They: A Sequence of Unease by Kay Dick

 

9781946022288

McNally Editions, 2022

first published in 1971

112 pp

paperback

Since finishing this book a couple of weeks back, I've been reading everything I can find on both book and author, and I found a great article in The New Yorker about how this book came back into being after a long period of obscurity.  Bear with me here because it's a great story and I love reading about this sort of thing, otherwise, skip this first couple of  paragraphs and just scroll on down.   It seems that a British literary agent by the name of Becky Brown had gone to stay with her parents in Bath during the pandemic, and "with nothing better to do" made her way to an Oxfam shop there in August, 2020.   Her work involves the representation of "dead authors," and so she had developed the knack of  quickly scanning bookshelves in places like thrift stores or used bookstores, "looking for particular colors, colophons, publishers' logos."  During one such scan, she came across a Penguin paperback, orange, with cracked spine which  she bought for fifty pence -- this book, as it happened.     

Penguin, 1977 edition.  from Amazon

About a week later, Ms. Brown received an email from a friend of hers, Lucy Scholes, a contributor to The Paris Review about found old books and the senior editor at McNally Editions, had come across the author's obituary in The Guardian.  She had never heard of Kay Dick but decided she'd look into the author's work, most of which she'd found "particularly unexciting," until she came upon this book.  She wrote about it for Paris Review, and following that article, because of newly-arisen interest in publishing this book, she emailed Brown for help in tracking down the author's estate.  Noting the "strangest timing,"  Brown revealed that she'd just read They.   Scholes was surprised, asking her how she had even found a copy, which as Sam Knight notes in The New Yorker article, was "virtually impossible" to find at the time.   Brown was "stunned" at just "how thoroughly the book had disappeared," saying that "It's incredibly unusual to find a book this good that has been this profoundly forgotten."  

I'd never even heard of this book nor its author, and I stumbled onto both accidentally when an email came to me from McNally Editions, advertising their book bundle that included They.  (By the way, it's also available from Faber, published in March of this year with an introduction by Carmen Maria Machado.)   I bought said bundle and put the books aside for later, but then I got another email from a reader friend who was blown away by They and  highly recommended it.  I took that as a sign that maybe I should read it sooner rather than later.   Much like Becky Brown's experience, reading They "just punched me in the face."   

I suppose for some people it may be a stretch to call this book a novel; it is a series of nine short stories which are linked by the recurrence of an unnamed, ungendered narrator, the "I" who travels around the "rolling hills and sandy shingle beaches of coastal Sussex"  with a dog visiting  pockets of artist/intellectual friends during a time when mobs are roaming throughout England bent on the destruction of the arts (including literature), working to stifle creative freedom  and to impose their own version of conformity.  "They"  are "over a million, nearer two,"  but how this situation developed is not explained; the author, I think, is less interested in the hows and whys than the idea of what it may be like to live in a world (to quote the book blurb) "hostile to beauty, emotion, and the individual."    At the same time, perhaps the not knowing makes it all the more horrific, heightening the sense of menace and paranoia that grows with each chapter.  

 Things are already ominous enough as this book opens -- in a seaside village the narrator learns that the mob has destroyed "the books at Oxford," and from a friend nearby finds out that the National Gallery had been "cleared." But it's not just cities that are affected -- in the countryside the narrator's friends cluster together in "pockets of quietude" for support and to go on with their work as much as possible; communal living  is a also a means of survival, as They fear "solitary living" --  those who live alone "are a menace to them."  The mobs watch all the time, ready to mete out punishment to those who stand out from the norm or who offer resistance.   As time and the book moves on, the situation grows worse as They take over more of the countryside, imposing more stringent measures against individual freedoms, tightening their control.   People are forcibly moved to newly-built houses,  young children often having to go "with or without parents."  Gunshots are commonly heard, signaling that "intractability is a punishable offense," and "senseless violence" becomes usual.  "Retreats" are built, constructed with no doors or windows, part of an effort to cure the offenders "of identity."  Lobotomies are a form of punishment.   Grief becomes an unforgivable offence, resulting in removal to a specialized grief tower where memory purges are performed.   And yet, through it all, the narrator who "allowed myself the luxury of going utterly to pieces for forty-eight hours" continues on, "greeting another day." 

In her afterword Lucy Scholes notes that this "strong allegory" can be read in numerous ways, 

" -- as a straightforward satire, a sequence of vividly-drawn nightmares, even a metaphor for artistic struggle -- but above all it's perhaps best understood as a plea for individual freedoms made by an artist who refused to live by many of society's rules"

and writer Eli Cugini in an article at XTRA*  discusses how They "deserves reappraisal,"  written by this "bisexual writer and editor who was ahead of her time," examining how  the "queer sensibility" remains evident throughout the book.   It can also be read as a straight-up look at the encroachment of fascism, and I have to say that I'm absolutely floored  by how the author managed to convey such menace, paranoia  and unease in such a short amount of space, but more importantly, by how what she wrote still resonates nearly fifty years later.  The lack of backstory in this book didn't bother me as it did some readers, nor did the fact that the chapters were so brief so that the characters were never really explored; for me it's more about the bigger picture here -- quite honestly, when I think about the last administration's lack of respect for the arts, labeling funding for institutions like PBS, the NEA, the NEH and the Institute of Museum and Library Services a waste of money, the current wave of book bannings,  it makes me angry and afraid.  And of course, considering the concept of "the mob"  in our own contemporary context, well, it's pretty damn scary.   Definitely a book that should not be missed, and this is coming from someone who rarely reads dystopian novels.  

The Death Spancel and Others, by Katharine Tynan

 

9781783807543

Swan River Press, 2020

221 pp

paperback

 "There's few could look on the boorwaugh washa, the death spancel, without terror."  

For me there is no greater comfort than to make a pot of tea, grab my favorite blanket and crawl into my favorite comfy chair with a book of older ghost stories in hand.   Let's just say that it is much more comforting than even my favorite comfort food (a grilled cheese sandwich with some fresh homemade tomato soup  - a childhood holdover), and that the pleasure is augmented when what I'm reading is written by an author whose work I have not previously read.  Imagine my pleasure in finding this book (thanks to one of my like-minded goodreads friends)  -- but I did have to ask myself the following question:  

what the hell is a spancel?

