The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories

by J A Cuddon (Editor & Introduction), Muriel Spark

Contents:
- The Beggarwoman of Locarno / Heinrich von Kleist
- The Entail / E.T.A. Hoffman
- Wandering Willie's tale / Walter Scott
- The Queen of Spades / Alexander Pushkin
- The Old Nurse's Story / Elizabeth Gaskell
- The Open Door / Margaret Oliphant
- Mr Justice Harbottle / Sheridan Le Fanu
- Le Horla / Guy de Maupassant
- Sir Edmund Orme / Henry James
- Angeline, or The Haunted House / Emile Zola
- The Moonlit Road / Ambrose Bierce
- A Haunted Island / Algernon Blackwood
- The Rose Garden / M.R. James
- The Return of Imray / Rudyard Kipling
- My Adventure in Norfolk / A.J. Alan
- The Inexperienced Gghost / H.G. Wells
- The Room in the Tower / E.F. Benson
- One Who Saw / A.M. Burrage
- Afterward / Edith Wharton
- The Wardrobe / Thomas Mann
- The Buick Saloon / Ann Bridge
- The Tower / Marghanita Laski
- Footsteps in the Snow / Mario Soldati
- The Wind / Ray Bradbury
- Exorcizing Baldassare / Edward Hyams
- The Leaf-Sweeper / Muriel Spark
- Dear Ghost / Fielden Hughes
- Sonata for Harp and Bicycle / Joan Aiken
- Come and Get Me / Elizabeth Walter
- Andrina / George Mackay Brown
- The Axe / Penelope Fitzgerald
- The Game of Dice / Alain Danielou
- The July Ghost / A.S. Byatt

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Fantasy, Supernatural, Paranormal, Ghosts

512 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[Shawn]

Another large anthology of ghost stories read through. As always, thorough reviews of big anthologies are long, so let's break this down.

FIRST TIER - A nice selection of stories involving ghosts (as I always point out, not all of them scary) following a roughly chronological progression. Lots of classic tales here and, as it reaches the mid-20th Century, a bit more-than-the-usual for well-chosen examples of stories in which ghosts serve various malleable and symbolic modern purposes, which may be off-putting to some just looking for "olde tyme ghost stories", scary or not. But a solid, thorough collection with a bit more of a modern eye.

SECOND TIER - The Editor, after a thorough and sometimes slightly contentious chronological introduction that traces the history of "ghost fiction" (he finds Poe "overrated"), lays out the parameters for this collection and they seem wisely stringent - no vampires or other creatures, ghosts must be "presences", stories presented in chronological order. Even with those strictures, there's room for debate (how could "Room In The Tower" NOT be a vampire story, even if the word is not stated?) but this is a fine selection, with the second half proving both intriguing and disappointing by turns in attempting to present "modern fiction" takes on spirits. There's no way anyone could like everything here, but as a handy and thorough sampler, you could do much worse.

THIRD TIER - And away we go - as usual, weakest to strongest story reviews:

The only story presented here that I did not like was "The Leaf Sweeper" by Muriel Spark, in which a mentally unbalanced man (with a fixation on hating Christmas) is essentially confined to an asylum while his "ghost" - no explanation - lives happily at home, loving Christmas. Thin, abstract, droll and inconsequential.

