Ghosts: A Treasury of Chilling Tales Old & New

by Marvin Kaye (editor)

A wonderful collection of over fifty ghost stories not to be read by the faint of heart. Great by the fireside or with a group of young couples. The stories will spur the imagination and chill the air.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Fantasy, Anthologies, Ghosts, Mystery

652 pages, Leather Bound

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Marvin Nathan Kaye was an American mystery, fantasy, science fiction, horror author, anthologist, and editor. He was also a magician and theater actor. Kaye was a World Fantasy Award winner and served as co-publisher and editor of Weird Tales Magazine.

Reviews

[hotsake (André Troesch) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my second time reading this, the first time was over twenty years ago. The book has a wide range of stories although most were write at least 50 years before the book‘s 1981 publication.

[Shawn]

When I was assembling my choices for my new, current reading list I deliberately chose the fattest books that were currently on my unread shelves when looking to place my "anthology" choices. This was an attempt to decrease the amount of shelf space I use, while also trying to process as many examples of stories I might likely have already read but not reviewed into Goodreads. Yeah, I know, unimportant info....but suffice to say, I have a complicated process for choosing what I read and when...

So, this is a very thick collection of ghost stories - not, as I often note, "horror stories". Ghosts are figures which transcend genres and shift from one to the other, and anyone approaching this collection expecting a selection of "spooky stories," might find themselves disappointed. Which is not to say that NONE of the stories here are scary, or intended to be scary, just simply that you're also going to get romantic ghosts and gentle ghosts and et cetera and so forth (as editor Marvin Kaye also sketches out in his introduction). Full details below, for those who have read it, but in the general for those considering it - a fair to middling collection of ghostly tales in which you'll likely find something you'd enjoy, but don't expect too much (as I only found 5 stories here to be truly "excellent"). As usual, sorry for the length...this thing is padded with a lot of traditional/anonymous folklore pieces.

So, as usual, weakest to strongest in the reviews. There were a few things here I didn't read, started to read and abandoned, chose not to re-read (as my notes indicated I did not enjoy them previously) or found to be lacking in any interest to me. These include "Legal Rites" by Isaac Asimov & Frederik Pohl, "The Ghost, The Gallant, The Gael and The Goblin" by W.S. Gilbert, "The Lady Of Finnigan's Hearth" by Parke Godwin (from the intro, it sounded like something that wouldn't interest me - fantasy about the afterlife and all), "A Gathering of Ghosts" by Craig Shaw Gardner (sounded like a modern fantasy piece, outside of my interests), "The Ghost Of Sailboat Fred" by Saralee Terry (a cute but forgettable poem), & "The Haunting of Y-12" by Al Sarrantonio (a genial club story is a frame for a yarn about a haunted computer...eh).

Next come the generally weak/ "okay" stories: Familiar childhood Scholastic author Bernhardt J. Hurwood appears here with 4 "rewritten/condensed" folklore pieces with lurid titles, encapsulated as "A Quartet Of Strange Things" - they are "The Corpse At The Inn" (lifted from Pu Songling's Strange stories from a Chinese studio.), the hoary perennial "The Vampire Of Croglin Grange" (I reviewed Augustus Hare's version in The Count Dracula Book Of Classic Vampire Tales), "The Old Man In Yellow" & "The Glowing Maggot Of Doom". Like all folklore, they are presented not as fiction but as having "really, actually" happened - and all are merely serviceable space fillers (Hurwood's condensed version of "Croglin Grange" omits the atmospheric details that made Hare's version enjoyable). Similarly folkloric is "The Phantom Hag" which is "attributed" to master storyteller Guy de Maupassant and seems very familiar to me, but I may have read it under another title or attribution. It's a typical folkloric ghost yarn. Edward D. Hoch's "Who Rides With Santa Anna?" features the siege of the Alamo, where our titular General is joined by a mysterious figure...eh...

"Mr. Justice Harbottle" by J. Sheridan Le Fanu was disliked by my younger self, but accounting for age and wisdom, I decided to re-read it, and shifted its ranking up a notch to "okay". A renter tells why he is leaving his cheap lodgings - he observed villainous figures emerging from his closet at night. Another friend provides the historical backstory. The titular corrupt voluptuary, a notorious "hanging Judge", meets with an old man who informs him of a Jacobite plot (a secret tribunal to watch Judges) and is then haunted by the appearance of an executed innocent. The story has an interesting multiple POV, possibly atypical for the time, but the writing is choppy and has no flow. It gets better as it continues (a nightmarish carriage ride to judgement by a grotesque doppelganger) but still reads as clunky. Not one of my favorite le Fanu tales.