As anyone might do, I googled it and discovered that it's something that "hobbles" or "tethers," with the original usage having to do with cattle.  It's definitely not put to bovine use here though, as I discovered, in not one, but two stories: first, the titular story "The Death Spancel"  and a bit later in the book,  "The Spancel of Death."  In simplest form, it is  skin cut from a corpse from head to heel in one swoop, much like one might do with an apple.  From the second story we learn that the cutting of the skin is done with "ceremonies so awful that it would make this story too ghastly reading to detail them."  In his introduction, Peter Bell notes that it is a "grim artifact of Irish lore;"  William Gregory Wood-martin goes a step further in his description in volume one of his Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland: A Handbook of Irish pre-Christian Traditions, calling it a "love charm of most gruesome character."  (Just as an FYI, that link goes to Google Books where you can download the book for free; mine is a paperback copy from Alpha Editions.) In the first story, it "dangles" from the "dusty rafters of Aughagree Chapel," a "devil's charm" of "such power that no man born of woman can resist it, save by the power of the Cross."   This story, which begins with remembrances of a priest fighting "with the demons" over the soul of Mauryheen Holion, has a most gothic atmosphere to it, as evidenced by passages like this one:

"...the servants in Rossatorc Castle said that as the priest lay exhausted from his vain supplications, and the rattle was in Dark Mauryeen's throat, there were cries of mocking laughter in the air above the castle, and a strange screaming and flapping of great wings, like to, but incomparably greater than, the screaming and flapping of the eagle over Slieve League."

The "devil-may-care" Sir Robert Molyneux and the lovely Lady Eva are to be wed in just two weeks' time, but it seems he can't help himself when it comes to the women "of a class below his own."  Even though "the germ of good in him" knows that this is wrong, and even though he  promises himself that he'll never do it again, from the moment he catches "sight of a girl's dark handsome face on the staircase" his fate is sealed. In the other story using this device, "The Spancel of Death," the girl doing the binding is an "Eastern beauty in the wilds of Mayo," Sabina Doheny,  who was once a "lonely, fierce, haunted child" and "pagan at heart" but now  "protegée"  and maid of the daughter of the local Marquis.  Lady Kathaleen's fiancé is Sir Harry Massey, and once again, as in the case of  Sir Robert Molyneux, once Sabina's eyes lit upon his face, her "heart had awakened with a madness and a violence beyond expressing."  Given that Sabina had once lived in a hut with Mag Holon, the local witch, she knows exactly where to go and what to ask for.  Be warned, old Mag reminds her,  "There's few could look on the boorwaugh washa, the death spancel, without terror."  

While those two stories alone were well worth the price of this book, there are plenty of other topnotch tales included here.  I have to say that I have read more than a few volumes of ghostly/strange tales, some of which are so predictable that they're hardly worth reading, but that is not the case here. Take for example   "A Sentence of Death," which I thought was going to be a sort of rehash of Benson's "The Bus Conductor" from 1906, when something similar happens and a driver offers the main character "Room for one more, madame." But I was pleasantly surprised with what Tynan did with this story, since (as described in the introduction, which should be left until last), the focus was much more on the poor woman as she undergoes a great internal turmoil. It seems that while "Life at the Manor House flowed by in its old, delightful way," Marion Desborough finds no joy either in her upcoming wedding, nor in life itself, as her memory of an event takes a toll on her mental health and she waits for her death which she believes has been sent by portent.  Her loved ones try to convince her it was all a dream, but, well, Marion seems to know better.  And then there's "The Dream House," in which Reggie Champneys is cut off without a penny because of his marriage to a dancehall girl and even worse, Champneys, the family home he loves,  goes to another relative.  His wife, Kitty, is told about the "Champneys ghost," but this is no ordinary haunted house story whatsoever.  

Two stories sort of jumped out in the "most disturbing" category,  "A Night in a Cathedral" and "The Picture on the Wall."  In the first a young officer becomes "obsessed" with a young woman who lives with her father near his regiment's barracks to the point that he follows her every evening as she enters a "gothic" cathedral for Evensong. He does this for months on end, hiding in the shadows to prevent being observed.  One night, not feeling well while "inhaling one knew not what foul vapours" he faints, only to find himself completely alone, locked inside the the cathedral, and realizes he must stay there until the morning, in the dark with no light. It's then that he notices the waters rising over the floors ...  "The Picture on the Wall" begins as a young woman refuses to give the man who loves her a specific wedding date, for reasons she will not reveal.  Eventually though she takes him home to meet her father, who not only seems hostile towards him but also puts him in a certain room of the house for his stay.  This is another one where I thought I could guess the ending, but I was (happy to be) very, very mistaken.    

There are still another half dozen or so stories remaining in this volume , along with a number of poems; the final section of the book includes other short writings, including a "weird tale," by the author, a "chat" with Tynan, and a brief anecdote about fantasy author Lord Dunsany.  All in all it's a fine and engrossing collection; and while not unexpectedly some stories worked better for me than others, it was still a great pleasure to read and to lose myself in this author's strange tales.  Leave it until the end, but do not miss the great introduction by Peter Bell.  I'll happily recommend this book to others who enjoy finding new (old) authors, women writers whose work has sadly sank into obscurity,  and to those readers who are fans of older Irish fiction and folklore as well. And it's from Swan River Press, which has provided me with hours and hours of great reading time over the last few years, so you know it's going to be good.  

The Villa and the Vortex: Supernatural Stories, 1916-1924 by Elinor Mordaunt (ed.) Melissa Edmundson

 

9781912766420

Handheld Press, 2021

306 pp

paperback

Melissa Edmundson is the editor of two volumes of weird stories of yesteryear written by women, Women's Weird: Strange Stories by Women, 1890-1940 and Women's Weird 2: More Strange Stories by Women, 1891-1937.  I have both of those books (and I'll be reading at least the first volume this month),  so when I first heard about this one, I made a quick hit on the preorder button.  I was not at all disappointed; in fact, reading The Villa and The Vortex gave me hours of pleasure.  

From the editor's introduction:

"Elinor Mordaunt is responsible for an eclectic and wide-ranging output of supernatural fiction that rivals the best writing by her contemporaries.  Yet in the decades following her death in 1942, Mordaunt was neglected and largely forgotten as an author, her work omitted from the subsequent anthologies that helped to ensure the reputations of fellow writers."  She continues, saying that "This major voice within the supernatural genre has been neglected for far too long, and it is time that her work returned to a wider audience."  As the editor also notes, "Mordaunt's short stories showcase a variety of otherworldly, supernatural entities as she drew inspiration from folklore, myth, legend, and history."   Most definitely my kind of book and my kind of writer. 

