Book picks similar to
In Ghostly Company by Amyas Northcote


horror
ghost-stories
short-stories
fiction

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."

Ghost Stories


Henry James - 1898
    Henry James was arguably the greatest practitioner of what has been called the psychological ghost story. His stories explore the region which lies between the supernatural or straightforwardly marvellous and the darker areas of the human psyche. This edition includes all ten of his ghost stories, and as such is the fullest collection currently available. The stories range widely in tone and type. They include 'The Jolly Corner', a compelling story of psychological doubling; 'Owen Wingrave', which is also a subtle parable of military tradition; 'The Friends of the Friends', a strange story of uncanny love; and 'The Private Life', which finds a shrewd, high comedy in its ghostly theme. The volume also includes James's great novella The Turn of the Screw , perhaps the most ambiguous and disturbing ghost story ever written.

Sleep No More


L.T.C. Rolt - 1948
    Rolt in Sleep No More, his highly effective collection of stories which was first published in 1948.Tom Rolt was an engineering historian, whose many book credits include biographies of Thomas Telford and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, as well as the highly-acclaimed Red for Danger, a history of railway accidents and railway safety.Rolt's first book, Narrow Boat, a classic in its own right, tells of his love for Britain's canals, a love which led to his involvement with the Inland Waterways Association.His knowledge of Britain's industrial past and his love for the countryside around him are very evident in this collection, which includes two stories not included in the original edition and also Rolt's essay 'The Passing of the Ghost Story'. Rolt takes us on a haunted tour of the world he knew well—from Cornwall to Wales, and from the hill country of Shropshire to the west coast of Ireland—in tales which are guaranteed to make you Sleep No More.Jacket and interior illustrations by Paul Lowe.Contents:The MineThe Cat ReturnsBosworth Summit PoundNew CornerCwm GaronA Visitor at AshcombeThe Garside Fell DisasterWorld's EndHear Not My StepsAgony of FlameHawley Bank FoundryMusic Hath CharmsThe ShoutingThe House of VengeanceThe Passing of the Ghost Story

The Dead of Night: The Ghost Stories of Oliver Onions


Oliver Onions - 2010
    His stories are powerfully charged explorations of psychical violence, their effects heightened by detailed character studies graced with a powerful poetic elegance. In simple terms Oliver Onions goes for the cerebral rather than the jugular. However, make no mistake, his ghost stories achieve the desired effect. They draw you in, enmeshing you in their unnerving and disturbing narratives.This collection contains such masterpieces as The Rosewood Door, The Ascending Dream, The Painted Face and The Beckoning Fair One, a story which both Algernon Blackwood and H. P. Lovecraft regarded as one of the most effective and subtle ghost stories in all literature. Long out of print, these classic tales are a treasure trove of nightmarish gems.

The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories


Algernon Blackwood - 1906
    Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

Carnacki, the Ghost Finder


William Hope Hodgson - 1913
    Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder is a collection of supernatural detective short stories by author William Hope Hodgson.

Collected Ghost Stories


M.R. James - 1931
    R. James is widely regarded as the father of the modern ghost story, and his tales have influenced horror writers from H. P. Lovecraft to Stephen King. First published in the early 1900s, they have never been out of print, and are recognized as classics of the genre. This collection contains some of his most chilling tales, including A View from a Hill, Rats, A School Story, The Ash Tree, and The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance. Read by BAFTA and Emmy-award winning actor Derek Jacobi, and with haunting and evocative music, these tales cannot fail to send a shiver down your spine.

Best Ghost Stories of J.S. Le Fanu


J. Sheridan Le Fanu - 1964
    Half these stories never published before in U.S.

Terror by Night: Classic Ghost & Horror Stories


Ambrose Bierce - 2006
    He was a dark, cynical and pessimistic soul who had a grim vision of fate and the unfairness of life, which he channelled into his fiction. And in his death, or rather his disappearance, he created a mystery as strange and unresolved as any that he penned himself. But more of that later. Ambrose Gwinett Bierce was born in a log cabin on 21st June 1842, in Horse Creek, Meigs County, Ohio, USA. He was the tenth of thirteen children, ten of whom survived infancy. His father, an unsuccessful farmer with an unseemly love of literature, had given all the Bierce children names beginning with 'A'. There was Abigail, the eldest; then Amelia, Ann, Addison, Aurelius etc. So oddness was a part of Bierce's life from the beginning. Poverty and religion of the extreme variety were the two chief influences on young Ambrose's childhood. He not only hated this period of his life, he also developed a deep hatred for his family and this is reflected in some of his stories which depict families preying on and murdering one another. For example the unforgettable opening sentence of 'An Imperfect Conflagration' seems to sum up his bitter attitude: 'Early in 1872 I murdered my father - an act that made a deep impression on me at the time'.

