Two years ago I suggested some different ghost story collections for your Christmas reading pleasure. I won’t go into how Christmas used to be the seasons of ghosts (which Halloween now dominates). We’ve all sat through how many versions of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol? (The latest is Spirited with Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds in a musical. My favorite is still The Muppet’s version.). Old Chuck liked to use his ghosts for redeeming sinners but most Victorians didn’t. The whole thing is meant to give you a shiver. (Kind like the weather. -18 Celsius here right now. Perfect weather for sitting with a hot cup of java and a collection of ghosts.) If you’d rather skip the blah-blah-blah, you can go straight to last year’s Quintessential Ghost Story Library here. Or if you’d rather you can listen to others read classic ghost tales of M. R. James here.
James, unlike Algernon Blackwood, felt that ghost must always be scary. He didn’t go in for that redeeming Dickensian nonsense. Ghosts are terrible and you’d really not enjoy them. One example of a great shot story ruined in this fashion (yes, I know, I mentioned it before!) is E. F. Benson’s “How Fear Departed From the Long Gallery”, in which there are two children’s ghosts that if seen instantly killed you. Better than anything Stephen King ever cooked up. Old Freddy has to wreck the deal with a woman who rescues the spirits with her love. (My reaction is just like Snoopy’s here.)
Benson wasn’t the only one to do this, of course. Charlotte Riddell, who I mentioned last time, was the Victorian’s answer to Seabury Quinn. She could tack a happy ending on anything. She was a very smart (and successful) writer, knowing as did old Quinn how to satisfy an audience. This is just my own preference. I like’em nasty. And not funny. Jerome K. Jerome gave us the classic Told After Supper (1891), where people share their funny ghost stories, is not one I seek out often. If you like your Christmas light, then I guess, read it. If you like it dark and depressing like reading all the M. R. James stories in a row (like I did on a Hawaiian cruise), then I get you.
Light meat or dark meat, (some gravy and stuffing to boot) here are some more books I can recommend as good conglomerations of single author stories:
Tales For Christmas Eve (aka Twilight Stories) by Rhoda Broughton (1873) was written by J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s niece. She did not produce a lot of stories but she didn’t write any sappy duds either. She wrote five really good ones and they are all in this book. The volume had two different titles, one on re-release. “The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth” (Temple Bar, February 1868) is probably the best of the bunch, and impossible to describe without ruining the fun. She learned well from her uncle and set a good example for M. R. James , who came later.
A Moment of Madness, and Other Stories by Florence Marryat (1883) is another famous relative, the daughter of Captain Frederick Marryat, who gave us The Phantom Ship and “The Werewolf” (1839). She married a military man and lived for many years in India. Like so many Victorian writers, she wrote novels and only the occasional ghost story. (Being a ghost writer was a sure way to starve.) She was also an actress. Later in life she became a Spiritualist and wrote books on seances and ghosts. This collection includes “The Ghost of Charlotte Cray”, perhaps her most famous story.
The Cruel Painter and Other Stories by George MacDonald (1891) is famous for many things, preacher, novelist, Scotsman, but not the least for his children’s fantasy tales that helped inspire modern Fantasy fiction. His The Princess and the Goblin was an influence on J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. But he also liked to write creepy stories occasionally. This one contains a werewolf story, “The Gray Wolf” and a ghost in “Uncle Cornelius, His Story”. Like Robert Louis Stevenson, MacDonald has a wonderful Scottish atmosphere but he doesn’t muddy things with heavy dialect.
I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter’s Tales by Arthur Quiller-Couch (1892) is the work of the essential literary man, editor of the Oxford Book of English Verse, that Rumpole was fond of quoting. His work is always well rendered but I find our goals too different. He is one of those ghost story writers who has an agenda that I don’t always agree with. James’ ghost are nasty and rather atheistic (or perhaps elemental). Q’s tales are usually religious parables or meant to lift you up with Christian themes. The the title of this collection is taken from the old Christmas carol.
Uncanny Tales by Mrs. Molesworth (1896) is that most classic of ghost story collections with titles like “The Shadow in the Moonlight” and “The Clock that Struck Thirteen”. Mary Louisa Molesworth made her money writing for children. She also liked to tell a good ghost story with actual ghosts in them. Since her protagonists are sometimes children the resolution is not always stark terror. Uncanny Tales was her second collection.
Stories of the Seen and Unseen by Margaret Oliphant (1900) is another one of those writers who can tell a story without sentiment or hope. “The Secret Chamber” has a family secret that can’t be avoided or pushed off. Published in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in 1876, it flies in the face of critics who say all the ghost stories in Blackwood’s were poorly done and cliche. This collection has her masterpiece, “The Open Door”. A skeptical soldier has to confront his beliefs to save his young son from death.
Stories in the Dark by Barry Pain (1901) is the typical writer of light comedy having a dark other side. Haunted telephones, people falling through the earth, werewolves and a woman seduced by the god Pan, Pain tells many different kinds of horror tales not just the ghost who haunts. Many of these tales, like “The Grey Cat” and “The Undying Thing”. have been used by anthologists . Hugh Lamb and S. T. Joshi are two.
The Watcher By the Threshold and Other Tales by John Buchan (1902) is a personal favorite. The author of The Thirty-Nine Steps was also the Govenor-General of Canada. Buchan created the celebrated GeeGees or Govenor-General’s Award for Canadian literature. I laugh because the thrillers and ghost stories Buchan wrote could never win such a prize. How Canadian! This collection features “No-Man’s Land” a cryptiod classic, and “The Watcher on the Threshold” that sounds Lovecraftian but isn’t. HPL does mention Buchan in his “Supernatural Horror in Literature” but not this story.
The Isles of Sunset by A. C. Benson (1904) was by the least recognized of the three Benson bros. E. F. Benson and R. H. Benson were the younger brothers of Arthur Christopher Benson. Old Artie was actually the one who sat to hear M. R. James read his tales on Christmas. This book contains his most popular ghost story “The Slype House”. A man who has not had a loving life turns to black magic to gain power. “Out of the Sea” is the other perennial ACB tale, here with a goat-like monster from the sea haunting a village.
Conclusion
Whether you like to read ghost stories at Christmas or Halloween, it is always a good time for winter tales when the wind is howling, the snow if falling, and dim ghostly figures move about in the street. (Around here, these usually prove to be deer that come into town when all the dogs are kept in doors. What mule deer want in town at thirty below, I don’t know. But it can’t be good, can it?) There is definitely a Christmas ghost story in there somewhere. I haven’t written one for a few years but you can check out my Christmas collection Ghoutide Greetings if you are in the mood for Strange Northerns, Cthulhu Mythos tales and Christmas tales without sappy endings. Enjoy a good book, no matter where you find it!