A traditional poem about the legend of "The Flying Dutchman" is nothing special, nor is "A Fisherman's Story" (a Breton folk tale by Anatole Le Braz retold here by Faith Lancereau) - in which a crew, driven by greed to fish on Christmas Eve, find themselves trapped in a fog with an extra passenger. And neither again is a haunted house folklore story (from my childhood locale, Barnegat Bay in New Jersey!), "The Old Mansion".

Ambrose Bierce is represented by "Staley Fleming's Hallucination", a vignette involving a guilt manifestation. Eh. Similarly, the anonymous "The Dead Woman's Photograph" involves a photographer asked to take a portrait of a deceased Jewish matron, only to have problems - well written but a typical folktale. Bram Stoker's "The Castle Of The King" is an overly poetic retelling of the myth of Orpheus, with a romantic poet venturing through the kingdom of Death to see his abducted beloved. Nicely done, but in the end exhaustively charming Romantic twaddle. Similar to it is "A Suffolk Miracle", a traditional bit of folklore regarding young lovers kept apart, a death, and the return of the lover. Yawn. E.F. Benson's priestly brother, Robert Hugh Benson, tells "Father Stein's Tale" of an German man who loses his religion until experiencing a moving, spiritual dream. Not particularly *good* (I'm not a fan of religious genre stories) but the framing piece is excellent. "The Ghost Of The Count" by the ubiquitous Anonymous is yet another "true" ghost story, this one about being led by hand through the dark, by a g-g-g-ghost! Eh, again. Charles Dickens' "The Tale Of The Bagman's Uncle" involves a jolly uncle who takes a drunken walk through Edinburgh and then has a vision of a ghostly past wherein a helpless lady needs some rollicking daring-do to rescue her from blackguards. Eh, cubed. Finally, Marvin Kaye relates a "true" ghost story of his own, involving a lookalike uncle who died at age 12 of influenza, long ago.

Next would be the good but slightly flawed stories , those that didn't fully achieve their potential: I upgraded Mary Wilkins Freeman's "The Wind In The Rosebush" on this re-read. This is the kind of story where its inclusion in a collection like this gives the game away a bit too early - a woman comes to claim her dead sister's daughter from the child's step mother, but the child seems absent. Endlessly waylaid by promises and deceptions, she eventually discovers an awful truth. I liked the sharp, uncomplicated language of this and its contemporary capturing of stiff, turn-of-the-century formality and customs, and how they are manipulated by the step-mother for her deceptions. I'd always associated John Kendrick Bangs with the subgenre of the humorous ghost-story. The piece here, "Thurlow's Christmas Story" is interesting if not particularly scary but there are a number of intriguing ideas here. A reporter, charged with supplying a ghost story for his paper's Christmas edition, desperately explains to his editor why the story is late and reveals how he was approached by a fan of his previous work with a story to publish under his own name, gratis. It really should be read for the full effect; there's some resonance with Henry James' "The Jolly Corner" and a meta-textual element (a ghost story about a writer of ghost stories) as well. The ending, in particular, is well done: oddly ominous in its implications about writing for profit and the author's dream/vision/doppelganger's resistance to the offer of same.

Barbara Gallow's "Jane" has a 70's AOR radio DJ (the station located in an old Victorian house) meeting a shy, enigmatic but warm young woman; but his hopes for romance are futile. Charming, bittersweet and, again, somewhat undone by being located in a collection like this. "Doorslammer" by Donald A. Wollheim is an effective, if minor, example of the "inconsequential" ghost story. Late hours in an office building where doors unexpectedly slam lead to revelation of a backstory involving a childish young woman with a broken heart. A charming diversion. Similarly charming is "The Parlor-Car Ghost", another anonymous yarn about a woman on a train who perceives an insubstantial passenger, a fabric salesman cursed to endlessly travel until he makes his sales quota. Algernon Blackwood's "The Woman's Ghost Story" has a female psychic investigator (a "modern woman" - very forward, smokes cigarettes) investigate a haunted house and converse with the ghost of a young man, who articulates some of the "rules" that ghosts exist by, and how hauntings can be undone and souls released. "Miss Jeromette And The Clergyman" by Wilkie Collins is quite involving. An aging priest tells of his young life as a lawyer, and his romance with a French woman who unfortunately awaits the inevitable return of her true lover: a wayward, cruel man. So the narrator quits law, joins the clergy, moves to the country and ends up taking as a religious student the wastrel adult son of a V.I.P. But the ne'er-do-well is endlessly shifty and morally conflicted, eventually disappearing back to London. This is essentially the story of a "death vision" of a lost love but is to be applauded for a brisk pace (it really clips along), a reticence in being overly maudlin (which was quite possible, given the subject matter) and for a subtle, unspoken moral lesson for the Clergyman.

