The Virago Book of Ghost Stories


Richard Dalby - 1987
    Byatt, Angela Carter, Charlotte Brontë, Antonia Fraser, Penelope Lively, Ruth Rendell, Edith Wharton, and many more. Here lost loves, past enmities, and unwanted memories mingle with the inexplicable as unquiet souls return to repay kindnesses, settle scores, and haunt the imagination. All of the writers demonstrate a subtle power to delight and chill at the same time as they explore the ghostly margins of the supernatural.

Powers of Darkness: The Lost Version of Dracula


Valdimar Ásmundsson - 1901
    Called Makt Myrkranna (literally, “Powers of Darkness”), this Icelandic edition included an original preface written by Stoker himself. Makt Myrkranna was published in Iceland in 1901 but remained undiscovered outside of the country until 1986, when Dracula scholarship was astonished by the discovery of Stoker’s preface to the book. However, no one looked beyond the preface and deeper into Ásmundsson’s story.In 2014, literary researcher Hans de Roos dove into the full text of Makt Myrkranna, only to discover that Ásmundsson hadn’t merely translated Dracula but had penned an entirely new version of the story, with all new characters and a totally re-worked plot. The resulting narrative is one that is shorter, punchier, more erotic, and perhaps even more suspenseful than Stoker’s Dracula. Incredibly, Makt Myrkranna has never been translated or even read outside of Iceland until now.Powers of Darkness presents the first ever translation into English of Stoker and Ásmundsson’s Makt Myrkranna. With marginal annotations by de Roos providing readers with fascinating historical, cultural, and literary context; a foreword by Dacre Stoker, Bram Stoker’s great-grandnephew and bestselling author; and an afterword by Dracula scholar John Edgar Browning, Powers of Darkness will amaze and entertain legions of fans of Gothic literature, horror, and vampire fiction.

Johannes Cabal the Necromancer


Jonathan L. Howard - 2009
    Johannes Cabal, a brilliant scientist and notorious snob, is single-mindedly obsessed in heart and soul with raising the dead. Well, perhaps not "soul" . . . He hastily sold his years ago in order to learn the laws of necromancy. But now, tormented by a dark secret, he travels to the fiery pits of Hell to retrieve it. Satan, who is incredibly bored these days, proposes a little wager: Johannes has one year to persuade one hundred people to sign over their souls or he will be damned forever. To make the bet even more interesting, Satan throws in that diabolical engine of deceit, seduction, and corruption known as a "traveling circus" to aid in the evil bidding. What better place exists to rob poor sad saps of their souls than the traveling carnivals historically run by hucksters and legendary con men? With little time to lose, Johannes raises a motley crew from the dead and enlists his brother, Horst, a charismatic vampire (an unfortunate side effect of Johannes's early experiments with necromancy), to be the carnival's barker. On the road through the pastoral English countryside, this team of reprobates wields their black magic with masterful ease, resulting in mayhem at every turn. Johannes may have the moral conscience of anthrax, but are his tricks sinful enough to beat the Devil at his own game? You'll never guess, and that's a promise! Brilliantly written and wickedly funny, "Johannes Cabal the Necromancer" combines the chills and thrills of old-fashioned gothic tales like "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," the mischievous humor of "Wicked," and the sophisticated charms of" Jonathan Strange &Mr. Norrell "and spins the Faustian legend into a fresh, irreverent, and irresistible new adventure.

This House Is Haunted


John Boyne - 2013
    Eliza Caine arrives in Norfolk to take up her position as governess at Gaudlin Hall on a dark and chilling night. As she makes her way across the station platform, a pair of invisible hands push her from behind into the path of an approaching train. She is only saved by the vigilance of a passing doctor.When she finally arrives, shaken, at the hall she is greeted by the two children in her care, Isabella and Eustace. There are no parents, no adults at all, and no one to represent her mysterious employer. The children offer no explanation. Later that night in her room, a second terrifying experience further reinforces the sense that something is very wrong.From the moment she rises the following morning, her every step seems dogged by a malign presence which lives within Gaudlin’s walls. Eliza realises that if she and the children are to survive its violent attentions, she must first uncover the hall’s long-buried secrets and confront the demons of its past…

Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories


Roald DahlJonas Lie - 1983
    For this superbly disquieting collection, he selected fourteen of his favorite tales by such authors as E.F. Benson, Rosemary Timperley, and Edith WhartonIncludes:"W.S." L.P. Hartley"Harry" Rosemary Timperley"The Corner Shop" Cynthia Asquith"In the Tube" E.F. Benson"Christmas Meeting" Rosemary Timperley"Elias and the Draug" Jonas Lie"Playmates" A.M. Burrage"Ringing the Changes" Robert Aickman"The Telephone" Mary Treadgold"The Ghost of a Hand" J. Sheridan Le Fanu"The Sweeper" A.M. Burrage"Afterward" Edith Wharton"On the Brighton Road" Richard Middleton"The Upper Berth" F. Marion Crawford

Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination


Edogawa Rampo - 1956
    Collected in this chilling volume are some of the famous Japanese mystery writer Edogawa Rampo's best stories—bizarre and blood-curdling expeditions into the fantastic, the perverse, and the strange, in a marvelous homage to Rampo's literary 'mentor', Edgar Allan Poe.