While  I won't be going through every story here, I will shine a light on my favorites, beginning with  "The Weakening Point"  from 1916, which opens this collection.    While birthdays are normally occasions for celebrations, it seems that for Bond Challice, they are met with a most particularly horrific and recurring nightmare. The situation has been ongoing since his first birthday, and every year since then, the approach of the day causes him abject fear, which in turn leads to outright paralysis.  It's more than crippling: his terror  prevents him from living life to its fullest and leads to changes to his personality.  His parents are in complete despair, having watched him suffer; as his father says at one point, "A Challice -- the last of all the Challices -- to go to hell for a dream!"  Tension builds slowly in this one, and by the time Bond decides it's time to face his fear, well, I don't mind saying that I was on the edge of my chair.  Jeez, I wish I could say more about this one, but all I will reveal is that the ending tipped this story into the weird zone for sure.    My vote for most frightening story in this volume is "Luz," from 1922, which is set in London and begins with a young woman with a strange dislike and fear of a particular blind man who passes by her flat at a regular time each night.  Normally, she says, she has always felt "acute sympathy" for "all who are maimed and defrauded; above all for the blind," but there's something in the "tap-tap of his stick" that sets her on edge and makes her run for home to ensure that she's inside before he walks by her flat each evening.   She's never seen the man, but she is curious about where he goes each time, for some reason convinced that he  

" reached the scene of his day's labours -- pleasure, solicitation, whatever it might be -- by some altogether uncanny means; that his every action, his whole life, indeed, was nefarious."

 One February night she finds herself coming home from a tea party, "enveloped by a thick yellow fog," and becomes turned around, completely lost, when a stranger she can't see offers help; it's then that she hears the familiar "tap-tap" next to her.   Let me just say that I thought I knew what was going to happen here, but as it turns out, I was not only wrong but I would never have guessed it in a million years.  The bizarre, disorienting travels through foggy London streets add even more of a chill to this story, which would be a superb addition to any collection of weird tales.   

from photosample, by Kalin Kalpachev (if you go there, buy him a coffee)

Two haunted house stories made my favorites list as well:  "Four Wallpapers," from 1924, is set in Tenerife, where a couple who had bought a house sight unseen are discouraged by the lack of progress the local workers have made by the time they arrive,  even though they'd been sending regular payments for the work.  Mrs. Erskine decides that she'll have to buckle down and get things done herself; for Mr. Erskine it's all too much so he spends most of his time in the local hotel.  He particularly hates the wallpaper, but his wife promises him it will all be gone shortly.  But even as she's starting to strip it away, she becomes utterly fascinated as the house begins to spill its secrets, layer by layer.    "The Fountain" (1922) features a house that becomes haunted over the course of the story, but what elevates this one is the author's incorporation of ancient nature beliefs into the story.  "The Villa," the final story,  is also not your typical haunted house -- here, as Edmundson notes in her introduction, Mordaunt describes this villa in Croatia as a "sentient being: hating, revenging, waiting."  The original owner of a beautiful house in Croatia falls victim to a death wish, so that another owner might take possession of it.  The house, however, isn't happy about the change in ownership and takes its revenge over the next few generations. 

Although I've only offered a very brief sketch, all of the stories in this volume run psychologically deep and often hit at the very souls of her characters.    The ones I didn't mention in this volume are also quite good, and I'm not at all surprised that Mordaunt's stories, as the editor notes, were "favourably compared" to those written by Algernon Blackwood and HG Wells.  What is surprising is that Mordaunt is so underappreciated with her work rarely appearing in anthologies, because her stories lend themselves so  nicely to any number of different facets of the supernatural and the weird.  Save the excellent introduction for last but do not pass it by -- I'm always amazed at the depth and breadth of Edmundson's research and knowledge.  From haunted houses to haunted people, Mordaunt's work is very well done, highly intelligent, and I'll go so far as to say a definitely must-read for readers of older supernatural tales, especially those written by women whose work has long been "very much underacknowledged."  Highly recommended.  

Mist and Other Ghost Stories, by Richmal Compton

 Good grief. The last time I posted was in February; since then it has literally been one thing after another with what seems like very little breathing space in between. That doesn't mean I haven't been reading -- au contraire, I've actually read a lot as a sanity-saving measure.  Mist and Other Stories is just the latest in a lineup of some pretty awesome books, so I'll begin with this collection of supernatural/ghostly tales, which, while perhaps not the most hair-raising stories I've ever encountered, are certainly compelling enough that I  read them all in one sitting.  Here you'll find ghosts, as promised, along with haunted houses, haunted people, and more. For those readers of the dark who love older supernatural tales, it is  no-miss read;  for me there's also the added bonus of discovering a new author in the genre. 

9781908274281

Sundial Press, 2015

originally published 1928

191 pp

hardcover

As if to signal that this will be no ordinary book of ghost stories,  the first two entries, to my great delight, are inspired by the figure of the Great God Pan.   In the opener,  "The Bronze Statuette,"  a "modern" but somewhat shallow sort of young woman ("she had become engaged to Harold Menzies simply because his dancing step and his game at tennis suited hers") at a house party undergoes an unexpected and extraordinary change after the host's father brings out a small bronze statue, "a thing of extraordinary grace and beauty."  Following that one is  "Strange," which also takes place during a house party, where one of the guests, "a chap called Strange," enchants the others with his presence as well as his syrinx.   

No ghost story collection would be complete without a haunted house or two, and what Crompton has on offer here strays a bit off the beaten path in that area. For example in "Marlowes," a woman who, along with her husband has left her home and is staying in a hotel while repairs are being made, confides to another guest that they love their Sussex house, but for a while there it didn't love them back.  Of course, "there's a story about that."  A full tank of petrol would have prevented the happenings at "The House Behind the Wood,"a personal favorite,  in which a threesome find themselves stuck in the cold night "six miles from anywhere."  Frank, married to the "fragile and delicate" Monica decides that sleeping in the car would likely bring on a case of pneumonia, but luckily for the couple and Frank's childhood friend Harold, there is a house nearby with a light shining in the window.  The caretaker has no petrol, but he does offer them a place to stay out of the cold. Let's just say that Frank blames what happens next on a nightmare, but oh Frank, it's not the drains that are causing it.   "The Haunting of Greenways" is another favorite in which the actual spectral visitation begins about ten pages in, but the events leading to that point are really the main show, centering on a young woman who is incapable of true happiness and  "had that gift for self-torture that belongs to the mentally unbalanced."  The title  story in this book is the last but by no means the least; I thought it was one of the best in the collection.  "Mist" finds a hiker who has lost his way in the "bleakest part of the moor" and luckily finds his way to a small inn for the night.  Surrounding and stranding him is the mist, "like something sinister and malevolent."  After boredom and cabin fever set in toward tea time, he decides it might be good to get out and go for a walk. But wait -- what's that "dull light flickering in the fog?"    

Of the remainder, three are well worth honorable mention: "Rosalind," "Harry Lorrimer, and "The Oak Tree,"  the first two of which are excellent and the third entertaining.    In the first, a young artist is haunted by his passion after he dumps the woman he loves for someone more suitable for marriage; the first vows that she will never let the second have him.  In the second, two old school friends, Gregson and Harry Lorrimer, meet by chance, and after a visit to the home of Harry Lorrimer, his friend makes a chilling discovery.  Gregson feels uneasy about Harry, but the uneasiness soon turns to sheer horror when he learns what's really happening with his old schoolmate.   Finally, "The Old Oak Tree" is the last of its kind, sitting in the yard of Bletchleys on "prehistoric land" where Druidic worship may have once been carried out.  Indeed, an old flat stone lies at its base;  Mr. Fellowes informs his wife that it was likely used for human sacrifices, but  Mrs. Fellowes  feels sorry that no one worships it now, and promises it a garland a day.  Sure enough, she keeps her word and the oak tree begins to take on a "new lease of life," which Mr. Fellowes doesn't necessarily like.  