On the Gothic tip, we have Matthew Lewis' "The Midnight Embrace" wherein caddish nobleman Albert takes advantage of poor, rural, naive Josephine before marrying someone else for money. But he still has to "cover his tracks", which eventually results in supernatural revenge. I *really* enjoyed the narrative frame to this tale - the tone is something like a "capital R" Romantic, emotionally exaggerated, Gothic Crypt-Keeper! I upgraded Frank R. Stockton's "The Philosophy Of Relative Existences" slightly on this re-read. A poet and philosopher explore a strange deserted town that was built but never inhabited and discover, occupying the town, spirits of those who will *someday* live there. This is an okay little story in which the set-up is much better than the story's eventual trajectory - I wonder what Thomas Ligotti could have made of such a concept! German fantastique author E.T.A. Hoffmann's "Automata" has a prologue of a self-contained tale, here included as "Untitled Ghost Story". It involves a colonel, his wife and his two daughters - one of whom is unfocused and impulsive, the other a pale, nervous, melancholy wreck ever since she saw a phantom on her 14th birthday, a phantom she continues to see every night at 9pm. A doctor suggests disabusing her of this obsession by mis-setting the clocks, but this only reaffirms the spirit's reality in a spectacular fashion while leading to further madness.

"The Doll's Ghost" by Francis Marion Crawford is the sentimental tale of an old doll doctor whose daughter goes missing, and the eerie vision of a doll that helps him find her. Nice but not scary. When originally reading Elizabeth Gaskell's "The Old Nurse's Story" I was probably turned off by its "Woman's Gothic" stiffness and predictability, but I'm a bit more forgiving about such things nowadays (I'd still say it's a bit too long-winded for its own good and the thuddingly obvious moral conclusion is just not my cuppa) but found I could appreciate it more. So you get such stolid standbys as wealthy gentry and servants, dark family secrets, an illegitimate child, a family curse, a ghostly organ that plays on stormy nights and a sealed wing of an isolated mansion (no doubt, someone walked down a corridor while holding a candle somewhere within there as well)! Probably the best thing about this story is the ghost (or ghosts, to be exact) - a wailing woman and ghostly child who haunt the snowy evening wastes around the mansion, attempting to lure a living child to her death. A bit like the Hispanic-American La Llorona folklore ghost, to my eye. In "The Phantom Regiment"by James Grant, an old Scots couple lets their vacant room to a boisterous, profane stranger who arrives on a dark and stormy night, promising to stay for only one year, at which point he will re-engage with his old regiment. As the innkeeper begins to get to know the cartoonish old blackguard (he struck me as as Scots version of Yosemite Sam, all bluster and swearing and odd rough-and-tumble habits like drinking his whiskey mixed with gunpowder!), the latter regales them with wild tales of his unsavory military career and misdeeds - he seems to have been involved in every combat atrocity of the time, including a slaughter of Native Americans that led to his own death (a detail he blithely mentions in passing). As expected, his regiment does return for him in spectacular fashion. I enjoyed this piece. I might have enjoyed it more with some background in Scottish history (as an examination of Scots nationalism, its conflicts and contentious events and the Scots character, seems to be part of the point) but the old warrior was a vivid and interesting character to spend time with.

[Edwina Book Anaconda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of ghostly tales that I've slowly savored on these cold Winter nights.

I'm left wondering if King read "How Fear Departed From the Long Gallery" and if that was his inspiration for "The Twins" in his book "The Shining."
Hmmm ... something to ponder upon.

[Sheri Pond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found this randomly (but almost like I was being drawn to it) on a shelf in Borders (before they sadly closed their doors)--and had to have it. It looks like an antique, and someday I imagine it will be old enough and book collectors will consider this book, and this particular edition, very antique.
I loved this book. I read it during a rough time in my life and it was very much an escape. I would read it by candlelight every night until I turned the last page out of over 600. The Appendices are very interesting, too. It has been awhile since that time in my life, and I think reading this would be even better the second time around. Unfortunately, my copy suffered some water damage packed away, and the book cover is coming off. I think I can glue it back on though... Maybe its being worn out will add some more antiquity to it? Lol
But all that aside, this is a book I highly recommend to all the paranormal junkies out there.

[Jeff McIntosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Edited by Marvin Kaye, "Ghosts" gives a wide cross section of spectral stories....although few by masters of the genre, such as M.R. James, etc. Many tales are by that most famous of authors - "anonymous". There are several poems included as well...

