her house...but there's no real motivation other that just hatefulness. "A Kink in Space-Time" is a variation on the doppelganger formula, and "The Gorge of the Churels" is a Wakefield rarity, an almost charming, Kiplingesque story of Brits in India who take a native servant along to mind their child while on a picnic in a haunted location. And, of course, it's the Wise Native and the Ignorant Imperialists, but ends happily. It's also rare for having a supernatural force that's clearly defined and understood.

"Immortal Bird" is more supernatural revenge, but interestingly presented as diary entries from a man who might have committed murder...or else the ghost thinks he did. Or else he's just going insane. The last story, "Death of a Bumble-Bee," is also probably the last story Wakefield ever wrote. One of the few undestroyed stories found after his death, it's really not very good. The wife of a wealthy publisher is having visions of a ticking bomb under her house. Is it the curse of a man whom she rejected? Or is she aware of an unexploded bomb from the war, forgotten under the house? Does it matter? Far too much of it is spent on mundane details of her comings and goings that it's hard to get caught up in it.

But, overall, this is a good sampling of Wakefield's work, and truly is some of his best stuff. It's out of print, but keep an eye open for it.

Holiday Cheer: CHILLERS FOR CHRISTMAS

Last year I read Dalby's GHOSTS FOR CHRISTMAS, so this year it's the follow-up, CHILLERS FOR CHRISTMAS. And I enjoyed this more than the first. GHOSTS had some great stories, but sometimes wandered too far into the touching/heartwarming/twee zone. CHILLERS, though, isn't as constrained and can go farther afield from strictly ghosts...although they're here, in abundance.

It's replete with supernatural terrors, of course, but there's also some more generalized supernatural terrors, as well as some plain thrillers and works of cruelty. And a couple of humorous stories to leaven it all.

So, to do the usual rundown...

"The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes" by Rudyard Kipling. A British soldier in India finds himself stranded, in the Christmas season, in an inescapable village, termed "the Village of the Dead." Apparently once there, always there, until the narrator seeks to find an escape. No supernatural terrors here, just a harrowing and grotesque situation.

"Christmas Eve on a Haunted Hulk" by Frank Cowper. Originally published in Blackwood's, this is one of their patented "predicament" tales in which a narrator finds themselves in a dangerous situation. (This was lampooned by Poe in "The Scythe of Time" and lived on in Reader's Digest as "Drama in Real Life.") The narrator, visiting a shore village at Christmastime, goes duck-hunting in the marshes and ends up stranded aboard a derelict ship as the tide rises and darkness falls. It's relentlessly atmospheric on those counts alone, but when eerie sounds start to replicate what seems to be a long-ago murder, it becomes a chilling classic. This tale is often anthologized, and is an effective little gem.

"The Phantom Riders" by Ernest Suffling, is a fun gothick tale of ghosts repeating a gruesome murder, and its aftermath. Amelia B. Edwards' "The Guard-Ship at the Aire" is another Predicament tale, this time of a man who is nearly killed by a rising tide while crossing a river delta. It's not just chance but human malice that got him on the wrong track, as is revealed in the tale, making this nastier than usual.

The authorship of "Horror: A True Tale" is debated, but it's a nasty tale of a girl who goes to her bedroom after a Christmas party, only to find herself the hostage of an escaped homicidal maniac. It's amusing, but the prose is undeniably purple and overwrought, making it rather unintentionally funny. "A Pipe of Mystery" by G. A. Henty tells of soldiers in India who do a good turn for a local mystic, and then receive psychic visions that save their bacon in the future. This isn't very Christmassy, but ekes through on a technicality: it's framed by a story of an aged man telling his young relatives a tale at a holiday party.

"On the Down Line" by George Manville Fenn is interesting, a Christmas railroad suspense story, with a possible ghost on a train. "An Exciting Christmas Eve" by A. Conan Doyle is a darkly humorous tale of a pompous expert in explosives who is kidnapped and made to lecture on bombs to a collection of anarchists.

Guy Boothby's "Remorseless Vengeance" is a nautical tale of spectral revenge, a bit different for its South Seas setting (Boothby was Australian). "The Vanishing House" by Bernard Capes is a minor classic, coming across almost as a folktale. A group of wandering musicians on Christmas Eve find themselves at a large house where a party seems to be taking place...but is it what it seems to be?

