Illusions of Presence: Lost Christmas Ghost Stories (ed. Johnny Mains)

 " ... an empty house is an admirable field for the operations of the imagination ..."

-- from "The Haunted Vicarage," by Emeric Hulme-Beaman

9780712355933

British Library, 2025

244 pp

hardcover

Ever since Valancourt Books put out its first book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories, reading ghostly tales for the holidays has become a personal tradition.  Now, just in the nick of time—Saint or Old, your choice—for this  2025 Christmas season, I dove into the latest entry in the British Library’s Gilded Nightmares series, Illusions of Presence: Lost Christmas Ghost Stories, edited by Johnny Mains. Known for his knack for unearthing wonderfully obscure tales, Mains pulls from a wide range of old, forgotten sources here, and the result is pure reading pleasure. Rather than sticking to the familiar seasonal standbys (near and dear to my heart though they may be), this collection offers stories reprinted here for the first time, steeped in that irresistible combination of Christmas warmth and the quiet, uncanny sense of dread that I so enjoy. 

Before I get going here with my purely reader's thoughts, if you would care more for a professional review, there's one here by Tim Prasil, who also knows his way around obscure stories and ghostly tales. 

Every story in the collection comes with a short but highly-informative introduction to its author, complete with  context about where and how the tale first appeared.  This volume definitely passes my does-the-first-story-convey-the-tone-of-what's-to-come test, with "In Deadly Peril: A Strange Christmas Story of Mining Life," by John Pendleton (1853 - 1914).   From 1887, it's a fine opener -- dark, eerie, and claustrophobic all at once—offering an immediate plunge into the anthology’s unsettling atmosphere. A dramatist in search of a “strong situation” for his new play, ventures into a coal mine on Christmas Eve. He’s warned he’s chosen a “strange day” for such an expedition and told it’s “not too late to turn back.” Christmas Eve, it seems, is unlucky in this pit—but he laughs it off as mere “nonsense.” Yet as the mine’s shadows deepen and the cold seeps in, it becomes clear that some warnings are best heeded…  

From there,  we move indoors for the most part, inside of houses that have seen too much and where the past lingers in the corners but has a way of making itself known.   "The Ghost at the Red Farm" by Mabel Collins (1892)  first sends us into haunted house mode.   Young Lucy Fielding has grown up motherless at the Red Farm, sheltered from almost all human contact—especially men. So when her father suddenly asks her to prepare a room for an older male visitor, the request unsettles her in a way she can’t quite name. Her unease deepens as the guest stays longer than expected, and she notices the subtle shift in her father—his usual good nature replaced by a “manifestly uneasy” tension.  Despite the unease, Lucy finds herself drawn to him, caught in a mix of fear and “awestruck admiration.” Then comes the chilling proposal: he asks her to marry him. But her father’s warning, spoken on his deathbed, hangs over the tale like a dark shadow, and to quote something I recently heard on British TV, Bloody Norah!    The ending of this story is evidently unending, when all is said and done.  Just plain creepy this one,  as is “The Haunted Vicarage” (1903) by Emeric Hulme-Beaman (1864–1937).  The vicar at Walford  invites his old friend Marsden to visit his home. When the conversation turns to the house being less than ideal for a bride—despite its “recommendations for domestic comfort”—Marsden is initially taken aback.  That was, of course, before he witnessed firsthand (and not forewarned!) the eerie happenings that have troubled the vicar since his arrival.  