The "Okay" stories: the great E.T.A. Hoffmann is represented here by "The Entail" in which the complicated Gothic reasons for the haunting (familial friction, inheritances) at the Baltic Sea castle of Baron Von Roderich are gradually unveiled. Like a lot of Hoffmann, this includes his focus on romance, Romance and the soul-stirring power of music, while eliding his endless metaphysical discussions. It occupies a historical position (the ghost aspect, while crucial to the plot, is not the narrative center), and Gothic fans might like it, but not the most effective story at the length, it never really "flows." "Mr. Justice Harbottle" by J. Sheridan Le Fanu was disliked by my younger self, but accounting for age and wisdom, I decided to re-read it, and shifted its ranking up a notch to "okay". A renter tells why he is leaving his cheap lodgings - he observed villainous figures emerging from his closet at night. Another friend provides the historical backstory. The titular corrupt voluptuary, a notorious "hanging Judge", meets with an old man who informs him of a Jacobite plot (a secret tribunal to watch Judges) and is then haunted by the appearance of an executed innocent. The story has an interesting multiple POV, possibly atypical for the time, but the writing is choppy and, again, has no flow. It gets better as it continues (a nightmarish carriage ride to judgement by a grotesque doppelganger) but still reads as clunky. Not one of my favorite le Fanu tales. A.J. Alan's "My Adventure In Norfolk" is a droll little story, a well-written piece of frippery, in which a man testing out a potential summer rental cottage overnight during the winter, has a car break down outside his door that eventually discloses a dead body. Eh. "Footsteps In The Snow" by Mario Soldati is a sentimental tale in which a husband, dining alone after his wife's brusque treatment, begins to reflect on his romantic past and eventually revisits the snowbound site of a past summer's idyll where he once chose not to pursue true love. A reflection on aging, memory and "roads not taken." Along similar lines, "A Game Of Dice" has a Hindu man take a pilgrimage to the source of the Ganges in an attempt to relieve himself of the guilt he feels over thoughtlessly causing another's disgrace in his youth. A fine story of supernatural religious redemption, but a sentimental ghost story by Alain Daniélou all the same.

In the "Good but slightly flawed" area, we have: "The Beggarwoman of Locarno" by Heinrich von Kleist which is a simply told fable about how a rich marquis arrogantly causes the death of a poor old woman, and finds his home haunted for his thoughtlessness. Nice and compact. "Wandering Willie's Tale", an oft-excerpted section of Walter Scott's Redgauntlet, finds a Scottish landholder cheated out of the fiscal acknowledgment of his hard-won rent when the current laird dies immediately after payment, and his replacement son has no receipt to show the payment. So, it's an unintended trip down to hell to retrieve the lost document, dated the day after the laird's death (along with an explanation for where the money disappeared to). This is fun stuff (loved the baboon dressed in a jester's costume, the "jackanapes") but, it must be noted, written in a thick dialect that only worked for me if read out loud. One might also argue, not a traditional "ghost story." In "The Queen Of Spades," rumors of a magical "trick card combination" (ascribed to Saint Germaine) that will always win in gambling leads an opportunistic young man to romance a young woman, servant of an old dowager who supposedly knows the secret, so as to obtain access. But even with ghostly assurance, things do not work as planned in this Alexander Pushkin classic. Pleasant. When originally reading Elizabeth Gaskell's "The Old Nurse's Story" I was probably turned off by its "Woman's Gothic" stiffness and predictability, but I'm a bit more forgiving about such things nowadays (I'd still say it's a bit too long-winded for its own good, and the thuddingly obvious moral conclusion is just not my cuppa) and found I could appreciate it more. So you get such stolid standbys as wealthy gentry and servants, dark family secrets, an illegitimate child, a family curse, a ghostly organ that plays on stormy nights and a sealed wing of an isolated mansion - no doubt, someone walked down a corridor while holding a candle somewhere within there as well! Probably the best thing about this story is the ghost (or ghosts, to be exact) - a wailing woman and ghostly child who haunt the snowy evening wastes around the mansion, attempting to lure a living child to her death. A bit like the La Llorona folklore ghost, to my eye. H.G. Wells "The Inexperienced Ghost" is exactly what the name implies (a droll and dryly humorous yarn of a practical, dedicated clubman's meeting with an untrained spirit) but is uplifted by the unexpected, sad ending which made me upgrade it in my notes. Edith Wharton's "Afterward" is a long, literary ghost story about a newly purchased house that manifests a most unusual form of haunting. Yes, it is a long read, but the emotional impact of the ending, when it does finally come, is pretty powerful. A man with a terminal disease alights from a train in some unknown German town and takes lodgings in Thomas Mann's "The Wardrobe". In said lodging is a wardrobe with no back (covering the doorway to the next room) through which periodically emerges a beautiful naked girl who, Scheherazade-like, tells him stories. This expressionistic tale, with an ambiguous ending, is well-done but I'm not sure I'd call it a ghost story. "The Buick Saloon" by Ann Bridge concerns a British woman who moves to Hong Kong with her banker husband and buys a used car (the titular item) unexpectedly haunted by the previous owner, a young French woman who was involved in an affair and whose voice can still be heard. This is an odd, delicate and subtle story - very charming and not intended to be scary - in which the owner's rather stiff and censorious view of life and love blooms, somewhat, under the unveiling of the ghost's past, although the story's dedication to the French language, with no translations, makes me feel I missed some of the ending. On the other hand, "Exorcising Baldassare" is one of those droll stories that one appreciates, but can't help feeling let down by. The asking price for a perfect British mansion increases due to its haunted reputation and scandalous legend (a rape and violent retribution); causing the new owners (plagued by the spirit's visage and screams) to resort to exorcism, until logic and rationality win the day. A black-humored, dry, cynical deconstruction of the ghost story by Edward Hyams. "Come And Get Me" by Elizabeth Walter starts promisingly, with an Army unit setting up a post at a decrepit, abandoned mansion in the hills while involved in war games, only to spy a spectral figure in the window and hear a pleading, distressing voice. Investigation eventually unravels a story of a young solder who committed suicide in the nearby lake, but that story (thanks to some coincidence), unravels even further. Not a bad set-up, but the ending is clunky and expositional. An old seafaring salt finds himself tended through an illness by a mute, beautiful girl whose existence he cannot prove after she disappears in the sad, sentimental "Andrina" by George Mackay Brown. Simple and touching. Finally, A.S. Byatt's "The July Ghost" is similar to Brown's story, in being a touching, gentle story of a man who begins to see the ghost of his landlady's accidentally killed son, although she herself cannot. A story about human emotional limitations.

