PETER HAINING has written and edited a number of bestselling books on the supernatural, notably the widely acclaimed Ghosts: The Illustrated History (1975) and A Dictionary of Ghosts (1982), which have been translated into several languages including French, German, Russian and Japanese. His companion volume to this anthology, Haunted House Stories, was published by Robinson in 2005. A former journalist and publisher, he lives in a sixteenth-century timber frame house in Suffolk that is haunted by the ghost of a Napoleonic prisoner of war.
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THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF
Modern Ghost Stories
Great Supernatural Tales of The Twentieth Century
Edited by PETER HAINING
Collection and editorial material copyright © Peter Haining 2007
All rights reserved.
For my wife
Philippa
– who has shared a lifetime with ghosts
“Ghosts, to make themselves manifest, require two conditions abhorrent to the modern mind: silence and continuity.”
Edith Wharton, 1937
“The modern ghost story appears to be as much about longing as it is about dread.”
Sinclair McKay, 2001
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FOREWORD
1. RAISING SPECTRES: The Modern Tradition
“OH WHISTLE, AND I’LL COME TO YOU, MY LAD”
M. R. James
THE HOUSE AT TREHEALE
A. C. Benson
THE RICHPINS
E. G. Swain
THE EVERLASTING CLUB
Arthur Gray
NUMBER SEVENTY-NINE
A. N. L. Munby
2. GHOST WRITERS: The “Golden Era”
PLAYING WITH FIRE
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
THE HOUSE SURGEON
Rudyard Kipling
THE GROVE OF ASHTAROTH
John Buchan
A MAN FROM GLASGOW
Somerset Maugham
THE LAST LAUGH
D. H. Lawrence
THE VISIT TO THE MUSEUM
Vladimir Nabokov
3. PHANTOM RANKS: Supernatural at War
THE BOWMEN
Arthur Machen
THE GHOST OF U65
George Minto
“VENGEANCE IS MINE”
Algernon Blackwood
THE PUNISHMENT
Lord Dunsany
THE HAUNTED CHATEAU
Dennis Wheatley
PINK MAY
Elizabeth Bowen
A GREMLIN IN THE BEER
Derek Barnes
MONEY FOR JAM
Sir Alec Guinness
4. THE GHOST-FEELERS: Modern Gothic Tales
THE LADY’S MAID’S BELL
Edith Wharton
THE DUENNA
Marie Belloc Lowndes
CLYTIE
Eudora Welty
THE POOL
Daphne du Maurier
A SPOT OF GOTHIC
Jane Gardam
5. ENTERTAINING SPOOKS: Supernatural High Jinks
THE INEXPERIENCED GHOST
H G. Wells
FULL FATHOM FIVE
Alexander Woollcott
THE NIGHT THE GHOST GOT IN
James Thurber
SIR TRISTRAM GOES WEST
Eric Keown
WHO OR WHAT WAS IT?
Kingsley Amis
ANOTHER FINE MESS
Ray Bradbury
6. CHRISTMAS SPIRITS: Festive Season Chillers
ONLY A DREAM . . .
Rider Haggard
THE HAUNTED HOUSE
Edith Nesbit
THE LIGHT IN THE GARDEN
E. F. Benson
THE PRESCRIPTION
Marjorie Bowen
CHRISTMAS HONEYMOON
Howard Spring
SOUTH SEA BUBBLE
Hammond Innes
RINGING IN THE GOOD NEWS
Peter Ackroyd
7. HAUNTING TIMES: Tales of Unease
SMOKE GHOST
Fritz Leiber