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.
The first was H. R. Wakefield’s “The Red Lodge“, and I read it years ago. Wakefield could be pretty scary. I’ve not read a lot of his work, but what I have has been topnotch. I think I prefer him to M. R. James. Don’t judge me. The story concerns an artist who has rented a cottage along a river for a few months, intending to spend some time with his wife, who is nearly ten years younger than him, and his son, who is about six. Things quickly go awry. They keep finding spots of green slime on the floor. Both the artist and his wife feel a compulsion to look out their bedroom window at the river, which has a history of people drowning. And their son claims to have seen a green monkey.
Elizabeth Gaskell’s “The Old Nurse’s Story” was new to me. The framing structure was that of an old nurse telling a group of children about an incident when she was young and their mother was only a few years old. Orphaned, the child was sent to live with an elderly spinster aunt in an old house which is subject to ghostly organ playing by the aunt’s father. As winter sets in, the child begins to see a little girl outside in the snow, beckoning her to come outside. The secret behind the ghostly little girl is unsettling. There was a cloying sweetness in some of the descriptions, but not enough to mar my enjoyment of the story. This story was written in the 1800’s, and the overly sentimental descriptions were typical of that era. It’s still a chilling tale.
So what ghost stories are your favorites? Is there a particular one that scared you more than any other?
I’m always on the hunt for good ghost stories this time of year. I’ve just read “Caterpillars” by EF Benson for the first time. It’s creepy, but not quite a ghost story, I guess. I do really like ‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’ by MR James, but I think I might choose “Afterward” by Edith Wharton.
I don’t think I’ve ever read Wakefield, but he just came across my radar and I was looking for a good collection, so thanks for the link.
You’re welcome. I read “Caterpillars” when I was a kid. You’re right. It’s not quite a ghost story, but it’s definitely creepy. “Oh Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” is one of James’s best tales. I’ll have to look up “Afterward” as I don’t think I’ve read it.
Ash-Tree Press was publishing some great collections and AFAIK put all of Wakefield’s collections back into print along with some uncollected stories, as well as volumes by E. F Benson, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, M. R. James, and a number of others. Their website is no longer active and what I can see of their Facebook page without having a Facebook account myself hasn’t been updated in two years. A page with their inventory can be found at
https://web.archive.org/web/20070728154656/http://www.ash-tree.bc.ca/ashtreecurrent.html
Most of their titles are available in reasonably priced ebooks that are well-formatted and available on Amazon. If anyone knows why they seem to have dropped off the radar, please let me know. Barbara Roden, who founded the press with her husband Christopher, is the editor of the Ashcroft Cache Creek Journal. An interview with her was posted on YouTube last Friday, but it was about her role as editor of the paper. Nothing was mentioned about Ash-Tree Press. I found a link to what appears to be a discussion board, and the preview says they aren’t dead. Life issues are getting in the way. When I tried to click the link, I got a message from the university server saying the site was blocked because it was a malware site.
Barbara has written some good ghost stories herself. Check out Northwest Passages. My review of that collection is here.
Thanks for the hat tip to the Wakefield book. I just started reading the old Chaosium collection, The Shub Niuggurath Cycle and it opens with a trio of classic ghost/devil stories by Lewis Spence, MP Dare, and JS Leatherbarrow. Looking to see what’s available by them led me down a deep rabbit hole on Amazon, where I discovered just how many great looking, and long out of print, collections of ghost stories Ash Tree has made available. At $7 a pop I’ve got to restrain myself, but, man, oh, man, it’s amazing.
You’re welcome, and yeah, no kidding. Ash-Tree has some great stuff. They did four volumes of A. M. Burrage that aren’t available in ebook, but it looks like someone else has put Burrage in ebook form (in about 10 volumes). I was buying the print editions of as many Ash-Tree books as I could afford for a while. This was in the days before ebooks. Restraint is a issue no matter the price.
W. W. Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw” is my favorite nervous story, though not sure it quite qualifies as a ghost story.
Close enough. I reread it a few months ago. Still had the same impact as when I read it as a kid.