The Shape of Fear, and Other Ghostly Tales

by Elia W. Peattie

Excerpt from The Shape of And Other Ghostly TalesTim O'Connor - who was descended from the O'Conors with one N - started life as a poet and an enthusiast. His mother had designed him for the priesthood, and at the age of fifteen, most of his verses had an ecclesiastical tinge, but, somehow or other, he got into the newspaper business instead, and became a pessimistic gentleman, with a literary style of great beauty and an income of modest proportions. He fell in with men who talked of art for art's sake, - though what right they had to speak of art at all nobody knew, - and little by little his view of life and love became more or less profane.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Genres: Short Stories, Horror

175 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1898

About the author

Elia Wilkinson Peattie (January 15, 1862 – July 12, 1935) was an American author, journalist and critic.

Elia Wilkinson was the daughter of Frederick and Amanda (Cahill) Wilkinson. She was born on January 15, 1862, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, but moved with her family to Chicago when she was young. She stopped attending school when she was fourteen, but kept up a reading habit. In 1883 she married Robert Burns Peattie, a Chicago journalist.

She began writing short stories for newspapers, and became a reporter with the Chicago Tribune and subsequently the Chicago Daily News. In 1889 she moved to Omaha, becoming chief editorial writer on the Omaha World-Herald. She wrote for magazines including Century, Lippincott's Magazine, Cosmopolitan Magazine, St. Nicholas, Wide Awake, The American Magazine, America, Harper's Weekly, and San Francisco Argonaut.

In 1888 she was commissioned by Chicago publishers to write a young people's history of the United States, and wrote the seven-hundred page The Story of America in four months. Her novel The Judge won a $900 prize from the Detroit Free Press in 1889, and was subsequently published in book form. Later in 1889 the Northern Pacific Railroad employed her to visit and report on Alaska: A Trip through Wonderland became a popular guide-book. With Scrip and Staff (1891) was a story of the children's crusade. Some time after 1890, Peattie befriended fellow writer Kate McPhelim Cleary while both were living in Nebraska. The two bonded over their financial, health, and family concerns.

Peattie subsequently returned to Chicago and became literary editor of the Chicago Tribune. Some time during her period in Illinois, she was a member of the Eagle's Nest Art Colony in Ogle County. One of her sons was the famed botanist, naturalist and author Donald Culross Peattie (June 21, 1898 - November 16, 1964).

Reviews

[Bill Borre]

The Shape of Fear is also printed in the Big Book of the Masters of Horror

[Jennifer Shaiman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A moderately good collection of ghost stories by a relatively unknown author. Many of these are "sweet"stories rather than attempting to be frightening. "A Spectral Collie" (about exactly what you'd imagine), "The House that was not" (which again is exactly what the story is about), and"The Grammatical Ghost" (about an unwelcome society ghost" were my favorites, but those looking for a twist on the more traditional weird story might prefer "The Shape of Fear," "On Northern Ice," or "the Room of the Evil Thought."

[Amy Peavy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The authoer Elia W. Peattie was born in Kalamazoo, MI on January 15, 1862. She died in 1935. The book was originally published in 1898.

The short ghost stories in this book were interesting, mostly pretty common tropes, though I don't know when they came into being. There was one story that made me shiver, "the Room of the Evil Thought". The rest of the stories presented benevolent spirits.

[Jeff Hobbs]

Read so far:

The shape of fear
On the northern ice (aka The specter bride)
Their dear little ghost --3
A spectral collie
The house that was not --3
Story of an obstinate corpse (aka The dead woman's photograph) --3
A child of the rain
The room of the evil thought
Story of the vanishing patient
The piano next door
An astral onion
From the loom of the dead --3
The grammatical ghost --4
***
The crime of Micah Rood --3

[Valerie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not very scary. Old fashion ghost stories.