Of the solidly "Good" stories here: Margaret Oliphant's "The Open Door", while long, is a very strong story, even with its moralistically heavy-handed and sentimental ending. A man returns to his country manor to find his son dangerously ill, the result of having experienced an encounter with the local ghost that haunts the ruins on the grounds (essentially, just part of a stone wall with a doorway, open on both sides). The son's chance of recovery seems tied to the father resolving the emotional distress the boy experienced at hearing - never seeing - a wailing voice begging to be let in through the ruined doorway. The solution to this mystery/problem may have been a biiiit too coincidental (still, one must forgive these things if one is to enjoy life, right?) but it must be said that the two scenes in which the father and assistants go at night to experience the haunting themselves (fully convinced that such things just do not happen - despite the scared locals attesting to the opposite) are expertly done. They capture the uncanny sense that an encounter in the pitch dark with an eerie, impossible sound should elicit (the fact that it's just a voice, and not even a visible specter, makes it even more impressive). Good writing and a textbook example of how to generate fear through attention to detail, mood and character. In Henry James' "Sir Edmund Orme" the author's dense style builds an entire culture around the characters through specific word choice, phrasing and details of action - it's heady stuff. "Orme" is a ghost story but not a horror story, a very "proper" ghost story, actually, about a very proper and well-behaved ghost who exists more as a "sins of the parent visited on the children" than any actual malevolent force. I wonder if all those DOWNTON ABBEY fans realize there's worlds of manners and courting and great reading awaiting them in James? For a great example of suspense writing, may I suggest "A Haunted Island" by Algernon Blackwood? A vacationing law student stays behind on a lonely Canadian island to study after his friends depart, but the tension ratchets up through sensations of dread, isolation and then, the inexplicable sight of an Indian war canoe in the moonlight. This would make a great short film! While not top-notch M.R. James, "The Rose Garden" is presented as somewhat more dry/droll than his usual ghost stories, in which the removal of an unaesthetic and ancient wooden pole in an estate's lonely garden unleashes bad dreams, voices and a disturbing face glimpsed in the bushes. Rudyard Kipling's "The Return Of Imary" (sometimes presented as "The Recrudescence Of Imray") is another India-set ghost story - this time dealing with a mysterious disappearance from - and a bothersome poltergeist in - a bungalow. It's fairly straight-ahead, plot-wise, but I liked the very practical military characters and their handling of the disturbance. "The Wind" by Ray Bradbury is a simple idea simply told, as long as it needs to be and no longer. I love how it locates the main narrative away from the important action, and then comments upon that very thing ("as we sit here, people are dying"), using the set-up for an effective punchline. Nice. Not wholly sure I'd call it a ghost story. In the sad and moving "'Dear Ghost...'" a man intending to write a novel rents a room in a cottage and then finds himself incapable of staying there alone. His discovery of the landlady's tragic backstory moves him to take action in this effective piece by Fielden Hughes. On the other end of the spectrum, the office-building ghosts of doomed lovers in Joan Aiken's charming "Sonata For Harp And Bicycle" serve as more of a prop obstacle in a romance/suspense story with a somewhat over the top ending.

