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Midnight Fright: A Collection of Ghost Stories
Vintage paperback
136 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
January 20, 2024
Meh. It was ok. I wasn’t in the mood for the flow-y and lyrical prose. The stories are older, so not as direct and much more descriptive than modern stories.
I had already read two of them prior and the three I hadn’t read didn’t grab me. I’m not big on scary stories tbh. I’m a bit of a scaredy cat.
3, not bad but didn’t do much for me, stars.
I had already read two of them prior and the three I hadn’t read didn’t grab me. I’m not big on scary stories tbh. I’m a bit of a scaredy cat.
3, not bad but didn’t do much for me, stars.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 11, 2017
Have you ever been so scared that you are about to live the rest of your life in fear? If you have, Midnight Fright: A Collection of Ghost Stories by various authors is one of those books. The book is comprised of five short stories: The Signalman by Charles Dickens, The Man-Size in Marble by E. Nesbit, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Cigarette Case by Oliver Onions, and The Horla by Guy de Maupassant. These works would all fall under the category of horror, which explains the book title, and a bit of mystery as the reader does not know what is going to happen.
The first story is The Signalman which follows a man talking with a signalman by the railroads. The signalman has been seeing strange things so he brings in a second opinion. In the second story, The Man-Size in Marble, it follows the newly married couple that moved into a cursed home. The third story, The Yellow Wallpaper, depicts a woman that moved to a house and starts to notice something with the wallpaper in her room. In The Cigarette Case, it tells the story of a man who lost his case and was later able to find it again. In the last story is The Horla. It describes a man who becomes sick and starts to question things around him.
Overall, I would give this a 4 out of 5 stars. This is because most of the stories were the fast pace. It would have been higher but The Cigarette Case was very slow and the wording on it was confusing for someone at my level of reading. The other four stories were very good because they moved quickly and I liked how the authors put a lot of detail into their work. It was a great book and I would definitely recommend it to a friend.
The first story is The Signalman which follows a man talking with a signalman by the railroads. The signalman has been seeing strange things so he brings in a second opinion. In the second story, The Man-Size in Marble, it follows the newly married couple that moved into a cursed home. The third story, The Yellow Wallpaper, depicts a woman that moved to a house and starts to notice something with the wallpaper in her room. In The Cigarette Case, it tells the story of a man who lost his case and was later able to find it again. In the last story is The Horla. It describes a man who becomes sick and starts to question things around him.
Overall, I would give this a 4 out of 5 stars. This is because most of the stories were the fast pace. It would have been higher but The Cigarette Case was very slow and the wording on it was confusing for someone at my level of reading. The other four stories were very good because they moved quickly and I liked how the authors put a lot of detail into their work. It was a great book and I would definitely recommend it to a friend.
March 3, 2025
Let’s establish ten-star grading. Halves leave an illusion of matching that range but do not. I liked four stories far more than the five of “Strange Stories Of The Supernatural”, which scrounged three stars. Guy De Maupassant’s writing was so bad, I almost slapped him with two! However, Midnight Fright: A Collection Of Ghost Stories” has four exceedingly superior authors, whose inclusion will not be spoiled. They have revived its status to three stars!
I usually find short stories too low on details to build interest. I have never thought their length excessive, or grown impatient with slow, needless narration like with Guy’s. I felt that it deserved the lowest grade possible after he also committed the most abominable, unrealistic atrocity in fiction plotting. His character was afraid of a presence he could only feel, overblown into the thought that it would kill him if he did not destroy it. Who would set fire to their house at all, not move belongings ahead of time, or warn staff to evacuate? This lazy author thought we would shrug and guess one could forget the living!
The balance of this 1980 suite impressed me. I have collected but not yet read some work by Charles Dickens. “The Signalman” moved me. It produced a sad but emotionally fuelled premonition and reaction that had me on tenterhooks. I think of my friend Lorraine since she mentioned teaching it in school.
I am proud of this collection’s two women who composed even more gripping tales, at a higher degree of unforgettable, complexly woven detail I could feel in the air! Grimness is not for me but I easily acknowledge that “Man-Size In Marble” by Edith Nesbit and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman are masterpieces! “The Cigarette Case” by Oliver Onion was tenderly mysterious.
I usually find short stories too low on details to build interest. I have never thought their length excessive, or grown impatient with slow, needless narration like with Guy’s. I felt that it deserved the lowest grade possible after he also committed the most abominable, unrealistic atrocity in fiction plotting. His character was afraid of a presence he could only feel, overblown into the thought that it would kill him if he did not destroy it. Who would set fire to their house at all, not move belongings ahead of time, or warn staff to evacuate? This lazy author thought we would shrug and guess one could forget the living!