Dick Donovan's "The White Raven" is an odd mixture of Victorian piety and sentimentality with supernatural terrors. In fact, the supernatural elements of the story (a room haunted by a white raven that's an omen of disaster for anyone who sees it) is more of a plot device that allows Donovan to praise the narrator's idealized selflessness.

"The Strange Story of Northavon Priory" by F. Frankfort Moore (Bram Stoker's brother-in-law) is an OK tale of a house haunted by spirits of its diabolic past. "The Black Cat" by W. J. Wintle is a typical tale of the "person plagued by a spectral animal for no discernible reason" genre, although a fairly well-done example.

John Collier's "Back for Christmas" is a great sample of that author's talent for black comedy. An academic murders his hated wife and buries her in the basement just before a lecture tour abroad...only to be undone by a wry twist at the end. "A Christmas Story" by Sarban was my least favorite of the volume, a difficult-to-read tale that seemed to involve cannibalism, and maybe Yeti, but never really seems to go anywhere.

L. P. Hartley's "The Waits" explores the dark side of the holiday, as carolers turn out to be messengers from beyond, and they won't go until they get what they came for. And it ain't figgy pudding. Shamus Frazer's "Florinda" is another familiar formula, of a child's imaginary friend who may not be so imaginary, but it's got good atmosphere and a harrowing climax.

R. Chetwynd-Hayes' "The Hanging Tree" was a fairly muddled and unsatisfactory tale of a ghost that seeks to have a human body...maybe...and a woman who may be trying to help, or may only be a homicidal maniac. "The Grotto" by Alexander Welch is a good little tale of a weary department-store Santa who's visited by a child's ghost...but it avoids too much cutesiness with some genuine fear and a chilling end.

"Just Before Dawn" by Eugene Johnson is all about supernatural justice, as a down-and-out derelict reflects on the man who betrayed him and got away with it. "Buggane" by Peter Tremayne has some good folklore from the Isle of Man and some fairly harrowing ghosts seeking revenge.

"The Uninvited" by John Glasby is really a glorified EC Comics tale of a murderess being chased through her house by the reanimated corpses of her victims. A. J. Merak's "A Present for Christmas" (actually, Merak is Glasby) is much better, telling about a nasty spirit seeking to give a backhanded present, and a man's futile efforts to prevent the worst from happening.

Simon MacCulloch's "The Deliverer" has supernatural horrors as a country parson turns to darker practices. Roger Johnson's "The Night Before Christmas" is another tried-and-true genre, the repeated dream that is a sign of a terrifying fate, but again, it's a good example of that genre. And it was specially written for the collection.

Another exclusive tale, "On Wings of Song" by David G. Rowlands, tells of an amateur production of "Dracula" that leads to what appears to be attacks by an actual vampire. And ending the collection is a wonderful short chiller, "The Santa," by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, that explores the darker side of St. Nick.

Aside from a few clinkers, this was a superior collection, well-suited for fireside reading as cold winds blew outside. Get a copy and put it on your shelf for the next holiday season, folks. It's well worth it.

THE CLOCK STRIKES 12 by H. R. Wakefield

Actually, it's more like "stories from THE CLOCK STRIKES 12" since this paperback, despite the ultra-cool cover illustration (by an uncredited artist), is not the full text of Wakefield's 1940 collection, but "highlights", one supposes.

H. Russell Wakefield is one of the great giants of the traditional English ghost story, but this collection is not his best work; in fact, this marks the start of Wakefield's decline, when his work was marred by sadistic endings and trite revenge plots. And I have to say...few of the stories in this book are particularly memorable, although some have their moments.

So, to do a rundown...

"Into Outer Darkness" is the basic tale of two people spending a night in a haunted room and experiencing Horrible Things. It's hard for me to be thrilled by this because it's got the sort of ending that I've heard a million times before; I can't be sure if this was the first or what. But it doesn't seem fresh.

"The Alley" tells of how Vulgar Rich People buy an Old House With A Haunted Room, and then Horrible Things happen. Despite its clunky plot, I have to admit, it's got some moments of shuddersome atmosphere and the haunting is given an interesting backstory.

"Jay Walkers" isn't much of a story, more like a padded vignette about a haunted stretch of road, and an investigation into the backstory. Again, it has some moments of atmosphere, but that's about it.

"Ingredient X" has a gentleman of reduced circumstances renting a room in a boarding house that, of course, is haunted. Not terribly exciting or memorable.