A nice collection to a first time reader of ghost stories....for the experienced reader...you've seen it before.


Jeff McIntosh

[Sarah Sammis · Rating 4 out of 5]

From it I read:

Minuke; Legal Rights; Smee; The Ghost, the Gallant Gael, and Goblin

[Sharon Barrow Wilfong · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fair mix of very good and mediocre ghost stories. The best I already had in more eclectic anthologies. The problem, I think for me, was the Editor, Marvin Kaye, is a science fiction, fantasy writer so half of the stories he included were written by authors of that genre and, if I may say so without offending, these writers are not of the same caliber of authors of classic literature.

Although I must concede that a couple of the sci fi ones were pretty good. The Haunting of Y-12 by Al Sarrantonio was rather eerie. We find a scientist trying to use a computer (and by computer we mean one of those giant wall units, this is an old book, published in 1981) as a medium to contact his dead son. The results are perturbing.

The only thought-provoking contribution that Kaye made has nothing to do with ghosts, even though it is based on his alleged contacts with his dead Uncle, (yes, he waits until the end of the book to let you know that). His Uncle died when he was twelve and did not receive a Bar Mitzvah. According to Kaye, his Uncle was hence regarded as "Not Jewish" and thereby excommunicated from the Jewish religion.

I am not Jewish, but this intrigued me. What does that mean? Someone cannot be Jewish until they are Bar Mitzvahed? And what significance does that hold pertaining to the Jewish belief of the afterlife, assuming there is agreement.

But that has nothing to do with the quality of this book except that Kaye includes a story of his own that he asserts is true, which concerns the various "contacts" he has had with his dead Uncle through out his life.

In conclusion, not bad, just not good. The Oxford Book of Ghost is a far superior collection.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a surprisingly strong collection of ghost stories. They avoid much of the tired tropes of ghost stories and are incredibly varied and unique, never repeating themselves. My only two complaints of the book are that it is slightly too long and there is not enough world view. There are many stories that take place in different parts of the world but they are told, typically, by an Englishman who has traveled there and is giving his perspective. Rather than a story which is original to the region. In the end though these are small gripes and overall not terribly impactful on the overall book.

[Diana Pauksta · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is an anthology of ghost stories from all over the world, from the late 1700s to the present day. the title is misleading, however. some are creepier than others, some are comical, some are love stories, etc. some are not scary at all. but it's a nice book to pick up if you're in the mood for it.

[Sam Ouellette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best collection of ghost stories I have ever read.

[Kris · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderfully eclectic compilation of ghost stories.

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars

[Sandy Carmichael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Collection of ghost stories; most of the authors were born in 1700's, 1800's and early 1900's---interesting to read various writing styles. As with most short story collections, some really good, some okay and some boring.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like most anthologies, I found stuff to love and stuff to hate in this one. I was expecting a bit more horror but the central theme is simply ghost stories, some of which are naturally going to be scary but it seemed like most of them were just spooky, which is not in the same category.

[David Grassé · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lost interest.

[Angelika Silva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing all that scary,but diverting nonetheless.

[Lauren Federer · Rating 4 out of 5]

some gems in here that will stay with me! others were less exciting, but overall this was a wonderful collection that i’m happy to have on my shelf

[DJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

probably my third time - great short stories to read in the dark woods of Maine

what's that creaking noise out on the porch?

[Michelle Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read about 3/4 of this book (I did skip over The Canterville Ghost; I want to read it, but I'm not in the right mindset for the attention it deserves at the moment [FYI: I stopped reading at a story or two after The Canterville Ghost, so you'll know where I stopped and what I missed if you pick this book up]) and I'm giving up so close to the finish.

This book calls itself A Treasury of Chilling Tales, but this is simply a collection of ghost stories, period. Very few of them are actually what you would call "chilling", and though even many of the non-scary selections are well written, I wanted what the cover promised, and I didn't get it. Below are a few if the stories I did think were creepy.


"Minuke" (Nigel Kneale) ~ A living haunted house that produces breathing sounds. Enjoyable. Sorry for the dog, though.

The Wind in the Rose-Bush (Mary Wilkins-Freeman) ~ A contemptuous women neglects her step-daughter, leading to her death and a haunted house. Not bad; though the wicked step-mother was really trying my, and her stepdaughter's aunt's, nerves.

Smee (A.M. Burrage) ~ A bit obvious, but a fun read.

A Quartet of Strange Things (Bernhardt J. Hurwood) ~ Finally, these 4 (very) short stories are much closer to the scary, supernatural tales I was looking for when I checked out this book. A relief after the past few stories I read.

