The Supernatural Omnibus- Being A Collection of Stories

by Montague Summers (Editor), J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Evelyn Nesbit

Being a collection of stories of apparitions, witchcraft, werewolves, diabolism, necromancy, satanism, divination, sorcery, goetry, and voodoo.

Contents

• Narrative of the Ghost of a Hand • short fiction by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (variant of The Ghost of a Hand 1863) [as by J. Sheridan Le Fanu]
• Man-Size in Marble • (1887) • short story by E. Nesbit
• The Judge's House • (1891) • short story by Bram Stoker
• Thurnley Abbey • (1907) • short story by Perceval Landon
• The Upper Berth • (1885) • novelette by F. Marion Crawford
• The Hall Bedroom • (1903) • short story by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
• The Phantom Coach • (1864) • short story by Amelia B. Edwards
• Brickett Bottom • (1921) • short story by Amyas Northcote
• Hilary Maltby and Stephen Braxton • (1919) • novelette by Max Beerbohm
• How the Third Floor Knew the Potteries • (1863) • short story by Amelia B. Edwards
• To Be Taken with a Grain of Salt • (1865) • short story by Charles Dickens
• The Signalman • (1866) • short story by Charles Dickens
• The Compensation House • (1866) • short story by Charles Allston Collins [as by Charles Collins]
• The Engineer • (1866) • short story by Amelia B. Edwards
• The Canterville Ghost • (1887) • novelette by Oscar Wilde
• When I Was Dead • (1896) • short story by Vincent O'Sullivan
• The Story of Yand Manor House • [Flaxman Low] • (1916) • short story by Hesketh Prichard and Kate Prichard [as by E. Heron and H. Heron]
• The Business of Madame Jahn • (1896) • short story by Vincent O'Sullivan
• Amour Dure • (1887) • novelette by Vernon Lee
• Oke of Okehurst • (1890) • novella by Vernon Lee (variant of A Phantom Lover 1886)
• Eveline's Visitant • (1867) • short story by Mary Elizabeth Braddon [as by Miss Braddon]
• De Profundis • (1923) • short story by Roger Pater
• The Dream Woman • (1874) • novelette by Wilkie Collins (variant of The Dream-Woman)
• The Inmost Light • (1894) • novelette by Arthur Machen
• Singular Passage in the Life of the Late Henry Harris, Doctor in Divinity • [The Ingoldsby Legends] • novelette by Richard Harris Barham (variant of Singular Passage in the Life of the Late Henry Harris 1831) [as by Richard Barham]
• The Spirit of Stonehenge • (1930) • short story by Rosalie Muspratt [as by Jasper John]
• The Damned Thing • (1893) • short story by Ambrose Bierce
• My Brother's Ghost Story • (1860) • short story by Amelia B. Edwards
• Sir Dominick's Bargain • short story by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu [as by J. Sheridan Le Fanu]
• The Bargain of Rupert Orange • (1896) • novelette by Vincent O'Sullivan
• Carmilla • [Martin Hesselius] • (1872) • novella by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu [as by J. Sheridan Le Fanu]
• The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains • (1839) • short story by Frederick Marryat (variant of The Werewolf 1837)
• A Porta Inferi • (1923) • short story by Roger Pater
• Jerry Jarvis's Wig • [The Ingoldsby Legends] • short story by Richard Harris Barham [as by Richard Barham]
• The Watcher o' the Dead • (1929) • short story by John Guinan
• The Story of Konnor Old House • [Flaxman Low] • short story by Hesketh Prichard and Kate Prichard [as by E. Heron and H. Heron]

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Fantasy, Supernatural, Anthologies, Occult

690 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1894

About the author

Augustus Montague Summers was an Anglican priest and later convert to Roman Catholicism known primarily for his scholarly work on the English drama of the 17th century, as well as for his studies on witches, vampires, and werewolves, in all of which he professed to believe. He was responsible for the first English translation, published in 1928, of the notorious 15th-century witch hunter's manual, the Malleus Maleficarum.

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fantastic collection with many great classic authors and household names of horror: Sheridan Le Fanu (Carmilla!), Evelyn Nesbit, Bram Stoker, Amelia B. Edwards (my hot tip), Wilkie Collins, Frederick Marryat (The White Wolf), Oscar Wilde (The Canterville Ghost), Arthur Machen (The Inmost Light), Ambrose Bierce (The Damned Thing). Must read for everyone interested in horror and starting point to explore more works by an author you like. This is an excellent collection you get a great overview. Of course not all stories didn't suit me but I was very fond of reading this massive volume!