CONTINUED IN FIRST COMMENT

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set from around the 1880s to 1early 20th century, these ghost stories are more subtle in the horror and more polished in the scene set, and the detective work involved in solving the mystery.
Many of them were written to be told as Christmas Eve enterntainments read to gatherings of friends.
The horror usually comes at the end and precisely because of the scene set is what makes the stories memorable in their own way.
Set usually in a country or seaside town, or an abbey or old university or library, often in England, but sometimes in Scandinavia or France, the stories usually involve a rather dull, rather naive scholar-gentleman who picks up some item ( a book or painting etc) such as in Canon's Scrap Book, The Mezzotint and Number 13, which awakens angry and malevolent spirits.
Or else the narrator-protagonist tells of a story he has heard from a secondary source in a place where he is staying weather on work or vacation such as Lost Hearts or Martin's Close.
Sometimes the horror of the discovery of the supernatural being is enough to chill the reader, sometimes the spirits involved, as in the Ash-Tree or Lost Hearts result in the death of the victim of their revenge.
An interesting read which requires some concentration not to lose the plot, good reading for the lover of older supernatural fiction.
Always told in a scholarly and carefully descriptive way.

[Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

THE PENGUIN BOOK OF GHOST STORIES offers a good mix of traditional and more modern tales, mainly ranging from the middle of the 19th century through to the middle of the 20th century. It's neither as in-depth or as wide-reaching as its companion piece (...HORROR STORIES) but it offers a nice mix of classics and slightly more obscure tales for readers.

THE BEGGERWOMAN OF LOCARNO is Heinrich von Kleist's opener, dating back to 1810. It's a traditional haunted castle story, so matter of fact it might just be based on truth. E.T.A. Hoffman's THE ENTAIL is a long-winded gothic melodrama that gets way too bogged down in exposition (it's virtually all exposition) and a lengthy romance which feels unnecessary to the story. Thankfully, Walter Scott shows how it's done in WANDERING WILLIE'S TALE, offering some pretty intense depictions of hell and full-blooded evil. It's very old-fashioned and there's some Scots dialect to wade through, but it's worth the effort to do so.

Alexander Pushkin was one of the classic Russian writers of his age, but THE QUEEN OF SPADES hasn't aged too well. It's a typical morality piece with only a touch of the ghastly. Elizabeth Gaskell's THE OLD NURSE'S STORY is the best so far, an excellent example of pure gothic frisson and a perfect wintry ghost story. It's as focused and attentive as anything that the Brontes offered. Margaret Oliphant's THE OPEN DOOR is every bit as good, with a father investigating a haunted stretch of road after his son is reduced to a gibbering wreck. J.S. Le Fanu's MR JUSTICE HARBOTTLE is one of his lesser efforts, offering an interesting variation on the traditional story but very dated in feel. LE HORLA by Guy de Maupassant is much better, an almost psychiatric manifestation of the supernatural which makes it modern feeling.

Henry James is represented by SIR EDMUND ORME, which is as much a romance as it is a ghost story. At least it's not as dull as other efforts from the author I've encountered. Emile Zola's ANGELINE, OR THE HAUNTED HOUSE is a typically evocative stab at the genre, with a back story as well crafted as you'd expect from the classic French novelist. Ambrose Bierce's THE MOONLIT ROAD is more like a murder mystery than a ghost story, although it's interesting for being an early exploration of mediumship. Then there's another classic, Algernon Blackwood's A HAUNTED ISLAND, which is hair-raising and pulse-pounding in equal measure, an excellent set-piece adventure in a spooky and remote location. M.R. James and his effort, THE ROSE GARDEN, feels rather unsatisfying by comparison, one of the writer's weaker efforts.

