Nesbit's JOHN CHARRINGTON'S WEDDING is probably the most dated in the book, but still worth a look.īack to the 20th century. Le Fanu's MR JUSTICE HARBOTTLE I found to be one of his least interesting and most predictable works.
Nathaniel Hawthorne has a bit of a reputation as a pompous windbag, but YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN is a fine work about black magic in the woods. Harlan Ellison's THE WHIMPER OF WHIPPED DOGS is uniquely original and makes for dark and uncomfortable reading, detailing how a new god feeds off the pain and fear of people living on council estates. THE SUMMER PEOPLE by Shirley Jackson takes the opposite, subtle approach to horror and achieves classic status with it. Lovecraft's here, well represented by THE CALL OF CTHULHU, one of his signature works of monstrous terror. An old fashioned ghost story it might be, but it deservedly won the World Fantasy Awards in 1977 and on reading it you can see why. Russell Kirk's THERE'S A LONG, LONG TRAIL A-WINDING is quite brilliant: simply one of the best modern horror stories I've read in a long time.
THE NEW MOTHER by Lucy Clifford is an old-fashioned Victorian morality tale that has a unique fairytale quality about it. James, in which the author expertly wrings maximum chills from the concept. THE ASH-TREE is one of many brilliant works by M. We move into more traditional ghost story territory after this. This is a dream-like love story and reminded me a lot of the film GHOST. The subtlety continues with John Collier's EVENING PRIMROSE, a strange account of a shopping mall inhabited by ghostly figures. THE REACH is an atypical piece of writing, a subtle ghost story more about realism than ghosts.
Things inevitably kick off with Stephen King. There are a lot of unusual stories here, quite a few of them unknown, and it's far from the bland, anthologised-to-death collection I was dreading. Hartwell set himself up for a fall, taking a scholarly approach to the genre and selecting what are, for him, the cream of the crop, but I think he does well. novelette by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu Ī collection of some of the best horror stories of all time.
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