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

It has occurred to me that while I vastly enjoy giving full and detailed overview reviews of anthologies, many on Goodreads may find the sheer length of said reviews daunting. So I'll endeavor, starting with this review, to employ a three-tier system on unwieldy anthology reviews (this book was 690 pages long). Thus:

Tier One: If you're looking for a good collection of weird tales from the 19th and early 20th Century, this isn't a bad collection to pick up - large and well-packed with stuff. Horror fans take note, this is a collection focused on "Supernatural" fiction so, despite the extensive subtitle, not everything here is intended to be scary or even spooky, as premonitions and psychic visions also fit the remit. Still, a pretty solid package.

Tier Two: Assuming you have an interest in the types of fiction contained here, and some previous experience with the writing styles of the periods covered, there's a lot of good and familiar work to be found in these covers. Interestingly, only 4 stories (out of the 36 here) are ones I would personally consider "excellent", but this detail is subsumed by the point that quite a large amount of stories here are solidly "good" tales. Also of interest, Summers' extensive introduction which charts the "supernatural" in fiction up to this point and discusses what is popular at the time he writes. Interesting.

And with that out of the way, on we go into the thickets (I will most probably bust the review word count limit and have to resort to the comments sections to continue)!

This collection must have been a godsend to fans of weird fiction at the time of its publication, because it collects so many examples of the form into one easy to purchase package. It's sometimes difficult, in our easy-access times, to reflect back on a period where if one had a particular taste in a style or genre of fiction, one had to work hard at the library and at the bookstalls trying to scratch your particular itch. Summers, here (1932 - although the indicia lists earlier copyrights, so perhaps it's a volume that grew over time), has two goals - to present an anthology collecting some of his favorite stories, and to examine the idea of the "supernatural" as presented in a variety of these same stories. Reading such an old collection allowed me the chance to reacquaint myself with a number of stories I had read long ago, thus opening up the opportunity for reappraisal and rumination on details that may have escaped my younger self, as well as the opportunity for an official "Goodreads" review (in the cases where I had recently reviewed a classic story to be found here, I just re-purposed my review). But before we get to that, let's talk about Summers lengthy introduction.

Summers (who was an interesting character as can be seen here) provides a very thorough introduction that, in some ways, parallels (to a much lesser extent) the work done by Lovecraft in his famous "Supernatural Horror in Literature" essay. He starts by positing the classic question - does one need to believe in ghosts to write effectively about them? (his answer - yes, or at least the author needs to be willing to entertain the possibility). Since Summers believed (or purported to believe) in the reality of witches, ghosts, vampires etc., his survey of the supernatural in fiction actually starts with a long examination of historical accounts of "real" ghosts, tales of hauntings and apparitions going back to Pliny. Eventually, moving through medieval witch-hunting documents and the like, he arrives at the common "real ghost stories" type books which were popular at the time (and the preceding decades), supported in part by the interest among the British populace in Folklore, Occultism, Theosophy, Spiritualism, Mesmerism or the more "scientific" end of the spectrum with groups like the Society for Psychical Research (est. 1882). This, in itself, is different than your usual fiction anthology, as Summers cites a number of contemporary books on the subject he found enjoyable -the kinds of works that would lay the groundwork for the careers of men like Elliot O'Donnell and Hans Holzer. His reason for this tangent is simply that the supernatural, when presented in fiction, works best when it is solidly laid in a groundwork of reality and real reactions, and so he offers these "ghost hunting" narratives as an important model of decorum on which supernatural fiction can (and should, in his opinion) model itself (here quoting M.R. James's admonition that the reader should feel "if I'm not very careful, something of this kind may happen to me!"). From there, he returns his survey to the realm of the fictional, with segments on the supernatural in Gothic literature (he's quite disdainful of the Naturalistic Gothics, wherein everything is explained away through human means), noting his particular favorites of the form, from there moving through the Fantastique and the ghost story "proper" (as an interesting aside - has anyone hazarded a guess as to which "nameless" author it was that Summers notes "gave us some excellent stories at first, but in his eagerness to create horror, to thrill and curdle our blood, latterly trowels on the paint so thick, creates such fantastic figures, such outrageous run-riot incidents at noon, and in the sunlight, that it is all as topsy-turvy as Munchausen"? Any guesses?). He ends the introduction by noting the many supernatural stories currently appearing in the Pall Mall magazine (notations quite useful to me in uncovering some previously forgotten obscurities) and related novels available. All in all, quite a valuable resource for readers at the time.