Rudyard Kipling is well represented by THE RETURN OF IMRAY, a traditional ghostly haunted house tale with an Indian setting. A.J. Alan's MY ADVENTURE IN NORFOLK does what it says on the tin, interspersed with humour and an effective twist ending. THE INEXPERIENCED GHOST sees H.G. Wells contributing a whimsical tale which nonetheless packs a sting in the tale. Then there's THE ROOM IN THE TOWER, one of E.F. Benson's most startling efforts, a nightmarish story up there with the best of James. It's eerie and evocative in equal measure. A.M. Burrage's ONE WHO SAW tells of a strange, walled-in garden and the figure who resides within; Burrage crafts an unsettling story here. Edith Wharton's AFTERWARD offers a thoughtful and well-judged spin on the genre.

By now the stories are from the mid-20th century and less interesting, for me, although not without merit. Thomas Mann's THE WARDROBE is about a train journey to an odd destination, but rather dull. Ann Bridge's THE BUICK SALOON is set in high society China, but the characters are unappealing and there are one too many layers of background information dolloped in. Marghanita Laski's THE TOWER is a little better, a touristy story that goes awry, and is short and to the point. But Mario Soldati's FOOTSTEPS IN THE SLOW is long-winded and unappealing, mild and dull with it. Thankfully, Ray Bradbury can be relied upon to deliver the goods, and his THE WIND is chilly stuff indeed, dealing with sentient and evil nature in a way which reminded me of Derleth's Ithaqua cycle but is even better.

The last stories are generally a lesser bunch, with one or two stand-outs. Edward Hyams' EXORCISING BALDASSARE is a traditional haunted house story with an effective twist and a ghastly apparition. Muriel Spark's THE LEAF-SWEEPER has a comedic set-up and a tragic climax. 'DEAR GHOST...' sees Fielden Hughes authoring an extremely subtle and thus realistic ghost story, one filled with sadness and regret; I admit that it moved me a lot. SONATA FOR HARP AND BICYCLE sees Joan Aiken off the boil, with an oddball mix of romance and horror ending on a ridiculous joke. Elizabeth Walter's COME AND GET ME is much better, telling of a rural haunted house and how it affects the soldiers stationed locally. George Mackay Brown's ANDRINA sees a salty old fisherman and his relationship with an idealistic young girl; the end twist is rather obvious, I thought. THE AXE sees Penelope Fitzgerald exploring office life and a sacking that goes awry. It's obvious too, but written in a chilly and effective down-to-earth style. THE GAME OF DICE is Alain Danielou's story of a gambling game leading to tragedy, but rather half-hearted and uninvolving. As for THE JULY GHOST, by A.S. Byatt, it has a very different kind of apparition, but is spoilt by some artificiality in terms of 'literary' content and wannabe highbrow elements.

[ka fi de · Rating 2 out of 5]

yeah man this was... not my favourite.

honestly.

i'm so sorry.

i just was not into it.

i was really really close to dnf-ing it but because it's not as long as the luminaries... i just decided to power through.

i don't think i'll have much to say. i was waaaay into the book and i realised that i hadn't bookmarked anything yet.

that's bad.

i think the last book i read really impacted my eagerness to continue reading. i honestly should've had a little break but i wanted to keep going with the challenge.

i'll just enumerate the stories that i liked. and i'm using "like" very generously here. these were the stories that kept my attention for more than one paragraph.

The Queen of Spades by Alexander Pushkin
Le Horla by Guy de Maupassant
Angeline, or the Haunted House by Emile Zola
The Room in the Tower by E.F. Benson
The Tower by Marghanita Laski
Exorcising Baldassare by Edward Hyams
Come and Get Me by Elizabeth Walter

Le Horla was my favourite.