from Love to Know

Further hauntings plague the inhabitants of various houses in "Nights of Terror" (1913) by E.J. Thomas, "The Ghost of Moor Hall" (1925) by M.E. Murray and then there's "The Malignant Thing: A Christmas Eve Ghost Story" (1928) by Vincent Cornier which begins with three men sitting by a blazing fire discussing the "pet spook" that lives in the host's (Summerson's) house.   One of the men, Petersham, declares that he only requires “one proof” of the house being haunted, promising a donation to a charity of the host’s choice if it can be shown. Meanwhile, the third, a professor, pleads—“for the sake of two souls”—that their host refuse the offer altogether. It seems that whatever has been lingering unseen yet present in the house has caused an entire wing to be closed, and that this "malignant thing ... a thing of Hell, a demon, a spectre, a shadow..." has been terrorizing people for well over two hundred years.  But a bet is a bet.  Then it's the eerie“The Spectre Bridegroom” by Mrs. Gordon Smythies (1884), followed by Bessie May Tobin-Montague’s “A Christmas Ghost Story” (1901), set during a Christmas hunting party at an inherited country house complete with gargoyles and a bordering Black Swamp. Everything begins pleasantly enough—fires lit, guests assembled—until the hostess starts seeing and feeling things no one else can. Naturally, whispers follow, and both her guests and her husband begin to wonder whether the problem lies with the house…or with her mind. I found this one especially well done, its slightly off-kilter events setting it a bit apart from the rest of the collection.  Even darker is “The Lady of the Mistletoe: A Christmas Ghost Story” by Mary Hall (1902), told from the retrospective point of view of Tom Derston as he recalls a fateful Christmas house party hosted by himself and his wife, Ellice. Their country home—Derston Hall—once belonged to an elderly relative whose presence still seems to cling to the place. One thing missing from the holiday decorations is mistletoe, which (and I won't divulge why) they were told was a good thing.  Unfortunately, an invited guest is unable to attend and instead sends along “a mass” of the stuff. That gift is the beginning of a strange unraveling.   Rich in atmosphere, heavy with supernatural menace, and just a little unhinged, this tale was so much fun to read.  May Wynne's "The Ghost of Cheldon Court:  A Christmas Ghost Story," from 1924, starts two days before Christmas, and gambling man Jack's wife Mollie makes him swear that he'll be back to spend time with her and their children on Christmas Eve.   Jack has resolved to leave by eleven that night, but best laid plans and all that.  While he and the men he is with are trying to figure out something fun to do, one of them comes up with the idea of spending a night at Cheldon Court.   As one of Jack's cronies says, he'll "lay a thousand to eight against any man spending the night tonight in that haunted room."  Despite the horrific things he's told about people who've done it before, Jack decides he'll take the bet.  

from PropertyAuctions

Leaving the haunted houses behind, we have five more tales that move outside home and hearth.   "The Child Who Had Everything But: A Christmas Ghost Story" by John Kendrick Bangs (1911) is a very different sort of ghostly tale, very likely the most poignant of this anthology, "The Ghost of Appledore Pool or The Iron Chest at the Barnstaple Bar," by JYT (1893) is a fine yarn that begins with two siblings asking their grandmother to tell them a story -- "a real good one, a thorough Christmas story..." Evidently, grandma is a terrific storyteller, because one of the children hasn't been able to forget last's year's ghostly tale.  They ask for a "real true one," as well as a ghost story, so she obliges with a tale unsettling enough to satisfy them as well as anyone reading this little piece.  Storms, shipwrecks, a lighthouse and of course, ghosts -- who needs any more than that?  "That Terrible Dentist" (1880)  by an anonymous writer is downright demonic in its own way (hint hint), and while offsetting that experience, more than a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor finds its way into "Claus and Defect by William J. Koen (1927).   

Bringing the anthology to a chilling close is “The Shadows of Evil or The Fatal Dream,” another anonymously published tale from 1871—and easily one of my absolute favorites here. Once again, a grandmother is pressed into service at Christmas to provide a ghostly diversion, and the story she chooses is one that held a “great fascination” for her when she was a girl. It comes from a diary written by her father’s aunt, who, in turn, heard it from one of the very people involved. Certain it won’t “trouble the heads” of her grandchildren, she reads it to them, but it turns out to be one of the most disturbing pieces in the entire book, troubling my own head for a while.   I can’t help wishing I knew the identity of this anonymous author; I’d hunt down everything they ever wrote without hesitation. This story is truly that good.

While not everyone will love every story, for me the editor's selection of stories for this Christmas ghost-story volume is spot on, and I can only begin to imagine the time and care that went into tracking them down.  While they are perfectly suited to the season, they are also first-rate ghost stories that would feel entirely at home in any anthology of ghostly tales from yesteryear.  So, if you didn't manage to read this one over the holidays, don't fret-- these stories will rattle your nerves and raise your hackles at any time of year.  Very, very highly recommended, especially for those readers who delight in older, darker pleasures.

I loved this book. Absolutely. 

Spectral Sounds: Unquiet Tales of Acoustic Weird (ed.) Manon Burz-Labrande

 

9787012354172

British Library, 2022

308 pp

paperback

In this anthology, as the editor of this volume says in her introduction,  "unexplained noises take centre stage."  I would think that at least once in someone's life, he/she/they would have experienced strange aural phenomena -- I know I have.  When I was about seven, we had a heater in our house that made strange noises now and then which reminded me of footsteps and I would just lay there at night in bed frozen to my core from fear.  I've been awakened at night more than once by someone distinctly calling my name,  bolting straight up in bed, only to find my sweet spouse still snoring away.  I could list others, but let  me just say that compared with what happens in these stories, my experiences are minor.  

