Creepy Stories: A Classic Collection

by Fred Urquhart (Introduction)

Genres: Horror

614 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1994

About the author

Frederick Burrows Urquhart was born in Edinburgh, the son of a chauffeur; and though he was both a novelist and short story writer, it was for his short stories that he was best known.

He was educated Stranraer High School and Edinburgh’s Broughton Secondary School before, at the age of 15, he started work at J.B. Cairns’ bookshop in Edinburgh. He hated being a bookseller and dreamed of becoming a writer. In 1935, when he was 23 he quit the bookshop to concentrate on his writing, and by 1938 his first novel, Time Will Knit, was published by Duckworth. Because he was a declared pacifist, at the outbreak of World War II he was sent to work on the land, and around this time, his first collection of short stories, I Fell for a Sailor (1940), was published.

Later came Fred’s second collection, The Clouds Are Big with Mercy (1946)’, and his two later novels, The Ferret was Abraham’s Daughter (1949) and Jezebel’s Dust (1951). Further volumes of stories included The Year of the Short Corn (1949), The Last Sister (1950), The Laundry Girl and the People (1955), The Dying Stallion (1967), and The Ploughing Match (1968). In 1978 he co-edited Modern Scottish Short Stories’, and his final works were the novel Palace of Green Days (1979), which drew upon his childhood in Perthshire where his father (Jim Lovat in the book) worked as a chauffeur, and two collections of short stories, A Diver in China Seas and Proud Lady in a Cage (both 1980).

In 1944 he started on a three-year stint working at the estate of the Duke of Bedford, which offered the opportunity to meet two literary notables, George Orwell and Rhys Davies. Soon after the end of World War II Urquhart began work as a reader for a London literary agency, and in the early 1950s he worked as a script-reader for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and as a reader and editor for Cassell. He was also a reviewer for the magazine Time and Tide and other journals between 1947 and 1974, and spent a year in the late 1950s as a literary scout for Walt Disney Productions.

In 1958 Fred moved to East Sussex with his companion, dancer Peter Wyndham Allen, but after Allen’s death in 1990 he left Spring Garden Cottage near Uckfield and moved back to Scotland and settled in Musselburgh. He died in Edinburgh on December 2, 1995.

Reviews

[Tom]

Introduction (Creepy Stories) • essay by Fred Urquhart ✔
The Snow • (1929) • short story by Hugh Walpole 5⭐
The Tarn • (1923) • short story by Hugh Walpole 5⭐
A Little Ghost • (1922) • short story by Hugh Walpole 3⭐
Mrs. Lunt • (1926) • short story by Hugh Walpole 3.5⭐

The Islington Mystery • (1927) • short story by Arthur Machen 3.5⭐
The Cosy Room • (1929) • short story by Arthur Machen 5⭐
Opening the Door • (1931) • short story by Arthur Machen 4⭐
Munitions of War • (1926) • short story by Arthur Machen 2.5⭐

The Red Turret • (1931) • short story by Christine Campbell Thomson [as by Flavia Richardson
2.5⭐

When Glister Walked • (1928) • short story by Oscar Cook (variant of The Sacred Jars 1927) 2.5⭐
Si Urag of the Tail • (1923) • short story by Oscar Cook 3⭐
The Great White Fear • (1925) • short story by Oscar Cook 2⭐
Boomerang • (1931) • short story by Oscar Cook 5⭐

Two Trifles • (1934) • short story by Oliver Onions 2.75⭐
The Smile of Karen • (1927) • novelette by Oliver Onions 4⭐
"John Gladwin Says ..." • (1928) • short story by Oliver Onions 3.25⭐

The Hanging of Alfred Wadham • (1928) • short story by E. F. Benson 4⭐

As in a Glass Dimly • (1931) • short story by Shane Leslie 4.25⭐
The Hospital Nurse • (1928) • short story by Shane Leslie 4⭐
The Lord-in-Waiting • (1929) • short story by Shane Leslie 4⭐