The Phantom Hag (attributed to Guy de Maupassant) ~ Occupies less than 3 whole pages, but such fun! The best kind of short horror story: scary and to the point.

The Ghost of the Capuchins (Eugène Montfort) ~ Very spooky and engaging.

Jane (Barbara Gallow) ~ It's just OK. More than the story itself, I like the MCs job; he works in a well-preserved gothic-mansion-turned-radio-station, where he works alone on the weekends, and can read books undisturbed while listening to music, and only has to talk/do commercials once an hour. Plus, he gets to bring his dog inside (with me, it would be my cats!). The ghost is even of the "genteel" variety, and actually stopped making her presence known to recent occupants because she was worried what they thought of her. For a haunting, it's really not such a bad situation.

The Tale of the German Student (Washington Irving) ~ The resolution seems obvious in retrospect, but not in an "I feel stupid way," just that the clue is in the story if you look.

Doorslammer (Donald A. Wollheim) (founder of DAW Books publishing house) ~ More sad than scary, but well-written and engaging.

The Spectre Bride (Anonymous) ~ Not scary but sweet and beautifully written.

The Dead Woman's Photograph (Anonymous) ~ Strange things showing up in pictures is always creepy.

Blind Man's Bluff (H. R. Wakefield) ~ I've heard or read a quote somewhere saying that the only thing scarier than being alone in the dark is finding out you're not alone in the dark, and that applies here.

A Suffolk Miracle (Traditional) ~ A corpse comes back from the dead. It's a poem, but still good as a ghost story.

And I forgot to add, in the correct order, The Red Room (H. G. Wells) ~ A very atmospheric story that I've read before and is probably the gem of this collection (up to the point I read, anyway).

[Willow Redd · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a compilation of some fine ghost tales from various times and places. Put together by Marvin Kaye, this book features stories from some of the greats like Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde, some traditional tales, and some great anonymous stories.

Kaye includes a tale of his own in the mix, but rightly puts it in the appendix instead of within the main text, not wanting to give the wrong impression. There is also a list of haunted locations, a bibliography for further reading, and a piece entitled "So You Want to Meet A Ghost." This last piece is so good, I really want to adapt it for a video.

Definitely a good edition to any library specializing in ghost stories and supernatural terror.

[Rodney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first read this when I was about 11 years old and absolutely loved it. I decided to dig it out and reread it. The quality is wildly variable, but as a general rule the late-19th/early-20th c. stories are pretty good, some of them quite good, and the contemporary ones range from kind of awful to outright embarrassingly awful.

There are also some "true" accounts, and...uh...yeah. I see why they're all anonymous.

Mixed bag, but that's what I expected. Worth spending a couple bucks on for the good stories, if you want some ghost stories.

[Chris]

This is the second time I have read this book. I have a number of ghost story collections on the shelf. When Christmas came around, I thought that there would probably be a Christmas ghost story in one of them. I picked this up and, sure enough, the fifth story was, "Thurlow's Christmas Story". After reacquainting myself with that one, I decided to reread the whole book. Some I remembered, some seemed new again, altogether, worth a reread. There are fifty four stories and none of them clunkers.

[Janith Pathirage · Rating 3 out of 5]

This's a really good anthology. A collection of 40 ghost stories .. Unfortunately, most of the stories are not frightening at all. But there are some real gems in this collection like 'Smee' , 'How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery' and 'Legal Rites', coming from some of the best players in the business. Good job Marvin Kaye !

[Roger]

a book i picked up a couple of years ago in Fall, from a book sale at the Palatine IL library

my copy has some damage to the front inside binding and the page that had the barcode and card-slot was torn out at the time of purchase

[Fred Conrad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ghosts, but mostly not scary ghosts, and as far as the "Old and New" part goes, it was mostly pretty old. I'd say 90% of the authors were born in the 1800's, and in this collection are a lot of obscure works by very well known writers.

[Alli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not all the stories in this collection are scary. Heck, not all of them are good! But if you are interested in the ghost story as a genre, this is a wonderfully varied collection that has everything from modern ghost romances to ghost epic poetry.

[Amy Talluto · Rating 2 out of 5]

In spite of one of the stories in this book being gloriously titled: "The Glowing Maggot of Doom," the stories were generally rarely captivating or scary.

[Albie]

Ghosts: A Treasury of Chilling Tales Old and New (Contemporary Bonded Leather Fibers Series) by Marvin Kaye (1993)

[Ken · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection of amazing works!

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun collection of ghost stories, some better than others. Overall though, I enjoyed it.