Original 1928 edition cover, from Sundial Press 

 Crompton's characters range from wronged women to people haunted by their pasts, including ghosts who aren't quite ready to give up the pleasures they had in life; her stories occur mainly within the framework of upper middle-class existence  where strange events have the potential to disrupt an otherwise comfortable life. Her real focus here though (for the most part) seems to be on the people themselves, taking her time to develop her characters just enough so that what leads up to the supernatural happenings is well understood by the time you actually get there.   Above all though, she excels in atmosphere -- not simply in natural world phenomena (which is itself so well done that in the last story, for example, you can actually see and feel the clammy fingers of mist in the forest) but also in the way she ever so slightly ratchets the tension experienced by her characters in the midst of uncanny events.   

Mist and Other Ghost Stories is a fine example of ghostly tales done in an original fashion and done well.  While not every story is perfect, it is still a collection that I would most wholeheartedly recommend. 

back to the British Library: Queens of the Abyss: Lost Stories From the Women of the Weird (ed.) Mike Ashley

 

978012353915

British Library Publishing, 2020

350 pp

paperback

The often-unknown works of women from yesteryear who dabbled in the weird, the strange and the dark is one of my reading passions.  I've got several of these anthologies in my home library, along with several single-author collections from small, indie publishers.  I've been at this for a few years now, and it is, as I've said many a time, a true pleasure at finding stories that have not been anthologized on a regular basis.   In this installment of the British Library Tales of the Weird series editor Mike Ashley has done it -- not only are there stories I'd not previously read, but there are writers I've never heard of until now.  A win-win for me and for anyone who has the same sort of reading love.    Here the work of both familiar and,  more importantly to me, not-so-familiar women writers whom Mike Ashley dubs the "Queens of the Abyss"  graces the pages of this book.    His choices are, as he says in his introduction,  representative of women writers who

"continued to experiment and develop the weird tale from its gothic beginnings and its thriving Victorian heyday into the twentieth century"

and these stories span a range in time from 1888 to 1952.  

The first three, "A Revelation," by Mary E. Braddon, "The Sculptor's Angel" by Marie Corelli and Edith Nesbit's "From the Dead," are all ghostly tales, as is Marie Belloc Lowndes' "The Haunted Flat."  Between the last two comes Frances Hodgson Burnett's "The Christmas in the Fog" which has one of the best and most eerie visions of being caught in a thick fog I've ever encountered, but really, that's about all that impressed me there.  It's not until I got to Alicia Ramsey's "A Modern Circe" that this book picked up speed and I found myself completely engaged until turning the last page.  Ramsey's tale is truly weird, featuring a "handsome rogue" of a man who has the misfortune of encountering "The Mad Virgin of the Hills,"  because he and the entire Italian village know that "Those whom she calls never return."    May Sinclair, whose work I absolutely love, is next with "The Nature of the Evidence," also on the ghostly side but with one of the finest and most unexpected twists ever.  You don't have to read between the lines to figure out what happens here.  "The Bishop of Hell" by Marjorie Bowen follows with the story of a "ruined" woman and the truly evil, debauched man responsible for her downfall.  I love Bowen's stories and this one is just example why.   

And then we come to my favorite section of this book, with a few stories written by, as Ashley notes,  "less well known" women writers who "dared enter the male stronghold of the pulp magazine and established their own reputation for the modern weird tale. " These topped my list of favorites.   Three strong examples can be found in Margaret St. Clair's "Island of the Hands"  (1952), Greye La Spina's "The Antimacassar" (1949),  and "White Lady," by Sophie Wenzel Ellis (1933)  St. Clair's story finds a man plagued not only with grief after his wife's death, but also with a recurring dream in which he sees her standing there, begging for him to come to her.  Her plane had crashed  "in perfect weather" even as he was speaking to her by radio, and while a search was mounted, no trace of her was ever found.  He knows logically that she's dead,  but the feeling is so strong that after three months of dreams and a decision to "abandon rationality," he decides he has to go look for her, and his search takes him to a strange island where everything is perhaps not what it seems.   "The Antimacassar" appeals to  the part of my reading self that appreciates a good mix of  mystery and pulp horror, as it is a blending of both.   When Cora Kent, Lucy Butterfield's "immediate superior,"  fails to return from her vacation, Lucy decides to use part of her own time off to try to find out what had happened to her.  With a little luck,  her search takes her to a farm owned by a Mrs. Renner, who denies ever knowing Cora.  Lucy believes otherwise, and decides to stay for a week to do a little "self-imposed detective work" when not learning weaving from Mrs. R.  She soon discovers that finding Cora Kent is probably the least of her problems at present.   "White Lady" just might be the strangest story in the entire book; certainly one of the most fun to read and definitely the most deliciously exotic.  Set on a remote island in the Caribbean, Brynhild is spending time with her fiancé André, a scientist who "experimented fantastically with tropical plant life."  As he shares with her his "supreme achievement," a flower he calls White Lady, she begins to believe that not only he has gone well beyond the point of obsession with this thing, but that this "bête blanche" is much more than a mere plant. 

Strange Tales, January 1933 issue. From Howard Works

In "The Laughing Thing," by GG Pendarves, a sick man who is cheated out of money on a land deal vows to return after his death to make the other party pay.  He promises that it will be "a payment that will not reduce your bank account," which only makes his nemesis laugh.  As the saying goes, he who laughs last laughs best, but there is nothing funny at all in what happens next.  "Candlelight" by Lady Eleanor Smith finds five people together at a weekend party (two couples and an unmarried man) which is interrupted when they discover they're being watched by a gypsy girl.  For kicks, the hostess invites her to tell their fortunes, but the fun ends when the girl actually does.  Jessie Douglas Kerruish provides "The Wonderful Tune," which turns out not to be so wonderful after all once it's played.  I saw where this one was headed not to far into the story but it's still fun.  "The Unwanted" by Mary Elizabeth Counselman (of whom I am a huge fangirl)  is truly on the weird side as a census worker in the hills of Alabama encounters a poor farmer and his wife. All is well until she inquires about the number of children they have ...  Last but not at all least is Leonora Carrington's "The Seventh Horse" which may at first seem nonsensically bizarre, but there is method in her surrealistic madness. 

Much reading happiness here; Queens of the Abyss is one of the best volumes of the series so far, and the British Library Tales of the Weird series overall is a definite no-miss for lovers of the truly strange.  My reader hat is tipped to editor Mike Ashley, who has been one of the best and most prolific finders and curators of these long-forgotten stories over a long career.    Definitely and highly recommended.  