"'I Recognized the Voice'" is a blah tale of psychic visions of murder. "Farewell Performance" is something that's now a familiar theme, a ventriloquist's dummy taking on a life of its own. Maybe original in its time, but after seeing a billion variations on the theme, it's not terribly interesting.

"In Collaboration" is a revenge tale of a writer who steals a friend's idea for a novel, and later finds himself hounded by the friend's ghost and unable to come up with any original ideas himself. OK for what it is. "Lucky's Grove" is one I've read before, a pointlessly nasty story of a Vulgar Rich Family that chops a Christmas tree from a grove sacred to Loki, and the Horrible Things that result.

"Happy Ending" also blah, of a psychic flash of a possible suicide. "The First Sheaf" is probably the most interesting of the lot, a tale of human sacrifice and pagan practices in a remote corner of England. "Used Car" is simply dreadful, a trite tale of a haunted automobile. And the closer, "Death of a Poacher," is another of those stories that I read twice and can't retain anything of it.

It almost pains me to be so harsh of someone who's a star of the ghost story canon, but this collection is definitely some of Wakefield's lesser work. Some of it is just flat-out bad. So many of these stories have hackneyed plot devices, but I will freely admit that it's possible they only seem hackneyed sixty years after they were published, after being repeated over and over until they're worn to a nub. But none of the freshness has remained.

Still, that cover illustration is great. If anyone can figure out the artist, I'd love to hear it.

THE DOCTOR TO THE DEAD by John Bennett

A treasured memory I have is of a blissful day spent in Charleston, SC, just wandering the streets of the old town, poking here and there. I took a ghost tour in the evening that was entertaining, with some fun old stories told by a local folklorist. (As it turns out, there's about a half-dozen different kinds of ghost tours in Charleston, making for quite a vacation if one is in the mood.) So when I stumbled on a very old copy of John Bennett's THE DOCTOR TO THE DEAD at the local library, I pounced on it.



Such a great subtitle: "Grotesque Legends & Folk Tales of Old Charleston." And it certainly delivers.

The title story is the longest, the tale of a man with the unlikely name of "Hein Ryngo" who becomes a doctor obsessed with death, to the point of falling in love with a ghost, and doing unspeakable acts in his attempts to bring her back. It's all very Southern-Gothick, and almost seems like something out of Hoffmann or Erckmann-Chatrian. The book's only illustration is a depiction of the doctor's narrow house, that certainly looks intriguing and Gothick...



Another intriguing story is "The Death of the Wandering Jew," that holds that the legendary character is buried in a Charleston cemetery after achieving forgiveness. There's also tales of deals with the devil, like "Madame Margot," in which a mixed-race mother makes a deal for her daughter to be white (and have better chances in life), and "The Black Constable," where a reckless lawman pays the price for his arrogance. And three "Tales from the Trapman Street Hospital" that tell of restless spirits, thirsting for water or simply going through the motions of life.

The rest of the book is tales told to the author by various African Americans of Charleston. Bennett is never condescending or patronizing of African American people or their culture; he allows them their dignity and from what I can tell, he was very open-minded and forward-thinking for his time. (I caught a bit of gossip that although he collected his stories in the 1920s, this book was never published until the 40s because so few people were interested in reading about the tales of African Americans, due to sheer racism.) The tales range from fairy tales (like "All God's Chillen Has Wings") or humorous morality stories ("The Young Wife Whose Vine Meloned Beyond the Fence") or simple ghost stories ("When the Dead Sang in Their Graves"). There's stories of "Rolling Rio," a heroically strong fisherman, that make me think of tales I've read of "Lickin'" Bill Bradshaw, a sort of folk hero of the Chesapeake, and I wonder if these tales of tall strong fishermen are just part and parcel of the areas where that's how folks made their living.

"The Apothecary and the Mermaid" has vague echoes of Lovecraft, or even Fitz-James O'Brien, maybe. And I've read "The Man Who Wouldn't Believe He Was Dead" before, adapted as a children's story, but it's a wry, humorous gem of a contrary man who dies, and won't be convinced that he's dead.

The last three stories are told entirely in Gullah dialect. Some people don't have a problem, but I can't stand dialect stories, even Stevenson's "Thrawn Janet." Emily Bronte pushes me a bit with her dialect passages in WUTHERING HEIGHTS. I tried, I really did, but they're too much for me.

THE DOCTOR TO THE DEAD has been reprinted and is available on Amazon, so if you're a fan of folklore, or fond of Charleston, or southern culture, go pick one up. This is a delightful gem, unjustly forgotten.