As usual, I'll proceed through my review by noting the least effective stories first, then moving onto the stronger ones. In "greatest hits" collections like these, there tend to be very few weak or poor stories, but Summers' particular range of interest in his choices did include some disposable pieces. The Trial For Murder (aka To Be Taken with a Grain of Salt) by Charles Dickens & Charles Allston Collins has a bank manager relate his series of visions/visitations of a murdered man as he works as jury manager in the trial of that selfsame murderer. Well, I had given this my lowest rating, once upon a time, and just bumped it up to "okay" on the re-read - the central idea is solid (if melodramatic) but the execution is deliberately flat, as it attempts to be a flat, undramatic accounting of a "psychic event". Eh. Roger Pater's "De Profundis" is not intended to frighten, merely to illustrate a point about psychic abilities and religious beliefs, as a priest happens to spy the distressed spirit of nun in a convent (tuning into her thoughts with his own telepathic sensitivity) and eventually uncovers a tale of a sister who was intended for beatification before she was found to be a fraud, which led to a secret cult evolving around her image. Weak tea.

In the merely okay category we have Wilkie Collins's "The Dream Woman", which is a prophetic dream story - person has strange dream/vision (in this case, a woman attempting to stab him in his sleep as he rests at a roadside inn) and then later connects up with individual/scene from the dream. It's understandable why, given their interest in Spiritualism and psychic powers, Victorians would be fascinated with this topic - but in truth it's been so heavily integrated into our pop culture that the novelty has mostly worn off. The dream itself resonated with "The Monk's Tale" from (Reign Of Terror: The 1st Corgi Book Of Great Victorian Horror Stories) - and it's interesting to posit why a fear of being attacked in one's sleep was so prevalent in the fiction of the time (aside from the obvious point that you're at your most vulnerable) - and the best bits were Collins' writing (clear, direct and efficient storytelling) and the main character's suicidal, dissolute and alcoholic betrothed (who, he eventually realizes, is the figure from his dream). Can he escape his fate? Amelia B. Edwards seems to have been a favorite of Summers, although not very much to my taste, as three of her four stories appearing here feature decidedly "uncreepy" ghosts. "How The Third Floor Knew The Potteries" features visions of a ghostly figure that point to the proof of a murder (a french artisan seduces the kiln foreman's girl and then burns the foreman in the kilns). "The Engineer" has two lifelong friends fight a fatal duel for the attentions of a flirtatious shopgirl, and here, after a long build-up, the "ghost" is a manifestation of the better angel of one's nature. Finally, in "My Brother's Ghost Story", a ghostly manifestation serves as an indication of the accidental death of a missing man (there is a nice bit wherein the manifestation is preceded by the eerie sound of the missing man's music box unaccountably playing in the dark of night). But, in the end, this is the old kind of "folkloric" ghost tale that served only to scare those of mild constitutions at the time. Also in the "okay" column is one of the two "Ingoldsby Legends" (folktales, humorous sketches and ghost stories written by Richard Harris Barham in the guise of a fictional figure, Thomas Ingoldsby of Tappington Manor) presented here. This is "Jerry Jarvis's Wig", a cute morality tale in which a hand-me-down wig gifted to a manual laborer by a wealthy landholder, seems to infect and initiate the poor unfortunate into a life of sin and vice, culminating in murder and public execution. A light and didactic piece.

Moving on to the "Good but somewhat flawed stories", we might as well start with the second Ingoldsby Legend presented here. Of course, all these stories have to be read with at least some thought to their age. They are not "dated", of course, just examples of how people wrote about certain topics in the past and anybody approaching them from a modern perspective should expect some differences of style and approach. "A Singular Passage In The Life Of The Late Henry Harris, Doctor In Divinity" by Richard Harris Barham is a good example of this needed tweak of perspective. Is it long-winded and stuffy? Yes, but the story it's trying to tell is so oddly unprecedented that one could argue it needs the rather elaborate framework structure of period gossip and tales within tales just to present its idea in a way that would be understandable to people at the time (never mind how obvious we may find such a set-up, with 175 years of popular culture refractions under our figurative belt). The crux of the tale are various religious records of a mysterious, recurring trance state endured by a young woman during which she finds her soul transported to another place wherein she is tortured in some manner. These records are assembled for the reader (in a sense, like Ambrose Bierce's approach in "The Moonlit Road", though not as ambitious and cynical as that fine tale) to make connections with implications of a larger tale of black magic experiments and rituals being performed by debauched young men away at foreign University. What makes this tale interesting is the way the modesty of the period makes the victim unwilling to elaborate or provide details on the spiritual tortures she endures - thus allowing this modern reader to imagine much worse than what was (probably) originally intended. Aside from that, there's something to be gleaned from the story's capturing of a time period when formalized religion begins to cede the care of unwell individuals to doctors and formalized science (the latter are represented as unfeeling idiots, but then how could they be expected to treat a spiritual malady like this, anyway?). An interesting, if uneven, story. Jasper Johns' "The Spirit Of Stonehenge" is a thin story, breezy and swift in the writing, that hauls in occultist conceptions of "elementals" (popular at the time) to tell of a wealthy amateur archaeologist who deliberately attempts to manifest the "elementals" of Stonehenge's Druidic origins, only to be undone by their need for blood sacrifice. A pretty good little story somewhat undone by being too brief and conscribed, rushing past any opportunity to really mine the drama of the piece while making sure to keep solvent the spiritualistic conceits of the time. "The Watcher O' The Dead" by John Guinan is a somewhat confusing story about a legend pertaining to the Gort Na Marbh (Gurthnamorrow) graveyard in Ireland - seemingly the last person laid to rest there is denied access to heaven and must fulfill the role of "watcher of the dead" until someone else is buried there and takes up the job. This ties in with a man's desire for his wife to not be stuck with the role, which he takes on while alive, becoming notorious for constantly haunting the graveyard - but now he is dying and attempts to strike a deal with an old friend until his son can arrive from overseas. The most interesting thing in this story is not so much the convoluted religious logic that is laid out, but a brief touching on the clash between older, more pagan customs, and their Christian replacements.