Ziska: The Problem of a Wicked Soul, by Marie Corelli

9781934555682
Valancourt, 2009
originally published 1897
184 pp

paperback

"In certain men and women spirit leaps to spirit, -- note responds to note -- and if all the world were to interpose its trumpery bulk, nothing could prevent such tumultuous forces rushing together."

Think what you will, but I love Marie Corelli's novels, at least the few I've read so far, with others waiting for my attention on their shelves.  The critics of her day had little nice to say about her work, but her reading public loved her, from "the eccentrics at society's lower end" to Queen Victoria herself.  One Corelli scholar notes that more than half of her novels were "world-wide best sellers," with more than an estimated 100,000 copies selling annually for several years.  Corelli's  1895 The Sorrows of Satan, according to Annette R. Federico in her book Idol of Suburbia: Marie Corelli and Late-Victorian Literary Culture, had an "initial sale greater than any previous English novel," selling twenty-five thousand copies its first week with and fifty thousand over the next seven weeks (2000, University Press of Virginia, 7).  Curt Herr, in his introduction to this Valancourt edition of Ziska, notes that 1897 also saw the publication of Stoker's Dracula and Richard Marsh's The Beetle, and that Corelli  outsold "Stoker and Marsh by the hundreds of thousands" (xi), which sort of begs the question as to why today she is all but forgotten, which is a true pity.

1897 original edition, from WorthPoint

There is no messing around as the story begins; the prologue puts us in the Egyptian desert of long ago, on a night when  "the air was calm and sultry; and not a human foot disturbed the silence."  A "Voice" breaks the stillness towards midnight,  "as it were like a wind in the desert," crying out for

" 'Araxes! Araxes!' and wailing past, sank with a profound echo into the deep recesses of the vast Egyptian tomb. Moonlight and the Hour wove their own mystery; the mystery of a Shadow and a Shape that flitted out like a thin vapour from the very portals of Death's ancient temple, and drifting forward a few paces resolved itself into the visionary fairness of a Woman's form -- a Woman whose dark hair fell about her heavily, like the black remnants of a long--buried corpse's wrappings; a Woman whose eyes flashed with an unholy fire and waved her ghostly arms upon the air."  

Flash forward to contemporary Cairo, where "full season" is in swing, where the "perspiring horde of Cook's 'cheap trippers' " have flocked for their holidays. We are introduced to one such group of British tourists, some of whom are in the lounge of the Gezireh Palace Hotel discussing  the arrival of the famous French painter Armand Gervase while others are preparing for a costume ball.  Expectations are highest, however, over the attendance at the ball of a certain Princess Ziska, of "extra-ordinary" beauty.  As the festivities begin and Gervase and the Princess meet, he is stunned:

"There was something strangely familiar about her; the faint odours that seemed exhaled from her garments, -- the gleam of the jewel-winged scarabei on her breast, -- the weird light of the emerald-studded serpent in her hair; and more, much more familiar than these trifles was the sound of her voice -- dulcet, penetrating, grave and haunting in its tone."

Ziska captivates this small group of tourists with her dazzling beauty and stories of ancient Egypt, but none more so than Gervase, who begins to believe himself in love with her, and  Denzil Murray, whose sister Helen knows that his obsession with the princess will eventually come to no good.  After confiding her woes to keen observer/researcher Dr. Dean of their party,  he notes that they have been caught up in "a whole network of mischief, " and that the

"...spider, my dear, -- the spider who wove the web in the first instance, -- is the Princess Ziska and she is not in love! ... She is not in love with anybody any more than I am. She's got something else on her mind -- I don't know what it is exactly, but it isn't love."

 As Gervase, as the back-cover blurb states, becomes more and more "haunted by strange and distant memories of her" over the short time in which this story occurs, it will become ever clearer exactly what it is that Ziska has on her mind.

The pulp/supernatural/gothic/occult-fiction reader in me of course positively swooned over Ziska, and if story alone was what it had amounted to I would have been happy enough.  Although I knew eventually what was going to happen here, it didn't matter -- the novel makes for an intense, compelling read.   But of course, there's always more that is not-so hidden under the surface with Corelli, whose beliefs often make their way into her work as debate between characters, and this book is no exception.  She begins right away with a look at the cultural imperialism of her day before tackling upper-class society, love, marriage, gender, and  her stock in trade, the undying soul.  Curt Herr has provided an excellent introduction that discusses all of this and more, including brief comparisons to the two other novels published the same year that I mentioned above.

'tis an old book, but a fine one, and I loved every second of it.  I really can't ask for more.

Ghostly Tales, by Wilhelmina Fitzclarence

9781241226855
British Library, 2011
originally published 1896, Hutchinson
370 pp

paperback (read earlier)

I'm very grateful to whomever it is at the British Library that makes decisions on which of these old, rather obscure books to reprint and make available to the reading public; what I paid for this book pales in comparison to the selling price of the original, which you can pick up for a mere $1,750 at L.W. Currey, where, incidentally, the photo below came from.  The British Library covers may be dull and unimaginative, but hey ... I don't know about anyone else, but if I had $1,750 to casually spend, it wouldn't be for a single book.

original 1896 edition, courtesy of L.W. Currey

Looking closely at this picture of the original, note that it gives authorship as the Countess of Munster.  According to her page at Author Information of the Victorian Circulating Library, Wilhelmina FitzClarence, Countess of Munster, was born in 1830 in Scotland.  Her mother, Lady Augusta FitzClarence, was the "illegitimate daughter of William IV," and was "a great favorite of the king."  In 1855 she married the second Earl of Munster (her cousin), and went on to have nine children.  She wrote two novels; this book appeared when she was 66.  Much more about her life is recalled here.   The Countess of Munster's stories were allowed to drift into obscurity; it's only been somewhat recently that her work has been rediscovered and anthologized, and now this book is also available in e-reader format and online.

There are eleven stories to be found here, along with original illustrations. And while overall I'm very happy to have found this book and to have it in my library,  let's just say it doesn't fall into the category of ghost-story favorites. 

Ghostly Tales opens with "A Double," about which the author says the names are "fictitious," but everything else is true.  Here, a woman and her daughter Ella are expecting a visitor who is most eager to speak to Ella about her two-year stay in America.  At the time she is expected to receive their guest, a Mrs. Jacks, Ella is supposed to be in London for an appointment. Promising to come back as soon as possible, off she goes, and gets the surprise of a lifetime.  In the next story, "The Ghost of My Dead Friend," also purported to be true, a friendship of "intense affection" carries over "beyond the grave." Then we start getting into more meaty stuff with three ghost stories in a row beginning with "The Tyburn Ghost," in which summertime visitors to London find lodging in a house near Marble Arch, Hyde Park at No. 5 Dash Street. After a dinner of pickled salmon and Welsh rarebit, Mrs. Dale awakens in terror proclaiming that she's just had an encounter with a "horrid putrid-looking face."  Daughter Minny shrugs it off as a case of  mom being "over-tired and nervous," until it happens again -- to her.   Next up is "The Bruges Ghost," which has a most shivery sort of ending but to tell would be to spoil, and at the end of this series of three ghostly tales is "The Page-Boy's Ghost," which plays out in a house in Granville Crescent.  Any of the latter three would be great in an anthology of haunted house stories, and spooky enough for inclusion in any ghost story collection. 

from "The Bruges Ghost," my photo. 