The balance of this 1980 suite impressed me. I have collected but not yet read some work by Charles Dickens. “The Signalman” moved me. It produced a sad but emotionally fuelled premonition and reaction that had me on tenterhooks. I think of my friend Lorraine since she mentioned teaching it in school.
I am proud of this collection’s two women who composed even more gripping tales, at a higher degree of unforgettable, complexly woven detail I could feel in the air! Grimness is not for me but I easily acknowledge that “Man-Size In Marble” by Edith Nesbit and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman are masterpieces! “The Cigarette Case” by Oliver Onion was tenderly mysterious.
July 18, 2025
A collection of ghost stories from Watermill. Let's highlight this publication. Watermill made some good paperback editions of various and usually public domain classics. the font is easy on the eyes. perfect reading for youngsters and elders who need to catch up on various authors.
The collection is surprisingly psychological for this genre. the stories are listed.
The Signal Man by Charles Dickens. A train signal man has visions about an impending doom.
Man Sized Marble by Edith Nesbit. A young married couple finds something mysterious about a church statue.
The Yellow Wall Paper by Charlotte Gilman. What is the secret of the putrid paper that adorns the wall?
The Cigarette Case by Oliver Onions. How did a young man leave his cigarette case within a boarded up house ?
The Horla by Guy De Maupassant. a man is haunted by an unseen force. or is it?
This was a great refresher. This time, the Horla hit hard. The story has an inferno driven climax. You seen i retrieve this book from a house fire while gathering various possessions. Just happen to be in the stack of papers. It still smells of smoke. I could smell my house burning while reading this.
The collection is surprisingly psychological for this genre. the stories are listed.
The Signal Man by Charles Dickens. A train signal man has visions about an impending doom.
Man Sized Marble by Edith Nesbit. A young married couple finds something mysterious about a church statue.
The Yellow Wall Paper by Charlotte Gilman. What is the secret of the putrid paper that adorns the wall?
The Cigarette Case by Oliver Onions. How did a young man leave his cigarette case within a boarded up house ?
The Horla by Guy De Maupassant. a man is haunted by an unseen force. or is it?
This was a great refresher. This time, the Horla hit hard. The story has an inferno driven climax. You seen i retrieve this book from a house fire while gathering various possessions. Just happen to be in the stack of papers. It still smells of smoke. I could smell my house burning while reading this.
October 16, 2019
Like Strange Stories of the Supernatural, another collection of classic literary ghost stories to try and sucker kids into reading classic literature, a gambit which worked well enough for me to buy these books in grade school and read them over 25 years later.
Any text that includes The Yellow Wallpaper starts auspiciously, and certainly, the first three stories here are fine little yarns. The Dickens story is eerie and moody, if not particularly gripping, while "Man Size in Marble" is exactly the sort of thing you'd expect from this collection: classic plotting, setup, diversion, and expected yet still unexpected ending. I'd mark it the best, if only because Gilman's text loses its spookiness after all these re-reads.
I was disappointed by La Horla: de Maupassant's story is seen as a classic, but the diary format is a bit too much suspension of disbelief. It just doesn't work, insofar as "nothing today" is a break in the suspense. It just feels wrong. And the less said of Oliver Onions, probably the better.
Any text that includes The Yellow Wallpaper starts auspiciously, and certainly, the first three stories here are fine little yarns. The Dickens story is eerie and moody, if not particularly gripping, while "Man Size in Marble" is exactly the sort of thing you'd expect from this collection: classic plotting, setup, diversion, and expected yet still unexpected ending. I'd mark it the best, if only because Gilman's text loses its spookiness after all these re-reads.
I was disappointed by La Horla: de Maupassant's story is seen as a classic, but the diary format is a bit too much suspension of disbelief. It just doesn't work, insofar as "nothing today" is a break in the suspense. It just feels wrong. And the less said of Oliver Onions, probably the better.
November 5, 2023
I have had this slim volume in my collection forever. The version with this cover art may not even be available any more. Reading it now for the first time, over Halloween, I really appreciated every story written so effectively because I wanted to be immersed in these Gothic tales that are classics. Having never read any Guy de Maupassant, I will pursue more of his writing now. In The Horla, we are invited along to read his diary entries as he becomes ill and then fully descends into the psychosis that truly did envelop him at the end of his life. I actually had a nightmare too after reading the details of his night terrors and feeling the crescendo of his fears. This tale followed The Yellow Wallpaper, which effectively invites us to experience yet another spiral of descent into madness. So, the authors delivered!
