British Ghost Stories

BRITISH GHOST STORIES FROM THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE GHOST STORY Selected and Introduced by Stephen Carver. 'Only their eyes, their terrible eyes, were living; and those eyes were all turned menacingly upon me!' Amelia B. Edwards. 'I want to know what it is that walks about his room sometimes when he's out and when the door's locked on the outside.' Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 'The madness of the living is a thing so abominable and fearful as to chill every human heart with horror; it is less than nothing in comparison with the madness of the dead!' Aleister Crowley. The Golden Age of the Ghost Story can be dated roughly from the last of the original gothic novels to the First World War. It runs from J.S. Le Fanu's early Victorian chillers, through Dickens' Christmas stories and the rise of Spiritualism, up to Le Fanu's natural heir, M.R. James. British Ghost Stories collects the eeriest tales of this period, selecting one from each of the most skilled UK writers of short supernatural fiction, men and women from England, Ireland, and Scotland, appending the first modern ghost story by Daniel Defoe. Each story is introduced with a brief biography of its author and its original publication details. This collection also includes the original stories from the BBC Ghost Story for Christmas series, 'The Signal-man', 'A Warning to the Curious', 'Lot No. 249', 'Man-size in Marble', and 'The Room in the Tower', with an Introduction exploring the history of the series, including ten tips from M.R. James on how to craft the perfect ghost story. Contents: The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street by J.S. Le Fanu The Old Nurse's Story by Elizabeth Gaskell The Haunted and the Haunters by Edward Bulwer-Lytton The Phantom Coach by Amelia B. Edwards The Signal-man by Charles Dickens The Ghost at the Rath by Rosa Mulholland Eveline's Visitant by Elizabeth Braddon Reality or Delusion? by Ellen Wood No Living Voice by Thomas Street Millington Miss Jéromette and the Clergyman by Wilkie Collins Old Mrs. Jones by Charlotte Riddell The Body-Snatcher by R. L. Stevenson Man-size in Marble by E. Nesbit The Phantom Rickshaw by Rudyard Kipling The Judge's House by Bram Stoker The Man of Science by Jerone K. Jerome Lot No. 249 by Arthur Conan Doyle The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost by H. G. Wells Out of the Sea by A. C. Benson A Strange Goldfield by Guy Boothby Keeping His Promise by Algernon Blackwood The Highwaymen by Lord Dunsany Thurnley Abbey by Perceval Landon The Whistling Room by William Hope Hodgson The Beckoning Fair One by Oliver Onions The Room in the Tower by E. F. Benson The Testament of Magdalen Blair by Aleister Crowley The Death Mask by H. D. Everett The Nature of the Evidence by May Sinclair A Warning to the Curious by M. R. James Crewe by Walter de la Mare APPENDIX 607 A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal by Daniel Defoe