Tag Archives: ghost stories

F. Marion Crawford and “The Upper Berth”

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August 2, today as I’m writing this, is the birthday of F. Marion Crawford (1854-1909).

Crawford wrote a number of stories about the supernatural, but he his brest remembered for two that have become classics, “For the Blood is the Life” and “The Upper Berth”.

Although an American, Crawford lived most of his life in Italy. He began his career as a novelist. Of his novels, the only one I’m aware of that has fantasatic elements is Khalid, which was reprinted in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series.

I took a look at “For the Blood is the Life” a few years ago. Today, I’ll look at “The Upper Berth”. M. R. James considered it one of the best ghost stories and defnitely Crawford’s best tale.  Continue reading →

“Christmas Eve at the Dancing Leprechaun” by Keith West and G. Addison Blaine

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This is the final piece of fiction I’m going to post, at least for a while, and the last collaboration with Gayle Blaine, also at least for a while. Depending on how these stories are received, there may be more. We had a lot of fun collaborating. Of course Gayle assures me that she is going to be writing and publishing some work that is solely her own.

Right, Gayle?

This one is a bit shorter than the previous story, and not as spooky.

As usual, here’s the link to purchase.

This post is no longer available for free.

“A Sprig of Mistletoe” by Keith West and G. Addison Blaine, Part 2

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As promised yesterday, here’s the conclusion of “A Sprig of Mistletoe”, a collaboration by me and my friend Gayle Blaine. This won’t be the last  collaboration between us. We had  so much fun that we’ve decided to make this a semi-regular thing.

We have a much shorter ghost story, one very different in tone, that should go live tomorrow.

You can read the first part here. Or you can purchase the complete story here.

The conclusion of this story has been taken down.

“A Sprig of Mistletoe” by Keith West and G. Addison Blaine

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Today’s Christmas ghost story is a little different than the ones I usually focus on.  Let me explain.

Gayle Blaine is a friend and also an aspiring writer who has chosen to write under the name of G. Addison Blaine. What she aspires to write isn’t fantasy, however.  It’s romance, although she isn’t opposed to fantastic elements in her work. She just isn’t at the point where she’s comfortable including those things in what she writes. (I have Gayle’s permission to share this, in case you were wondering.)

So when she approached me to inquire if I would be interested in collaborating, I quickly agreed. We discussed plots and characters, as well as who would write what sections. Then we set to work. I think the result is something neither of us could have produced on our own.

For those who are curious as to who wrote what parts, Gayle focused on the primarily romance parts, meaning the historical portions as well as some of the contemporary sections. I wrote the ghost stuff. Then we each made a pass through the other’s work to make the style more consistent.

The result was a 13,000 word novelette. Because of its length, I’m going to post part of it today and the remainder tomorrow.If you don’t want to wait to read the conclusion, here’s the purchase link.

NOTE: Unlike the other two Christmas ghost stories I posted and the conclusion to this story, I didn’t take the first part of this one down. Call it a sneaky marketing trick. Continue reading →

“The Carolers”

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I’m going to try something a little different for the next week and see what happens. I’ve got some Christmas stories I’m going to post, some by me alone and a couple that are collaborations. This is going to be the first one. I’m going to post a link where you can purchase the story if you wish to read it on a device such as an ereader rather than a web page. I’ll remove the stories from the blog sometime between Christmas and New Year’s. The links to purchase will stay up after the stories are removed.

This s the first one, about a group you don’t want to go caroling with.

Here’s the link to purchase.

This story is no longer available for free.

“A Ghost Story for Christmas”: M. R. James and the BBC, Part 2

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This is part 2 of John Bullard’s guest post.

This is the second part of a look at the ghost stories by M.R. James that the B.B.C. adapted for their series, “A Ghost Story for Christmas”. In part 1, we looked at the stories and films of “The Stalls of Barchester”, “Lost Hearts”, “The Treasure of Abbot Thomas”, “The Ash Tree”, and briefly at “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”. Now, we will examine “A View From a Hill”, “Number 13”, “The Tractate Middoth”, and take a deeper dive into the original 1968 version of “Oh, Whistle …” and its 2010 remake. There will be major spoilers for these last two films, and minor ones for “A View From a Hill”. Continue reading →

“A Ghost Story for Christmas”: M. R. James and the BBC, Part 1

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This is the first of a two-part essay on M. R. James by John Bullard.

Being close to Christmas time, and Keith having established his annual ritual of looking at Victorian Christmas Ghost stories, I thought I’d help him out this year with a look at the second biggest person to uphold the tradition of a good ghost story for Christmas after Dickens, M.R. James, and how the B.B.C. ran several dramatizations of his stories for years for Christmas. We will look at nine of the ten stories that were adapted, starting with the first five. Continue reading →

A Report on NaNoWriMo and a Glimpse of Things to Come

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Thank you to everyone who purchased “Pickman’s Exhibition” or boosted the signal on it. I greatly appreciate it.

I’m going to be releasing more fiction over the next few weeks and into 2022. I participated in NaNoWriMo this year. I was behind most of the month until the last few days. I finished with a final word count of 50,006. Instead of a novel, I decided to try to write as much short fiction from scratch as I could. By that I mean everything had to be started during NaNoWriMo. Nothing I had worked on previously. It all had to be fresh. That was the goal I set for myself. I had hoped to have ten pieces of short fiction completed by the end of November. I finished with nine completed stories and six in various states of completion, ranging from a few pages to Oh-Lord-this-isn’t-short-fiction-it’s-a-longer-work.

I’m calling that a  win. The genre varied somewhat, although not as much as last year. That means I didn’t write any detective or crime fiction. I did write a few Christmas ghost stories, though. I’ll be trying to put them up over the next few weeks. I’m still figuring out what I’m doing with self-publishing, so I’m not making any promises about how many I’ll actually get up.

In the meantime, John Bullard is working on some M. R. James posts. The first will go live tomorrow.

And I haven’t forgotten I still need to do a post for Leigh Brackett.

A Happy Howardian Halloween: A Guest Post by John Bullard

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It being that time of year when night starts coming earlier and earlier, ghoulies and ghosties start showing up in the stores, and Texas finally starts to receive cooler temperatures, I thought it would be fun to look at some of Robert E. Howard’s favorite supernatural and horror tales that he was told or learned about. Not horror fiction, but the “real” ghost tales and weird stuff that folks tell around a campfire. The old “a friend of a friend heard this” stuff. Of course, during Howard’s life, Halloween had not yet begun to develop its modern traditions of kids dressing up and going door to door begging for treats, or adults having parties. He never really wrote or told something as a “Halloween” story as it was just a day of the week to him. However, as most Howard fans know, he did write of “things that go bump in the night” in his correspondence with H.P. Lovecraft, trading tales and legends with each other in an unofficial “can-you-top-this” way. Most of us know that Howard’s “Pigeons From Hell” and “Black Canaan” yarns came from spooky stories he had been told as a child from relatives and family friends, but there are several other tales he talks about with Lovecraft that you may not know of, and which fit in perfectly in getting you ready for Halloween. Continue reading →

“They’s Why I Don’t Go Up There”

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Pete Miller shivered as he crossed the parking lot to the north entrance of Hub City High School. Clouds scudded across the first quarter moon, throwing shadows over the tarmac and making the bell tower appear as though it were pulsing with a spectral light.He could see how rumors of the building being haunted could get started.

He reached the door, inserted his key in the lock, and turned it. The door opened without a sound.

“Who’s there?” Continue reading →