Roger Pater's second story in this collection, "A Porta Inferi", is more interesting than the previous "De Profundis" as it gives us a priest who, in visiting a lunatic asylum, realizes that an inmate there is an old associate who dabbled in Spiritualism. Said inmate now seems to be possessed by the spirit of an old reprobate/suicide, illustrating the dangers of dabbling in seances and the like. Again, while not particularly effective, the story is noteworthy for featuring one of the earliest fictional examples of an exorcism ritual that I'm aware of - including the now expected hateful dialogue between priest and possessed. Hesketh Prichard & Kate Prichard (aka E. Heron & H. Heron) appear here with two stories of their occult detective character Flaxman Low. In "The Story Of Yand Manor House", Low teams with a French naturalist/rationalist to investigate a haunting in which a ghost in a home's dining room cannot be seen, only felt (pressing, smothering flesh) and tasted, which has already left one victim's dead body perched, sitting upright, in a chair in the room. This, sadly, is not an excellent story, despite (or perhaps because of) the pithy, sharp and concise writing style. Sadly, it's all too glib in its rolling out of pulpy details, too quick to fill in story holes with little artistry. While the set-up is strong, the climax is perfunctory and reliant on occultic hand-waving to explain things (the reason for the manifestations to occur as they do is never explained). Meanwhile, "The Story Of Konnor Old House" has a solitary country abode haunted by the figure of a shining man and a tramp that camped there overnight was driven mad. Flaxman Low attempts to posit some psychological laws of haunting, but the owner of the estate insists the manifestations are supernatural, tied to historical racial strife between master and servant. Sullivan, a strapping Irishman, agrees to test the place overnight and is found the next morning confused and debilitated. Low is able to finally explain the origin of the events in one of those stories that (much like William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki series) need to happen in the careers of all occult detectives if their tales are to seem balanced: it's all down to toxic, luminous, hallucinatory fungus, you see.

(review continued in comments below)

[Pam Baddeley · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting collection originally issued in 1931. I read the 1994 paperback edition by Bracken Books, with the same ISBN as the hardcover issued in the same year, oddly. It is a thick book but possibly has been edited down from the original, as another reviewer mentions several stories not in my copy.

The book features an introductory essay by Montague Summers, known to me for his works on the supernatural, including the Malleus Maleficarum and the witch persecutions which plagued Europe, particularly in the 16-17th centuries. Summers professes his belief in the supernatural in this essay and his stance that it isn't possible to write convincing fiction in the genre unless the writer actually believes in the supernatural. I'm not sure I subscribe to that myself, but the essay is an interesting summary of the history, not only of supernatural fiction up to the late 1920s, but of writing about the supernatural from early times. It mentions some writers of whom I was unaware previously, and no doubt was a valuable resource to readers in the pre-Internet age. Also interesting is his reference to "A well-reputed writer, whose name I will by your favour omit, gave us some excellent stories at first, but in his eagerness to create horror, to thrill and curdle our blood, latterly he trowels on the paint so thick, he creates such fantastic figures, such outrageous run-riot incidents at noon and in the sunlight, that it is all as topsy-turvey as Munchasen." Given the time this was written, I'm tempted to believe he is talking about H P Lovecraft, who is otherwise conspicuous by his absence from Summers' thorough review of the field.

