“The Veiled Portrait”
James Grant
Available in The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories, Volume 2
Paper $16.99
Ebook $7.99
Today’s selection is a nice little tale that isn’t set at Christmas but is still chilling.
The story is set a year after the Indian mutiny of 1857. Narrated by an unnamed soldier recovering from wounds, it concerns an act of betrayal by a fellow soldier. Continue reading
“The Governess’s Story”
Amyas Northcote
available in Winter Ghosts: Classic Ghost Stories for Christmas
ebook only $0.99
There’s an old English tradition of sitting around the fire on December evenings, especially on Christmas Eve, and telling ghost stories. I’m not sure when or how this tradition got started, but I like it. The practice never caught on here in the States, which makes me think it started in the late 1700s or early 1800s. I’ve always associated telling ghost stories at Christmas with the Victorians, probably because Charles Dickens had some success with them.
But I digress. I’m going to attempt something here, and that’s to post a review of a ghost story set at Christmas every day until Christmas. (I’m writing this on the 17th.) We’ll see how it goes. I’ll be drawing from a number of different books and will try not to review stories from the same book two days in a row. I will also try to avoid spoilers as much as I can. Continue reading
So it’s the time of year when spooky stuff seems to pervade the air. I like a good ghost story anytime of year, but there’s something about when the air turns crisp that just seems to make them the perfect thing to be reading.
I’m always on the lookout for a good, scary ghost story. Charles Rutledge posts the contents of a horror “anthology” every year. I put the word anthology in quotes because he doesn’t publish anything. It’s just the book he would publish were he to actually do so.
I find this a fun and entertaining exercise. I had read more of this year’s list than I have of some in previous years. There were too that stood out to me. One I had read years ago, and the other was new to me. Continue reading
The Unquiet Grave
Sharyn McCrumb
Trade Paper $16
ebook $11.99
I’ve been a fan of Sharyn McCrumb ever since I read Bimbos of the Death Sun, a satirical mystery about a murder at a science fiction convention, back in graduate school. To put some context to how highly I regard her work, Ms. McCrumb is one of the few living authors whose books I still buy in hardcover when a new one comes out. (Jack McDevitt and Larry Niven are two others.)
She’d been writing the Elizabeth MacPherson mystery series at the time and had just published the first of what would become known as the Ballad books. That would be If Ever I Return, My Pretty Peggy-O. It was a traditional mystery set in the Appalachians. The next book in the series, The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter, wasn’t. The book set the tone for what would become the Ballad series. The next book, She Walks These Hills, knocked my socks off, and I’ve been reading the Ballad books ever since. Continue reading
Something seasonal to share with you.
If I’m the first one at work, and lately I have been, I’ll make the first pot of coffee for the department. The coffee pot is in the work room between the departmental office and the conference room. Because I don’t have a key to the departmental office (only the department chair and the staff who have offices in that suite have keys), I come in through the conference room.
Twice last week I unlocked the door to the conference room and walked in. I didn’t turn on the light because there was enough light from the windows opposite the entrance for me to see. So everything was in some degree of shadow. The door to the workroom was in the middle of the wall to the left and was closed or nearly so.
The door swung open as I approached. When it was about halfway open, it began creaking.
There was no one else there.
The joke has been that there was a ghost, and it was opening the door for me. This wasn’t the first time that has happened to me. Do I think there’s really a ghost? Probably not. Every time this has happened, at least to me, the door has not been completely closed. I think it’s just the vibration of my walking across the room the makes it move. As for the creaking, that’s nothing that a little WD-40 can’t fix.
On the other hand, my building does have a reputation for being haunted. After all, three murders have occurred in it, including a decapitation…
There are two birthdays today, October 12. The first is Richard Marsh (1857-1915) and Lester Dent (1904-1959). Continue reading
Alice Walks
Michael Aronovitz
Cemetery Dance
ebook $4.99
Alice Walks is one of the best ghost stories I’ve read in quite a while. I bought a few weeks ago and managed to read it last week.
Mikey Fitzsimmons’s father used to be a respected English teacher until a scandal cost him his career. Now he’s the caretaker at the cemetery. One winter night, Mikey steals his father’s keys and sneaks into the maintenance shed with a couple of friends to smoke a little pot. The conversation turns to Alice Arthur, a girl their age who drowned the previous summer.