The Wine-Dark Sea


Robert Aickman - 1988
    Unlike much of the current form, full of blood, monsters and melodrama, Aickman's stories achieve a quieter, more subtle and, in several ways, more lasting sense of disquiet. His lucid, finely tuned prose moves imperceptibly from the small crises and celebrations of ordinary life into another sphere. In these 11 stories, the occasion may be a walking tour of Northern England, a birthday present of a Victorian dollhouse or a stay at a Swedish sanatorium for insomniacs, but it simultaneously traps the characters with dread and opens them up to a new awareness of a greater, deeper and more dangerous world. A remarkable collection by an author who deserves to be better known.Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Phantom Coach: Collected Ghost Stories


Amelia B. Edwards - 1999
    Edwards is acknowledged as one of the best Victorian ghost story writers. She was one of the select band of authors invited by Charles Dickens to contribute ghost stories to the Christmas numbers of his magazine All the Year Round, and some of her tales—such as 'The Four-fifteen Express', 'Number Three', 'My Brother's Ghost Story', and the highly influential 'The Phantom Coach'—have become staples of ghost story anthologies.There was much more to Amelia Edwards than ghost stories, however, as Richard Dalby makes clear in his introduction. She was an indefatigable traveller, and she incorporated much of what she observed into her ghost stories, many of which are set in northern and central Europe. She was also an archaeologist of world renown, who was instrumental in ensuring that the treasures and antiquities of ancient Egypt were properly excavated and preserved.The Phantom Coach is the first book to collect together all of Amelia B. Edwards's supernatural fiction. In addition to all her known ghost stories, the volume also contains three additional items, including a delightful piece by Edwards herself about 'My Home Life': a fascinating look at one of the Victorian era's most fascinating women.Contents: Introduction by Richard Dalby; 'My Brother's Ghost Story'; 'The Eleventh of March'; 'Number Three'; 'The Discovery of the Treasure Isles'; 'The Phantom Coach'; 'The Recollections of Professor Henneberg'; 'An Engineer's Story'; 'The Four-fifteen Express'; 'The Story of Salome'; 'A Service of Danger'; 'The New Pass'; 'In the Confessional'; 'Sister Johanna's Story'; 'A Night on the Borders of the Black Forest'; 'Monsieur Maurice'; 'Was it an Illusion?'; Appendixes: 'Four Ghosts'; 'A Legend of Boisguilbert'; 'My Home Life'.

The Beast with Five Fingers


William Fryer Harvey - 1928
    'We'll keep it there until it dies, ' he said. 'May I burn in hell, if I ever open the door of that safe again.' The brilliant and scary The Beast with Five Fingers, is the first entry in this mammoth collection of strange and chilling short stories by W. F. Harvey, an unjustly neglected author of supernatural tales. This unique volume demonstrates clearly that Harvey is one of the masters of the genre. Along with such classics as August Heat, which concerns two strangers whose individual fates become inextricably entwined in a nightmare scenario and the gruesome school yarn, The Dabblers, you will find such minor masterpieces of the uncanny as The Man Who Hated Aspidistras, Sarah Bennet's Possession, The Habeas Corpus Club and many more stories which refreshingly avoid the cliche while at the same time creating that wonderfully eerie sense of fear.

The Collected Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson


E.F. Benson - 2001
    Tilly's seance --Mrs. Amworth --In the tube --Roderick's story --Reconciliation --Face --Spinach --Bagnell terrace --A tale of an empty house --Naboth's vineyard --Expiation --Home sweet home --"And no bird sings" --Corner house --Corstophine --Temple --Step --Bed by the window --James Lamp --Dance --Hanging of Alfred Wadham --Pirates --Wishing-well --Bath-chair --Monkeys --Christopher comes back --Sanctuary --Thursday evenings --Psychical mallards --Clonmel witch burning.

Strange Tales


Rudyard Kipling - 2006
    This collection presents the best of these strange tales in which ghosts, monsters and inexplicable happenings abound.

Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural


Marvin KayeJ. Sheridan Le Fanu - 1985
    A gripping, chilling collection of 47 stories and six poems, dating back to Shelley and Stevenson, but also including modern masters.