The book mainly features nineteenth century writers, and there are classics such as Charles Dicken's The Signalman and J Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla, which is probably the earliest fiction centred around a female vampire, certainly predating Stoker's Dracula with its wives of Dracula and ill-fated Lucy. Nowadays, we have been exposed so much to this genre through TV and films, and in my case from reading ghost stories from an early age, that the stories do not have the power to shock and chill that they would have had in their own time, plus the earlier ones are sometimes written in a style that today we find convoluted and over formal. But there are nevertheless some interesting tales, such as Brickett Bottom by Amyas Northcote in which a young girl befriends an old couple with disastrous results, and two pyschological stories by Vernon Lee, the pseudonym of Violet Paget. In the first of these, Armour Dure, a young Polish historian, residing in an Italian town for the purpose of writing a history of it, becomes increasingly obsessed with a femme fatale of two centuries previous. Oke of Okehurst is told from the point of view of a disinterested painter who spends a few months at a stately home to paint his host and hostess, but who becomes embroiled in the psychodrama in which the very strange wife identifies with a murderous female ancestor whom she resembles. I don't recall coming across this writer before, and according to Summers, she had ceased publication after 1890 when both these stories appeared. Perhaps it is not co-incidental that they have a more modern sensibility shared by Bram Stoker's Dracula, published in 1897.

One story which would not appeal to current tastes is towards the end of the book. The Story of Konner Old House by E and H Heron concerns the apparent haunting by the black servant of a former owner, who was implicated in the death of the owner's daughter. The answer turns out to be a prosaic one, but the story employs a word which is not acceptable to today's readership. Ironically, the concluding tale, set in Haiti, is free from any such racist terms.

I found one point interesting in a story by Roger Pater, otherwise not that remarkable. This is one of the tales from his collection about a priest's psychic encounters. Early on in De Profundis, the priest and his listener discuss the nature of ghosts. The priest expresses an idea that I originally thought was original to the late Nigel Kneale's play for the BBC, The Stone Tape. Pater does nothing with this notion - "that a place or a thing, such as a weapon or article of furniture - almost anything, in fact, which has played a part in events that aroused very intense emotional activity on the part of those who enacted them - becomes itself saturated, as it were, with the emotions involved. So much so, in fact, that it can influence people of exceptional sympathetic powers, and enable them to perceive the original events ....' The priest, who hears the dead, claims he can hear such recordings, but in this story, he hears the here-and-now complaints of a dead nun, reacting to contemporary events. To find this idea expressed in a story published in 1923 was astounding. I have no idea if Kneale read it and later developed the idea so effectively in his play, perhaps without remembering where he had seen it, but if not, it is an example of how the same idea can arise spontaneously at different times.

To conclude, an interesting survey of mostly lesser-known ghost, vampire, werewolf and zombie stories of the 19th and early 20th centuries, which for the most part found their first publication in magazines of the time. I've rated it 3-stars overall to reflect its varying quality.

[Carrot :3 (on a hiatus)]

Dnf - 25%
I don’t know why I started this. Some stories were okay but pretty much most of them were bad considering they’re all famous horror classics. I just couldn’t continue.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best collections I've read.Montague Summers was himself an odd character, and firmly believed in werewolves and vampires. Dennis Wheatly recalled that he spent a night at his house once, and saw the biggest spiders he'd ever seen scuttling across the floor. Most of these tales are classics that appeared in nineteenth century periodicals. He was a great fan of Lefanu, so of course Carmilla is included.

[Eggp · Rating 3 out of 5]

So fresh, Sunday best
scrumping is a gateway drug
straight to the gallows.

[Nathan Shumate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the stories in here are eminently forgettable, and are of interest only for historical context. Others are wonderful, and thus have not been forgotten (like "Carmilla" or "The Canterville Ghost.")

[Kev · Rating 4 out of 5]

I managed to buy a fifth edition 1952. The aroma is magnificent! Am I addicted?

[Mengxing Fu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Summers' introduction is as interesting as the stories collected. Apart from his eccentric view that ghost story writers should first believe in ghosts to write real good stuff, I think his judgement of selection of ghost stories err little. Anyway, this is Summers (we know how eccentric this guy is), but he does not allow his 'belief bias' to diminish his praise of Henry James and M. R. James, who certainly do not belong to the believers. Also he shows first rank taste in giving non-reserved praise to Vernon Lee, although Lee wrote so few ghost stories compared to the other writers. Hauntings is really a masterpiece.

[Damien Zehnder · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazingly engrossing collection of weird/horror fiction and short stories. It has something for everyone really but best suited for fans of GOTHIC fiction. Nothing more needs to be said. It's really a great book to read and reread.