Alice is buried in the same cemetery Mikey’s father works for. Due to a problem with a new embalming process, her coffin is currently sitting open in her mausoleum. Mikey makes up a story about Alice’s ghost. One thing leads to another, and the soon the boys are sneaking into her crypt. After all, what’s a little teenage grave desecration? Continue reading
Two practitioners of the fantastic were born this day. You might say they were Legends. *ducks and runs* Continue reading
The Winter People
Jennifer McMahon
Anchor Books
MMPB, $7.99
ebook $7.99
If you’re in the mood for a creepy ghost story that provides plenty of chills, and who this time of year isn’t, then you might want to check out The Winter People. You may have the book. It’s on sale at a lot of the big box stores, such as Wal-Mart. Don’t let that stop you.
Set in the countryside near a small town in Vermont called West Hall, this is the story of Sara Harrison Shea, who died under mysterious circumstances 1908, not long after her daughter was found at the bottom of a well. Sara’s ghost is said to haunt the area, and she’s something of a local legend. Her secret diary has even been published.
Or what pieces people have been able to find of it. But don’t worry. The missing pieces are included here. Much of the story takes place in modern times and concerns 19 year old Ruthie. She lives off the grid with her mother and younger sister in what used to be Sara’s farmhouse. Ruthie returns home late one night to find the lights on and her mother missing. This isn’t typical of her mother, especially not in the dead of winter. While trying to find some clue about where her mother could have gone, Ruthie discovers a copy of Sara’s diary in a secret compartment of her mother’s room. Continue reading
Familiar Spirits
Donald J. Bingle, ed.
Compiled by Donald J. Bingle and William Pack
54o40′ Orphyte, Inc.
Paperback, 166 p., $19.95
ebook $4.99
This collection was funded through Kickstarter, and I supported it. I chose both the electronic and a signed print version as my rewards. I think I got my money’s worth.
I’ve always liked ghost stories, although they used to scare me to death when I was a kid. I’ll admit when I pledged this particular project that I was expecting a slightly longer book. I guess I’ve gotten spoiled by the Ragnarok Publications doorstoppers.
But like I said, I think I got my money’s worth. With the exception of Jean Rabe, all of the authors in this volume were unfamiliar to me. All of the stories were of professional quality. With the exception of Jean Rabe’s offering, none of them tried anything fancy with voice or style. The authors, while each having a different voice, told their tales in a straight-forward manner. There were plenty of chills to be had, and none of the ghosts could be mistaken for Casper. That’s a good thing.
Here’s what you get:
Sarah Hans tells of a battered wife’s revenge from the grave in “The Cold Earth”. A wife’s ex-husband still blames her for his troubles, even after he’s dead, in Dolores Whitt Becker’s “All I Have is a Photograph”. William Pack gives us a teenager’s first experience with the dead when he helps to clean out his recently deceased aunt’s house in “Stepping into October”. “Green Lady” by Lynne Handy tells the story of a new wife’s encounter with a vengeful ghost after she moves to America to take up residence on her new husband’s estate.
In “What Happened at the Lake”, Wren Roberts gives the terrifiying account of a mother with two autistic children, and what happens when the older child demands to know where his yonger brother is after the brother has drowned. This was one of the most chilling in the book because so much of the horror isn’t supernatural. Kate Johnson’s “The New Girl” goes exploring where she shouldn’t. “The Hut” by Cathy Kern deals with a ski trip gone bad and a haunted ski hut. In “Legend of the Sea Captain”, Ric Waters lets us know why you shouldn’t go walking along the beach before dawn.
I’ve always had a fondness for cemeteries in my fiction, and T. S Rhodes delivers with “Statuary”. Melanie Waghorne shows us how “Irene” can find meaning in her life when the ghosts that only she can see and hear won’t leave her alone. And finally, Jean Rabe gives us some canine ghosts (and a pet cemetery) in the dark “Cold-Nosed and Cold-Hearted”. This one was written in a bit of dialect, something that’s fallen out of fashion, but I thought it added to the story and gave the narrator a unique voice.
Not all of the stories are scary, and some of them have a rather upbeat tone and/or ending. But the ones that are scary are quite chilling. Like I said, the book isn’t long, which means the stories are nice little October treats, just like all that candy you used to get on Halloween. But without the stomach ache the next morning.
As I mentioned earlier, I got both the print and electronic editions. I bounced back and forth between them, reading some stories at home in the paper book, and some in electronic format as I had a few free minutes throughout the day. The print book is a high quality product. The pages are sturdy paper, the cover has a deliciously creepy (and somewhat disturbing) cover, and the print has a font size that’s easy on my aging eyes. The electronic book is well formatted. The links in the ToC take you where they’re supposed to. All in all, both versions are a good buy.