The next story, "Aunt Jean's Story" is very different from what came before, in the sense that it takes on more of a religious tone rather than providing ghostly chills.  It recounts the adventures of a young girl who grows up unwanted and neglected in Auld-Castle in Scotland, her other siblings having all left home as soon as possible and who "never troubled their parents with their presence, unless obliged." She falls in love, but her parents have other plans for her, resulting in tragedy.  The story itself is okay, a bit of an adventure,  but I'm not too keen on the religious aspects that are clearly spelled out here.  "Only a Cat" I didn't even really see a purpose for.  "The Leather Box" makes for great sensation fiction with a touch of exotic flair and lots of weirdness, but definitely NOT ghostly fare.  Considering that this is the longest story in this collection, I find that a bit odd.  Moving on, "Saved" is also a fun tale, gothic in tone, complete with a strange Russian countess who is stepmother to a young and sickly prince, which is followed by a story in which madness, a lunatic asylum and a strange lodge in the forest all combine to make up "A Mauvais Quart d'Heure," in which a young woman finds herself making the decision of a lifetime, one that leaves her haunted for some time afterwards. Finally we come to the end with "A Mysterious Visitor," and I'm saying nothing.

All in all, the actual "ghostly tales" are few, which leads me to wonder exactly why Wilhelmina Fitzclarence settled on the title of her collection, which is misleading at best.  It is a very mixed bag of stories, to be sure.  The joy for me isn't so much the book as a whole, but rather the discovery of yet another obscure Victorian author of strange tales.   Anyone considering this book based on this title may be a bit disappointed, but it has some great moments to be savored.

The Spirit of the Place and Other Strange Tales: The Complete Short Stories of Elizabeth Walter (ed.) Dave Brzeski

9780957296251
Shadow Publishing, 2017
409 pp

paperback

"You've got to be careful when dealing with spirits."

The work of Elizabeth Walter, whose name I didn't know before buying this book this past spring, has found its way into many an anthology, including several volumes of The Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories, New Tales of Unease (ed. John Burke), The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories, and The Virago Book of Ghost Stories. (Sadly, as I was looking up the last book just now, the little red guy with the pitchfork on my right shoulder made me hit the buy button, so I expect I'll be talking about that one here after my vacation in August). Considering how little there is about her to be found (and believe me, I tried), I think Brzeski has done a great job here in compiling so much information about Elizabeth Walter.

So now on to the book, which all told comprises a whopping thirty-one stories, each listed under the titles of Walter's original books in which they first appeared. In this book, those forces lying outside the realm of nature are not of the beneficent sort, but have a rather cruel, malevolent streak to them. To her credit, and with only minor exceptions, Walters manages to sustain this idea throughout most of the stories in this book; when all is said and one, however, it's the human reaction to these forces that matters in this volume.  As she is quoted in the introduction,

"The thing I like most about the supernatural is that it enables you to play God, to dispense justice -- only you dispense it from beyond the grave." (3)

I can guarantee that this happens here, in spades.  Like any other anthology, it's not perfect -- the writing can be uneven, the later stories are not as good as the earlier ones, but as a whole, The Spirit of the Place and Other Strange Tales is well worth reading. The big plus for me was the stories with Welsh settings -- it's amazing how old superstitions still abide in some places.  

Just FYI: not only is this probably going to be a lengthy post, but I am briefly annotating here so opting out at this point would be a good option for those people who want to go into this book knowing absolutely nothing. For those brave enough to read on, don't worry -- there is no leakage of critical detail. I've organized the stories into their original collections.

Book one is Snowfall and Other Chilling Events, from 1965, containing five stories. "Snowfall" takes on the benighted traveler, who this time finds himself stuck in a horrific storm with only a few miles to go until the next town. He's fortunate that someone just happens to be walking around and takes him in, or is he? "The New House," well, when you live in a home that is built in an area once known as Gibbet Hill, you might expect some creepiness to crop up. Let me just say that while the trope's been used before, the ending just about made me jump out of my chair. The best way to describe the next tale, "The Tibetan Box," is grotesque. A little carved box with a strange history finds its way into a home via a jumble sale, and gives its new owners more than they'd bargained for. Yikes. And now, just four stories in, we've come to "The Island of Regrets," my favorite story in this entire volume. Set in Kéroualhac, a small town in Brittany,  from "the hill above the village," one can see a small island in the Channel, "Like a child's toy left floating by the beach." On their way to St. Malo, Dora Matthews and her fiance Peter Quint (ring any bells, Henry James readers?) stop in this little town for the night, and learn about the superstitions surrounding this island, which the locals call the Ile des Regrets. "The island is a magic place," they are told, one that

"grants the first wish you make when you first set foot there, but grants it in such a way that you will wish it had not been granted." 

Even though they're also warned that "the island is an unlucky place," Dora drags a passive Peter along with her to visit it. Wild horses couldn't drag the rest of the story out of me -- this one is beyond chilling, and needs to go in a hall-of-fame sort of collection of best supernatural/weird tales ever told. The final story in this group is "The Drum," which, while it does highlight Walter's concept of justice meted from beyond the grave, I wasn't so keen on since I've read this same kind of thing before more than once. 

from Weavers of Tradition

The next block of six tales is from Walter's The Sin-Eater and Other Scientific Impossibilities (1967), which I'll say is a mixed bag of stories ranging from good to okay to whatever. This group begins with "The Sin-Eater," which when all is said and done is rather eerie, involving a hiker who accidentally finds himself caught up in a bizarre ritual that will come back to haunt him later. "Dearest Clarissa," which is set in a sanitarium, starts out well enough, but I figured it all out long before the narrator was able to. I really hate when that happens. Moving right along, "A Scientific Impossibility" was less creep-inspiring than laughworthy, especially because it takes place among a group of arguing academics, and then we come to "A Question of Time," which builds ever so slowly but ends up with a gutpunch. Discussion among friends about the subject of a certain centuries-old painting turns very strange in a big way. Up next is a story that Brzeski says was turned into a segment of the old Night Gallery show called "A Fear of Spiders," which I'll admit I've never seen, but I'm kind of inspired to see if I can find it now. Walter's tale is called simply "The Spider," and ultimately it's a tale of revenge served cold with a rather hair-raising twist. To say more would be to wreck it but I ended up pitying that poor fool, even if he is a jerk. Closing out this batch is another one I didn't care for very much, although its title, "Exorcism" will probably arouse some readers. Here the victim of a murderer appears shroud and all, to exact vengeance, but the murderer's wife is having no part in the dead guy's scheme. I think this one was supposed to be humorous, but the comedy escaped me for the most part.