Burz-Labrande divides this book into four thematic sections.  The first is  " 'I Heard a Noise, Sure Enough' : Living with Audible Presences"  and you  have to love an editor who starts her book with a selection from Florence Marryat (1833-1899), whose short stories, novellas and novels have given me hours of entertainment, especially her bizarre The Strange Transformation of Hannah Stubbs (1896) and The Blood of the Vampire (1897),  republished in 2009 by Valancourt.  I love her weird stuff so much that I bought the two-volume set of work from Leonaur, The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Florence Marryat, and I always rejoice when I find a collection of ghostly tales and find one of her stories in the contents.  Getting back to Spectral Sounds,  the Marryat piece included here is  "The Invisible Tenants of Rushmere" which made its debut in her The Ghost of Charlotte Cray and Other Stories published in 1883.  A London doctor who believes he's on the edge of a breakdown and is looking for a few months of "complete quiet," finds a house "on the banks of the Wye, Monmouthshire" that promises "excellent fishing," rounds," and a nominal rent.  It is, he thinks, "the very thing we want," and the family soon takes up residence in the place.  It is a bit on the isolated side, and this worries his wife, but as time goes on there are more pressing matters to deal with as the family begins to experience some strange but unseen phenomena.  In conversation with the landlord of a nearby pub, the doctor learns that  "No one who lives at Rushmere lives there alone," but the doctor refuses to listen to "any such folly."  As always, he probably should have taken the word of someone who knows.  It is a fine opener, the perfect haunted house story to read at night by booklight during a noisy thunderstorm, which is how I did it.   Also included in this section is B.M. Croker's "The First Comer"   and The Day of My Death" by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, which unlike the previous two, takes place in America. 

from Sublime Horror

The second section, " 'I Had Heard The Words With Painful Distinctness': Perceiving Ghostly Voices"  begins with  "The Spirit's Whisper," by an unknown author but often attributed to Le Fanu.  You can be the judge as to whether or not it reads like a Le Fanu story.   My favorite in this section is "A Case of Eavesdropping" by Algernon Blackwood, which first appeared in his The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories from 1906.  Shorthouse,  down on his luck, left high and dry "in an American city" talks his way into a week's trial writing for a newspaper.   Forced by circumstance to live in a rooming house, he keeps irregular hours, thereby never meeting the "old gent" on the same floor.  Although "it seemed a very quiet house," well.... The remaining stories in this section are "A Speakin' Ghost" by Annie Trumbull Slosson, "The Whispering Wall" by H.D. Everett and "No Living Voice," by Thomas Street Millington. 

from Wikipedia

The work of four very well known authors makes up section three, " 'I Jumped Awake to the Furious Ringing of My Bell' : Sonorous Objects and Haunting Technology."  Edith Wharton's "The Lady Maid Bell" is first up before  Barry Pain's very short "The Case of Vincent Pyrwhit;"  Rosa Mulholland follows  with one of my all-time favorite tales "The Haunted Organist of Hurly Burly" and H.D. Everett's "Over The Wires" rounds out this part.   "The Lady Maid Bell" (1902) wins for most atmospheric, as a young woman who's come to the end of her money after a bout of typhoid takes a job  at a country house on the Hudson.  She is warned before taking the job that it is "not a cheerful place,"  with the mistress of the house alone for most of the time after losing her two children and having a husband who is rarely there. When he is there, she is told, "you've only to keep out of his way."  Although the job suits her, even as isolated as she is there, she does wonder why her employer, Mrs. Brympton, doesn't use the bell to summon her but sends a maid to fetch her instead.  Let's just say she will definitely find out why in the course of things, but not before she is witness to some rather extraordinary phenomena.  

from Litbug

And last, but by no means least, two stories bring us to the end of this volume in the final section, "Sounds and Silence: Acoustic Weird Beyond the Ghostly."  The first is a tale by Edgar Allen Poe, "Siope"  which I have to admit that I'd never read before; the book ends with  "The House of Sounds," by M,P. Shiel, which the editor refers to as "a masterpiece of the acoustic weird."  I wholeheartedly concur.   On an isolated island off the Norwegian coast, the narrator of this story has been called to the home of his friend.  The noise of the waves is not only constant, but along with the fierce howling of the gales tends to drown out other sounds so that the conversation between the two has to be conducted largely via written notes.  While I won't go into any detail here (if ever a story needed experiencing this is it)  think family curse, a strange machine, altered states of consciousness and time ticking down toward a very palpable doom.  The editor mentions its comparison to Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher," but this story goes well beyond Poe into something entirely its own.  It is truly one of those tales that once read, will never be forgotten. 