Aylmer Vance: Ghost-Seer


Alice Askew - 1998
    Originally published in 1914 between 4 July and 22 August in The Weekly Tale-Teller, the stories were belatedly collected into the current volume in the late 1990s by Jack Adrian. This is a collection of eight ghost stories, written by the remarkably prolific husband and wife team of Claude and Alice Askew, centering on Aylmer Vance, an investigator of the supernatural. Dexter, the narrator, meets Vance during a fishing holiday and Vance tells him three ghost stories on successive nights, each story involving Vance more closely in the action. The fourth story brings Dexter himself into the action, and reveals him to have unsuspected clairvoyant powers. The remaining stories feature Vance and Dexter as a sort of Holmes-and-Watson team investigating incidents not all of which prove to have supernatural causes. The final story, "The Fear" is very effective, describing a house in which a general feeling of extreme fear grips the inhabitants at various times and locations; the emotion of fear is effectively evoked and an interesting tale is constructed as Vance and Dexter work to assign the fear "a local habitation and a name."

This Census-Taker


China Miéville - 2016
    After witnessing a profoundly traumatic event, a boy is left alone in a remote house on a hilltop with his increasingly deranged parent. When a stranger knocks on his door, the boy senses that his days of isolation are over—but by what authority does this man keep the meticulous records he carries? Is he the boy’s friend? His enemy? Or something altogether other?

Ghost Stories: Classic Tales of Horror and Suspense


Leslie S. Klinger - 2019
    In this spine-tingling anthology, little known stories from literary titans like Charles Dickens and Edith Wharton are collected alongside overlooked works from masters of horror fiction like Edgar Allan Poe and M. R. James.Acclaimed anthologists Leslie S. Klinger (The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes) and Lisa Morton (Ghosts: A Haunted History) set these stories in historical context and trace the literary significance of ghosts in fiction over almost two hundred years—from a traditional English ballad first printed in 1724 through the Christmas-themed ghost stories of the Victorian era and up to the science fiction–tinged tales of the early twentieth century. In bringing these masterful tales back from the dead, Ghost Stories will enlighten and frighten both longtime fans and new readers of the genre.  Including stories by:Ambrose Bierce, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Olivia Howard Dunbar, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, M. R. James, Arthur Machen, Georgia Wood Pangborn, Mrs. J. H. Riddell, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Walter Scott, Frank Stockton, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton.

The Curse of Allie Mae


Aiden James - 2010
    David Hobbs, vacationing with his wife Miriam, inadvertently stumbles upon a small cloth 'keepsake' bag and a broken tooth. A human tooth. Miriam begs David to hand the bag and tooth over to park officials, but he ignores his wife's pleas and secretly keeps the 'harmless' items. The action opens a doorway that had been closed for nearly a hundred years and unleashes hell on earth, or at least hell in the lives of David and Miriam.Following the brutal murder of his best friend in Denver, and an aborted attack on his oldest son, David desperately seeks to understand why a mysterious teenage girl has chosen to terrorize him and the males closest to him. To prevent further devastation to his family and end the wanton bloodshed, he returns to the enchanted hills of eastern Tennessee, where a terrible truth awaits discovery...one that forces him to face the consequences for the unpaid sins of his ancestors.

A Haunted House


Virginia Woolf - 2013
    Short story by Virginia Woolf.

The Phantom Ship


Frederick Marryat - 1839
    Cursed by the captain's deadly sins, the seventeenth-century ship and its crew are doomed to sail and suffer for all eternity ― unless a holy relic can be brought to them. Philip Vanderdecken, the captain's son, vows to rescue the ship from its living hell. In the employ of the Dutch East India Company, young Vanderdecken sets sail for a gripping series of adventures, from sea battles and shipwrecks to an encounter with a werewolf.

North American Lake Monsters


Nathan Ballingrud - 2013
    Monsters, real and imagined, external and internal, are the subject. They are us and we are them and Ballingrud's intense focus makes these stories incredibly intense and irresistible.These are love stories. And also monster stories. Sometimes these are monsters in their traditional guises, sometimes they wear the faces of parents, lovers, or ourselves. The often working-class people in these stories are driven to extremes by love. Sometimes, they are ruined; sometimes redeemed. All are faced with the loneliest corners of themselves and strive to find an escape.Nathan Ballingrud was born in Massachusetts but has spent most of his life in the South. He worked as a bartender in New Orleans and New York City and a cook on offshore oil rigs. His story "The Monsters of Heaven" won the inaugural Shirley Jackson Award. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with his daughter.

After the People Lights Have Gone Off


Stephen Graham Jones - 2014
    Included are two original stories, several rarities and out of print tales, as well as a few "best of the year" inclusions. Stephen Graham Jones is a master storyteller. What does happen after the people lights have gone off? Crack the spine and find out. With an introduction by Joe R. Lansdale.Stephen Graham Jones is the author of fifteen novels and five collections, and has some two hundred stories published. Stephen's been an NEA Fellow and has won the Texas Institute of Letters Award for Fiction and the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural fiction. He's forty-two, married with a couple of kids, and lives in Boulder, Colorado.WINNER, Short Story Collection, THIS IS HORRORNOMINATED, Short Story Collection, BRAM STOKER AWARDSNOMINATED, Short Story Collection, SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARDS

The Elementals


Michael McDowell - 1981
    Two of the houses at Beldame are still used. The third house, filling with sand, is empty...except for the vicious horror which is shaping nightmares from the nothingness that hangs in the dank, fetid air.The McCrays and Savages, two fine Mobile families allied by marriage, have been coming to Beldame for years. This summer, with a terrible funeral behind them and a messy divorce coming up, even Luker McCray and little India down from New York are looking forward to being alone at Beldame.But they won't be alone. For something there, something they don't like to think about, is thinking about them...and about all the ways to make them die.