Image from "A Fear of Spiders," from Night Gallery, via Genre Snaps 

The next bunch are included in her Davy Jones's Tale and Other Supernatural Stories (1971), and it's here that I discovered my second favorite story, which is coincidentally, "Davy Jones's Tale." It begins with the story of a shipwreck  a century earlier "with the loss of all hands," without which, as the narrator tells us, "nothing in this tale makes sense." Set in Wales, the modern-day story goes along and builds to a conclusion where the reader has to make his/her own choice about what actually happens here, and I have to say, it's not an easy one to make. The draw here is most definitely the ambiguity; this one demands more than a casual read. The next one is a kind of weirdo Cold War spy story that absolutely didn't do it for me called "The Hare." Seriously, had I never read it, I wouldn't have missed a thing. It may float someone's boat, but not mine. Following that one there comes another one that was less than satisfying and less original than most of the stories in this book, "In the Mist." All I would have to do is give the storyline, and I guarantee that someone reading this would go "oh yeah...I know that one."  Enough said. We enter into the zone of completely weird with the next story, "The Lift," in which a man in trouble seeking help finds himself in a building where strangeness follows. Not a fan of this one either. In "The Street of the Jews," while there is a supernatural element, it's the history here that rattles. "Hushabye, Baby" is a tough one to talk about without giving anything away, so I won't, but it's a good one. Really good. 

from The Telegraph

1973's Come and Get Me & Other Uncanny Invitations begins (obviously) with "Come and Get Me," set deep in the Elan Valley of Wales. A house that was put on the market and remains vacant years later is the setting for this one, which begins with military maneuvers interrupted by a "terrible shrill ha-ha-ha that was human but maniac." Here past aligns with present; in the end, it was just okay. Luckily, the next one is pretty good, "The Concrete Captain," where a newcomer learns the hard way that "You've got to be careful when dealing with spirits," followed by "The Thing," another one I just didn't care for. It starts out very nicely, has a lot of potential for weirdness, but frankly, this one just sort of fizzles into meh. "The Travelling Companion" is yet another I figured out way earlier than I should have since it's another been there, read that, bought the t-shirt kind of ghostly tale, as is "The Spirit of the Place," set in Italy. Next is "Prendergast," which is somewhat of a departure from the other stories in this book. A string of killings of young girls prompts concerned citizens to form a group that patrols the streets between 6 pm and midnight. The narrator of the story gets the cemetery beat, and it doesn't take long until the strangeness begins. This one really relies on its ending, although admittedly it was suspenseful on the path to getting there and I quite enjoyed it. "The Grandfather Clock" is quite fun though, as a young woman wants no part of family tradition and it comes back to haunt her. Sort of.

from Ambient-Mixer

Two years later  Dead Woman & Other Haunting Experiences was published,  and the "Dead Woman" in this case is a hill in Wales with a tainted history. Another personal favorite, this story underscores the idea that superstitious beliefs are alive and well in this part of the country, and have everything to do with what happens to a newcomer to a village where "everyone was polite but no one was friendly." Great story. The next one, "The Hollies and the Ivy" could have benefited from fleshing out the story a bit more fully. Like "The Thing," it had the potential to be terrifying but fell somewhat short, in my opinion. A couple sinks everything they have into their new home The Hollies, bought to be renovated. If only they could get rid of that damn ivy that covers everything. I liked everything about the next story "A Monstrous Tale" except the last couple of pages where what could have been majorly creepifying just fell flat. A vacation turns into a nightmare for one couple when they decide to take a ride on a small boat to accompany a yacht across the Bodensee; luckily for the wife she had a tantrum and decided not to go with her husband, who didn't fare so well. "The Little House" is very well done although somewhat predictable, but still very nicely written. Once again, like so many of Walter's stories, past deeds come back to haunt the present when the owners of a newly-bought home clear out their garden and discover a Wendy house. That's when the weirdness begins. In "Dual Control" two people on their way to a party are sniping at each other and in the midst of their argument, they happen to bring up the girl they've just run down and left to die. The driver, Eric, refuses to go back to take a look, but the story is far, far from over. Oy! In "Telling the Bees" a gardener's superstitions regarding his bees turns out to be not just another old wives' tale when a young woman who's convinced her husband has been trying to kill her takes steps to do something about it. This one took two reads, but I ended up liking it. And last but not least in this volume comes "Christmas Night," which takes place at an inn with the name The Hanged Man, so I just felt in my bones that something weird was going to happen there. My bones were right.


This is a book I would certainly recommend to anyone who has an interest in the supernatural or in older weird tales in general, although obviously these are pretty tame in comparison to modern horror tales so maybe a less jaded audience without a need for gore or the severely grotesque would more likely appreciate these stories. Collectively, they make for a great time, and kudos to the editor for bringing the work of Elizabeth Walters into the public eye once again.  

one last thing: readers thinking about this book may well want to read it on Kindle or another e-reader, since this book is huge dimension-wise. As I said to someone recently, it's not one you can take to the vet's office to read while you're waiting, and if I had it do over again, I would have foregone the print copy for the electronic. Either way, though, read the book! 

something new in something old... Lonely Haunts, from Coachwhip Publications

9781616462499
Coachwhip Publications, 2014
362 pp

paperback

"I always know how to distinguish a true ghost-story from a faked one. The true ghost-story never has any point, and the faked one dare not leave it out." 


                  -- Mrs. H.D. Everett, "Anne's Little Ghost"  (288)

Technically I'm supposed to be reading Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me right now, but this long holiday weekend called for something floaty so I grabbed this book from  my shelves.   Fans of obscure or long-forgotten ghost-story writers will most certainly welcome this collection by Coachwhip, a "one-man publishing venture" with a lot of very cool titles. And damn the man -- the last few pages of this book are cover shots of other Coachwhip publications that I now feel compelled to buy, plus he has some interesting looking old mystery novels I want to pick up.   Aargh!

The only thing that would have made this book better would have been an introduction to the two authors, but I understand why there isn't one, at least in the case of Mrs. H.D. (Huskisson) Everett.   It's difficult to find out much about this woman  (1851-1923), who  between 1896 and 1920 published some twenty-two books under the name of Theo Douglas. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy of Science Fiction reveals that half of her books "had fantasy and supernatural content."  She wrote two Gothic novels for which she is most well known; one of these,  Iras,  is described (in part) at L.W. Currey as a

"Novel of magic and witchcraft and the raising of the dead. Young Egyptian woman is revived in England after seven centuries in a state of suspended animation in a priest's tomb at Luxor." 