I love these spooky tales from yesteryear and I really enjoy the British Library Tales of the Weird Series, offering readers the opportunity to find authors and their works which they may not know, as well as incorporating more famous (and often anthologized) strange tales into the mix.  Not all of these stories floated my boat but the ones that did provided several hours of enjoyment, chills up the spine and often left me thinking about them well into the night.  I definitely recommend this volume as well as the complete series of books from the British Library.   And since it's October, these stories are more than perfect for Halloween, but they can be enjoyed any time of year.  I am truly in my element here, happy as a clam and wanting the show to go on long after the book is finished and the booklight goes off. 

haunted house, anyone? The Silent Companions, by Laura Purcell

9780143131632
Penguin, 2018
originally published (UK) 2017
304 pp

paperback

The Silent Companions is my real-world book group's pick for our meeting on October 30th.  I racked my brains trying to come up with a book that would be a good Halloween-ish read -- I could have, of course, easily gone and scanned my shelves for a title but the women in my group tend to not share my love of dark dark books, so it was tricky.  I needed to find a novel that would not only fit in with the occasion, but one that was well written with intelligent themes that would hopefully provide for some good discussion.  When I found out about The Silent Companions, I added it to the list.  I will confess that near the midpoint of this novel, I was beginning to regret my choice because the book was moving along at a slow pace, but just after complaining about it on Goodreads, a few pages later I was actually hooked and couldn't put the book down.  It's not great literature, but on the other hand,  it's fun, it's creepy, and once I got in the groove of its gothic weirdness, I couldn't stop turning pages.  Certainly it isn't without its faults, but it is a perfect Halloween read, just filled with that lovely ambiguity that made me wonder if there's more than meets the eye here, right up until the very last page.


This book spans three different timelines, alternating between present and the past.  First, as the novel opens, we find ourselves in main character Elsie Bainbridge's present, which, as we learn pretty quickly,  is during Elsie's time in an asylum  where she is undergoing a psychological assessment.  Before her doctor can pass judgment, though, he begs her to tell the truth about the events that landed her there, but Elsie cannot speak.  Giving her a slate, and then later a pencil and paper, he encourages her to write down all she knows, and we are immediately taken back to the time before Elsie's incarceration when she had first arrived at the Bainbridge family home, The Bridge, in 1865.  Her husband Rupert had gone ahead of her,  leaving Elsie in London while he got the place ready for the two of them and their unborn baby, but his unexpected death while at the house brings Elsie there as a woman in mourning.   Also at The Bridge  are a handful of servants, as well as Rupert's cousin Sarah, who had served as lady's companion and who is now at The Bridge to keep Elsie company.  It doesn't take long until Elsie becomes aware of strange noises that seem to emanate from a room that has always been kept locked, but that's just the beginning of a series of bizarre events that plague the household.   The house itself has a long history and a dark past that continues to keep the villagers away, which is reflected in the third timeline (the 1630s) during the reign of Charles I.  I'm not saying another word about the actual plot here or how the time periods interweave; I was perfectly happy not knowing anything at all about this story until I'd it read it.

from Treasure Hunt

The Silent Companions has it all: hints of witchcraft, gypsies, locked rooms, strange noises, a black cat, eerie happenings, madness and an asylum, but as the title suggests, the centerpiece of this story is "the silent companions."  The photo above is one of these and is the cover image of the Penguin edition of this book; they are also called "dummy boards,"  which as noted by the blogger at Treasure Hunt, were made out of wood, but had a "lifelike quality"  which could "render them a little spooky as you suddenly come upon a solemn little child, a gesturing servant or even a soldier with gun at the ready."   The first of the silent companions is discovered in a locked garret, but soon others begin to appear, heightening the already-existing tensions within the household, making for a creepy and unforgettable tale.

As I said earlier, the book starts out very slowly and sort of trudges along for a while as we get the picture of the house and its environs as well as the people within, but that all changes very quickly just about midway and zooms toward the ending.  Aside from the atmospheric sense of place and time that is built into this story, the best part of this book is the underlying and particularly unsettling sense of ambiguity that not only ratchets up the tension, but makes you want to question everything you've read after finishing. 

Considering that I prefer my horror from yesteryear, the author's done a fine job here and I can certainly recommend this novel.  Do yourself a favor and carve out a few hours -- once the creepiness gets rolling, it doesn't let up.