A Considerable Murder • (1928) • short story by Barry Pain 3⭐

The Lovely Voice • (1928) • novelette by Cynthia Asquith 3.5⭐
The Playfellow • (1929) • novelette by Cynthia Asquith 4⭐

The Rocking-Horse Winner • (1926) • short story by D. H. Lawrence 5⭐
The Lovely Lady • (1927) • novelette by D. H. Lawrence 3⭐

The Prince • (1928) • short story by W. B. Maxwell 2⭐
The Last Man In • (1910) • short story by W. B. Maxwell 2.25⭐

Dispossession • (1929) • short story by C. H. B. Kitchin 3⭐
Beauty and the Beast • (1931) • novelette by C. H. B. Kitchin 4.5⭐

Those Whom the Gods Love... • short story by Hilda Hughes 3.5⭐
The Birthright • (1931) • short story by Hilda Hughes 4⭐

The Villa Désirée • (1921) • short story by May Sinclair 5⭐

The Apparition of Mrs. Veal • (1919) • short story by Daniel Defoe (variant of A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal the Next Day After Her Death to One Mrs. Bargrave at Canterbury the 8th of September 1705, 1706) 3⭐

The Lost Tragedy • (1926) • short story by Denis Mackail 4⭐
Spinster's Rest • (1926) • novelette by Clemence Dane 3⭐
Circumstantial Evidence • (1928) • short story by Edgar Wallace 4.25⭐
A Descent Into the Maelström • (1841) • short story by Edgar Allan Poe 5⭐
Twelve O'Clock • (1926) • short story by Charles Whibley 3⭐
The Spectre Bridegroom • (1819) • short story by Washington Irving 4⭐
Mr. Tallent's Ghost • (1926) • short story by Mary Webb 5⭐
The Buick Saloon • (1930) • short story by Ann Bridge 4.5⭐
The Horns of the Bull • (1931) • short story by W. S. Morrison 4⭐
Our Feathered Friends • (1931) • short story by Philip MacDonald 4⭐
The Stranger • (1909) • short story by Ambrose Bierce 5⭐
My Adventure in Norfolk • (1924) • short story by A. J. Alan 4⭐

The Mysterious Mansion • non-genre • (1934) • short story by Honoré de Balzac? (trans. of La Grande Bretèche 1832) 4⭐

The Stranger • (1927) • short story by Algernon Blackwood 3⭐

[Paul]

It's a massive collection, and it's a massive collection of much older material. That means not every story hits for the modern reader, but quite a few are quite good, some of the author's I'd never read before. A mixed bag, but it has some goodies in there.

[Jeffrey W Brigham]

This tome is a collection of antiquated, therefore royalty-free horror stories. There are a few that truly chill to the bone. The writing style is as you might imagine from stories written 200 or so years ago.

The editor of this work tells of working at a bookstore when young and, during downtime, reading some scary stories that really stuck with him. Presumably, he's found them and managed to collect them all into this book. Many of the stories are forgettable. However, there are a few moments to be found that do stick. Is it worth a read? Yes. If you are a true fan of horror.

[Aastha Goel]

A collection of scary stories by such classic authors as Poe, Defoe, Lawrence, Irving, Bierce, and others.

It has a perfect collection of short stories that are scary, filled with horror and are bone chilling. You are bound to have nightmares after reading this 614 pages book of scary stories.
The language used is old as it dates back to 200 years.
It is a must read for every horror story fan and this is the perfect time to read this book as it is the month of October and Halloween is just around the corner.

[Elle]

The stores in this collection are interesting, though mostly outdated. There are a few timeless classics, but not as many as other maybe more well known collections. It's a book that has sat on my shelf for as long as I could remember, and I figured it was about time to read it, rather than it being a book I've wanted to read for a while. I would recommend it for fans of horror, mainly because of the age of the stories within, giving an idea of where the horror genre sort of started. Some of the stories are slow, a bit of a pain to get through, but others do manage to effectively draw you in, though those ones I'd think most people would have read before anyway. Nothing in it is particularly shocking or scary, not a 'read if you dare' but more 'read if you must'.