 Another one for which she is known is her psychic vampire story Malevola (1914), with the "mysterious Madame Thérèse Despard," who is "able to draw into herself the beauty and vitality of another during the process of massage."  [Wait. I'm having a psychic moment myself here -- oooh weee ooooh --  I see myself curled up in a blanket reading both of these tales in 2017.]

On to Sir Thomas Graham Jackson (1835-1924), who is much more well known as a great architect. The blurb about Jackson in the Ash-Tree Press edition of his Six Ghost Stories (long out of print -- another reason to pick up this Coachwhip edition!) notes that he was

"celebrated in his day, as one of the foremost architects in England. His many commissions and restorations included extensive work at Oxford, Cambridge, and many English public schools, while his work at Winchester Cathedral between 1905 and 1912 almost certainly ensured that great church's survival to the present day." 

He was also a "keen traveller and antiquarian, whose journeys took him throughout Britain and Europe," and later he would use his experiences in writing "several ghost stories for the amusement of family and friends... collected together in book form in 1919."  His biography can be found in several places online, so we'll leave off there.

On to the book now, which is perfect for someone like me always on the lookout for obscure, forgotten writers and their works. First up,  Jackson's stories "were written in idle hours for the amusement of the home circle," as he says in the preface to his collection; he also notes that M.R. James (noted here as "the author of Ghost Stories of an Antiquary") lays down two conditions for a good story of the kind."  The first is that the "setting of the scene must be in ordinary life...so that one may say "This might happen now, and to me," and the second is "that the ghost must be malevolent," a rule that Jackson decided to "violate" in two of his stories.  I'll leave it to potential readers to discover which stories those are.  There are, of course, six tales here, the last four of which concern themselves with guilt, and  thus making for great ghostly reading

"The Lady of Rosemount," in which a houseguest ("a born antiquary") has a strange encounter in a an old chapel that replays in his dreams;
"The Ring" finds "la vecchia religione"  striking out for revenge when someone removes property from an old tomb;
"A Romance of the Picadilly Tube" is a tale of two brothers whose father's death and inheritance leads one down a path of temptation, with ghostly results;
"The Eve of St. John" is  a sort of mystery story from the past that finds its unknown ending played out in the present, and is my favorite story of the six;
"Pepina" finds a man in love facing disapproval by the brother of his beloved up until the day the brother dies and his troubles really begin; and finally
"The Red House," in which a murderer discovers that he's being haunted by a ghostly companion.

Obviously there's much more to those six tales but hey - if I say everything there is to say about them, well, then there's no point in anyone reading this book. And that would be a shame.

Onto the next part of this book, which is

courtesy of Internet Archive

There are so many well-crafted, creepifying tales here by Mrs. H.D. Everett that it's tough to pick a favorite. As the back-cover blurb notes, her tales are a mix of "...ghost stories, with family haunts, communication from the other side, malevolent curses, and more."  This is certainly true -- there is a good and varied selection of tales here that keep the reading fun without becoming too repetitious, which is always an issue in any ghost-story collection by a single author.  Some tend to follow along the same lines, but even so, they are definitely original in the telling.

Now that I'm thinking about it, three stories float to the top right away.   The title story, "The Death Mask," is just so flat out, unbelievably good that I could feel my eyes getting bigger while reading it, and I'm experiencing it nearly one hundred years after it was written. No spoilers or even the least bit of anything about this story here.  I also really enjoyed "The Next Heir," which finds Richard Quinton receiving news that he just might possibly be the heir to his second cousin's fortune and his estate.  As excited as he is about the whole thing, it's the conditions his second cousin places on the inheritance that are troubling.  This story is almost novella length, but the horror is sustained throughout. Another good one is "Nevill Nugent's Legacy," which is also the first of Everett's stories in this book to examine the changes and the trauma brought about by World War I, most notably from a female point of view.  Here Kenneth Campbell has returned from the war, which his wife notes had "made a great change in our circumstances," and if that wasn't bad enough, he'd come back "ill and broken." So when he is left a substantial legacy that can change their lives, the two are overjoyed ... until strange things begin to happen once they decide to visit their new property. It's a solid story of a gruesome haunting, sending those welcome frissons of horror up the spine.    The other stories are as follows:

"Parson Clench," a tale that takes place in a small, "deeply rural parish" where they say the people there "just begin to realise they are born when it is time for them to die, and that it takes at least as long to convince them they are dead."  And trust me, not everyone gets the hint that they've passed on in this story.   "The Wind of Dunowe" is set in an old Scottish castle, home to the MacIvors, who have a foolproof way of protecting what's theirs, as one guest will soon discover. "The Crimson Blind," also set in the Scottish highlands, starts out with two brothers deciding to pull a fast one over their cousin Robert in a house that is said to be haunted.  Years later  after acting as best man at his friend's wedding, Robert finds himself back at the house yet again, now the property of said friend. This time there's no suggestion of practical jokes when he starts having some weird visions.  Next up is "Fingers of a Hand," which is one of those stories I can't talk about so as not to wreck things, as is the case in "Anne's Little Ghost," another one which examines personal trauma and begs  the question of whether or not "some houses have a psychical atmosphere which can be variously moulded and used..."  These two little gems are followed by "Over the Wires," where a man seeking a family of Belgian refugees finally receives a call from their niece, who is also his fiancée. The problem is, however, that ... (!!!) The next one is "A Water Witch," where an overbearing sister is called on to help her brother who leaves his wife alone while he goes off on a shooting trip, and discovers why his wife was absolutely terrified at the thought of being alone.  It is sort of the same sort of tale as "Fingers of a Hand," so I will say no more, as is "A Girl in White."   "The Lonely Road" follows a man and his strange companion over eight miles as he walks a road at night where of late there have been a number of assaults and robberies.  "A Perplexing Case" is rather a unique tale that stands apart from all of the rest.  While it also has very much to do with postwar trauma, the story takes a bizarre turn that really is more science fictionish than ghostly, but certainly well worth the read. Finally, in "Beyond the Pale," we move to the American frontier where after some property is stolen, a woman decides to take back what is rightfully hers with some horrific consequences.

Overall, Lonely Haunts is a lovely, haunting, and seriously page-flipping collection, and even better, it's my introduction to  two more obscure writers, which is a major  big deal for me.  Not all of the stories reach greatness, but I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't creeped out most of the time and highly entertained by the entire book.  Anyone can read what's current or read tales from the past that are already very well known, but for me there's much more pleasure to be had in discovering forgotten writers and their stories that I never knew existed.

Coachwhip guy -- keep up the good work! I've read two Coachwhip collections now and have been blown away by both.  Highly recommended for that reader who wants something new in old ghostly fiction.