I don't have much to say.

i'll maybe give this away at the end of the year.

soz

[Banana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did not finish the entire book but stopped somewhere past halfway through. The reason why is that I was probably expecting something else from the cover which is more horror and thriller. These stories aren't really bad, but they're more about regular/basic fiction with the involvement of ghosts in the story rather than horror.

Personally, I'd say that a lot of the stories also focus on completely the wrong details that aren't really by my opinion relevant to the actual paranormal or horror-part. My guess is that a lot of the writers are more accustomed with writing some other genre, and they've pretty much just written according to that genre adding in a bit of paranormal.

I'd recommend this book for someone who wants to read earlier works about ghosts that are pretty much just basic fiction, but if you're looking for proper horror, this is probably not it.

[Matthew Latourette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love the cover but the stories within at just ok.

[Lauren van Diermen · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was very cool to read some ghost stories from the 1700s and 1800s but it got long winded for me personally.

[Edith · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very mixed bag. Some of the stories are truly excellent, and some just left me cold (and not because they were eerie.)

[Benjamin Stahl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Usually with these compilations, I end up giving a lower rating than is necessarily deserved because one can't help feeling drained by the end. Even someone as enthusiastic as me can only stand so many ghost stories before they yearn for something else. Notwithstanding the fact that I have been reading several things simultaneously anyway, I must give credit to Cuddon, the editor and compiler of this book, where credit is greatly due. Do not let the cheesy, pulpesque cover fool you: this here is an exceptional amalgamation of ghost stories coming from more obscure corners of the literary spectrum. I mean, sure, they are all American or European (largely British), but while there are a few bigger names - (your beloved Jamess, several of them, as well as my favoruite Irish yarner, Le Fanu) - there were many that I had not heard of before. I thought I would probably skip a few out of recent familiarity. In the end, the single one I skipped was Bierce's adequate The Moonlit Road.

Cuddon takes what I thought was an unusual road, bypassing the way of snobbery and including amongst his many nineteenth century tales, a few good modern ones as well. This is what made this book significantly more enjoyable to me. Five-hundred-plus pages of ghosts should have gotten stale by the 250 mark. Instead, every new story was an exhiliratingly fresh experience.

Also, while the greater number of stories here still racked up an average three stars from me, the book entire gets an extra point for the fact that, contrary to the norm, there were not just one or two, but several stories here that actually scared me. I mean, one actually gave me nightmares. Many a time this book elicited an actual shudder from me. Being a fairly desensitized ghost lore fanatic, that was a special and rare bonus indeed.

In short this collection is one of the best I have read in a long time. I chose well for my Halloween reading this year.

[Doreen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow, I remembered so very little this re-read from the last (which was, granted, nigh on two decades ago.) The two stories that did stir memories, though faint, are likely the ones I will continue to remember, Ann Bridge's "The Buick Saloon" and Marghanita Laski's "The Tower", both for the unflinching cruelty done to the heroines. I've come to believe that ghost stories at their best are allegories for the terrible meanness of fate, though even so I do rather like tales such as Joan Aiken's "Sonata For Harp And Bicycle," which showcase a delightful British pragmatism even as it allows for the worst. I also thought it interesting that stories I know would have thrilled me when younger (such as Edith Wharton's "Afterward") now just seem a bit much. Fun post-Halloween reading, though I think I've ODed a bit on short stories.

[SheLivesAmongBooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Penelope Fitzgerald is one of my all-time favorite authors, so I'm biased, but I'm in love with this ghost story. The eerie setup frames some killer social satire that's even more biting today. The end is deliciously uncomfortable and illustrates how the manager/narrator bears the brunt of the consequences for doing the boss's dirty work. I come back to this story now and then as the years go by, just like I do with the rest of Fitzgerald's work.

[saniya khan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did not see that ending come up at all with the way the narrator had bound up the words in such a coherent, almost perfect way. Bringing an eerie and gothic atmosphere to a modern atmosphere - somewhere we do not really expect that atmosphere to be - is both a skill and essential part of Fitzgerald's writings: bringing the unknown to the known. It was a great read.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't paying full attention to this book as I read it since I was mostly reading it on the train. Also, fifty pages near the end were missing so I missed the last six or so stories. It seemed pretty good though.