The other 3 stories vary in intensity but each add to the mood and tone of the promised ghoulish and macabre experience from this collection.
The other 3 stories vary in intensity but each add to the mood and tone of the promised ghoulish and macabre experience from this collection.
December 27, 2017
This book is not what I expected. I wouldn't say I was ever scared while reading any of the five stories. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gillman was definitely my favorite and I was surprised to find it in a book about the paranormal because I always thought of it as feminist literature. The final story, The Horla by Guy de Maupassant, however, freaked me out. His character contemplates a lot of scientific and paranormal ideas and in the end he has a complete nervous breakdown. The story was definitely spine tingling but what scared me the most was reading the brief author description and findings out that Maupassant did eventually lose his mind and spent the last 18 months of his life in an asylum. I would now love to read a book about his life.
October 23, 2023
Read this for the Halloween season, and it's a decent, short collection of five ghost tales. They all date back to late 19th/early 20th century, so they're more spooky or creepy then terrifying in the sense of modern horro. No gore or graphic stuff, all done by implication. The best stories are Guy de Maupasant's 'The Horla' and Man-Sized In Marble, by E. Nesbit. The Charles Dickens entry, 'The Signalman,' was porbably the weakest, though none of the tales are bad. An enjoyable supernatural read.
June 10, 2024
The stories in this book were a bit older than I expected - but what did I expect when the first story was from Charles Dickens? LOL. Although the stories were "good" stories - they were hard to read since they were written in a time period when the spoken & written language were a bit different than they are now. I had to re-read passages (I think because my mind seemed to keep wandering).
I'm sure if you are a fan of the classics & the older style of writing, this would be a good book for you. It just wasn't my style.
I'm sure if you are a fan of the classics & the older style of writing, this would be a good book for you. It just wasn't my style.
December 12, 2024
I had the slim volume lying around from high school days and decided to read it again. Of the five "horror" tales included in this book aimed for young readers, none would probably make much of an impact on today's youth, if they could even handle Victorian literature enough to finish it. For adults, however, these stories are likely satisfying to those who appreciate vintage literature or Victorian short story craft. The one I found most disturbing was Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper with its theme of worsening madness (which may also be a theme in de Maupassant's The Horla).
November 7, 2023
A student tried it and brought it back the next day, saying he didn't like it. I started it and immediately wondered why I hadn't gotten rid of it before now. I have a tough time believing that any child of any age would enjoy this book. Too old-timey language, and way too difficult for middle schoolers.
December 20, 2015
For my full review, and review of individual stories, please visit Casual Debris.
This tiny anthology of five supernatural tales, specifically labeled "ghost stories," is essentially made up of tales widely available over the internet as well as across numerous print anthologies. Surprisingly re-printed in 1994, the anthology will likely never be printed again, as the internet has made most tales in this vein and in this period so readily available. The initial packaging of this five-some appears quite generic and nondescript, though I do like the simple cover (pictured), while the 1994 reprint is packaged as a set of tales for young adults, with an amusingly colourful cover by Mia Tavonatti. By packaging such a volume for a younger readership, the implication is that the stories would not frighten adults, and yet many of these tales have serious threads that only adults can appreciate. (Of course I'm generalizing.)
I mention that the stories are "labeled" as ghost stories because, if we are to examine each one of them individually, four of the five are not ghost stories at all. In fact, many nineteenth century and early twentieth century ghost stories are not actually ghost stories, including some popular tales consistently labeled and anthologized as such. The separation of fiction into genres, eventually associating stories with a certain "class" of readership, was a practice popularized in the early twentieth centuries (thereby H.G. Wells and R.L. Stevenson are considered literature, M.R. James is sometimes considered literature, while latter twentieth century authors of the supernatural are most often considered trash--another generalization). In more recent years the practice of classifying stories has increased drastically and the expansion of sub-genres has exploded to the point that contemporary readers have become obsessed with classifying fiction the way entomologists have been classifying insects. From a revisionist point of view, we can examine the stories collected in Midnight Fright in light of genre, and re-classify them in light of of contemporary approaches to genre. I will here examine the stories as ghost stories and in most cases de-classify them as such, and invite others to attempt to properly re-classify them. The benefit in such an exercise is to understand the development of genre in fiction, as well as to examine our changing perceptions of genre. More importantly, the author's own intention is clearer since often specific genres have adverse affect on the fiction itself, and as discussed below, in particular the Dickens's "The Signalman" and Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" are vastly different if we were to view them as ghost stories rather than as what they actually are.
This tiny anthology of five supernatural tales, specifically labeled "ghost stories," is essentially made up of tales widely available over the internet as well as across numerous print anthologies. Surprisingly re-printed in 1994, the anthology will likely never be printed again, as the internet has made most tales in this vein and in this period so readily available. The initial packaging of this five-some appears quite generic and nondescript, though I do like the simple cover (pictured), while the 1994 reprint is packaged as a set of tales for young adults, with an amusingly colourful cover by Mia Tavonatti. By packaging such a volume for a younger readership, the implication is that the stories would not frighten adults, and yet many of these tales have serious threads that only adults can appreciate. (Of course I'm generalizing.)
I mention that the stories are "labeled" as ghost stories because, if we are to examine each one of them individually, four of the five are not ghost stories at all. In fact, many nineteenth century and early twentieth century ghost stories are not actually ghost stories, including some popular tales consistently labeled and anthologized as such. The separation of fiction into genres, eventually associating stories with a certain "class" of readership, was a practice popularized in the early twentieth centuries (thereby H.G. Wells and R.L. Stevenson are considered literature, M.R. James is sometimes considered literature, while latter twentieth century authors of the supernatural are most often considered trash--another generalization). In more recent years the practice of classifying stories has increased drastically and the expansion of sub-genres has exploded to the point that contemporary readers have become obsessed with classifying fiction the way entomologists have been classifying insects. From a revisionist point of view, we can examine the stories collected in Midnight Fright in light of genre, and re-classify them in light of of contemporary approaches to genre. I will here examine the stories as ghost stories and in most cases de-classify them as such, and invite others to attempt to properly re-classify them. The benefit in such an exercise is to understand the development of genre in fiction, as well as to examine our changing perceptions of genre. More importantly, the author's own intention is clearer since often specific genres have adverse affect on the fiction itself, and as discussed below, in particular the Dickens's "The Signalman" and Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" are vastly different if we were to view them as ghost stories rather than as what they actually are.
December 4, 2012
This collection contains five short stories by famous authors, most of whom are known for their work outside of the supernatural realm. Each offer up a ghost story of sorts and overall it’s a great compilation. Because the story are so short, instead of summarizing them I’m going to rate each one and encourage you to pick the slim volume up for yourself!
The Signalman by Charles Dickens: B+
Man-Size in Marble by E. Nesbit: A
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A+
The Cigarette Case by Oliver Onions: C
The Horla by Guy de Maupassant: A+ - This one blew me away. Not only is it completely engrossing, it was apparently written by the author during the final 18 months of his life, while he was living in an asylum! The creepy tale, which questions a man's sanity, is magnified by that fact. If you like The Yellow Wallpaper you should definitely read this one!
The Signalman by Charles Dickens: B+
Man-Size in Marble by E. Nesbit: A
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A+
The Cigarette Case by Oliver Onions: C
The Horla by Guy de Maupassant: A+ - This one blew me away. Not only is it completely engrossing, it was apparently written by the author during the final 18 months of his life, while he was living in an asylum! The creepy tale, which questions a man's sanity, is magnified by that fact. If you like The Yellow Wallpaper you should definitely read this one!
March 25, 2015
A nice collection of horror short stories. The Signalman by Charles Dickens is a classic apparition tragedy. Man-Size in Marble by Edith Nesbit also is an unexpected tragedy. The Yellow Wallpaper is repeated in every horror collection I've ever seen so I won't comment here. The Cigarette Case is one of those chatty "Guess what happened to me" ghost stories, it was neat but not quite as jarring as the others. Finally The Horla was pretty great, though the ending didn't need to be tragic in my opinion.
July 4, 2009
Older horror stories, generally very gothic in nature, but still quite good. Here's the titles:
Charles Dickens, "The Signalman." (Eerie and not what I expected)
E. Nesbit, "Man-size in Marble." (I don't remember much)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman "The Yellow Wallpaper." (a masterpiece)
Oliver Onions, "The Cigarette Case." (Onions could do ghosts.)
Guy de Maupassant "The Horla." (a classic and very good.)
Charles Dickens, "The Signalman." (Eerie and not what I expected)
E. Nesbit, "Man-size in Marble." (I don't remember much)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman "The Yellow Wallpaper." (a masterpiece)
Oliver Onions, "The Cigarette Case." (Onions could do ghosts.)
Guy de Maupassant "The Horla." (a classic and very good.)
December 28, 2012
Found my old copy of this when my sister was clearing out some of her old books.
September 5, 2018
Really good little collection of older horror stories. There wasn't a disappointing story in here.
December 30, 2014
All good, classic tales, but The Yellow Wallpaper is the real standout.
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