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Ancestral Shadows: An Anthology of Ghostly Tales
Widely regarded as the founder of the modern conservative movement, Russell Kirk was a noted man of letters whose prodigious literary career included a syndicated newspaper column and a regular page in National Review. This volume demonstrates another compelling side of Kirk—the imaginative author who could communicate his powerful vision through the dramatic genre of the ghost story.
Ancestral Shadows collects nineteen of Kirk's best ghostly tales from periodicals and anthologies published throughout his life. In the tradition of Defoe, Stevenson, Hawthorne, Coleridge, Poe, and other master writers, these frightful stories conjure the creaks and shadows of the very places where they came to life through Kirk's pen: haunted St. Andrews, the Isle of Eigg, Kellie Castle, Balcarres House, Durie House ("which has the most persistent of all country-house specters"), and Kirk's own ancestral spooky house in Mecosta, Michigan.
The volume ends with 'A Cautionary Note on the Ghostly Tale', an incisive piece in which Kirk reflects on why he writes such stories: "experiments in the moral imagination" are what he is really after. Ghost stories are merely entertaining but possess a particular ability to capture the essential feature of human nature, or good and evil. "All important literature has some ethical end," Kirk says, "and the tale of the preternatural—as written by George Macdonald, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and other masters—can be an instrument for the recovery of moral order."
Including an illuminative introduction by Vigen Guroian, Ancestral Shadows will enthrall and delight all lovers of ghost stories.
Ancestral Shadows collects nineteen of Kirk's best ghostly tales from periodicals and anthologies published throughout his life. In the tradition of Defoe, Stevenson, Hawthorne, Coleridge, Poe, and other master writers, these frightful stories conjure the creaks and shadows of the very places where they came to life through Kirk's pen: haunted St. Andrews, the Isle of Eigg, Kellie Castle, Balcarres House, Durie House ("which has the most persistent of all country-house specters"), and Kirk's own ancestral spooky house in Mecosta, Michigan.
The volume ends with 'A Cautionary Note on the Ghostly Tale', an incisive piece in which Kirk reflects on why he writes such stories: "experiments in the moral imagination" are what he is really after. Ghost stories are merely entertaining but possess a particular ability to capture the essential feature of human nature, or good and evil. "All important literature has some ethical end," Kirk says, "and the tale of the preternatural—as written by George Macdonald, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and other masters—can be an instrument for the recovery of moral order."
Including an illuminative introduction by Vigen Guroian, Ancestral Shadows will enthrall and delight all lovers of ghost stories.
406 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2004
11 people are currently reading
555 people want to read
About the author
Russell Kirk
185 books304 followersFor more than forty years, Russell Kirk was in the thick of the intellectual controversies of his time. He is the author of some thirty-two books, hundreds of periodical essays, and many short stories. Both Time and Newsweek have described him as one of America’s leading thinkers, and The New York Times acknowledged the scale of his influence when in 1998 it wrote that Kirk’s 1953 book The Conservative Mind “gave American conservatives an identity and a genealogy and catalyzed the postwar movement.”
Dr. Kirk wrote and spoke on modern culture, political thought and practice, educational theory, literary criticism, ethical questions, and social themes. He addressed audiences on hundreds of American campuses and appeared often on television and radio.
He edited the educational quarterly journal The University Bookman and was founder and first editor of the quarterly Modern Age. He contributed articles to numerous serious periodicals on either side of the Atlantic. For a quarter of a century he wrote a page on education for National Review, and for thirteen years published, through the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, a nationally syndicated newspaper column. Over the years he contributed to more than a hundred serious periodicals in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, and Poland, among them Sewanee Review, Yale Review, Fortune, Humanitas, The Contemporary Review, The Journal of the History of Ideas, World Review, Crisis, History Today, Policy Review, Commonweal, Kenyon Review, The Review of Politics, and The World and I.
He is the only American to hold the highest arts degree (earned) of the senior Scottish university—doctor of letters of St. Andrews. He received his bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University and his master’s degree from Duke University. He received honorary doctorates from twelve American universities and colleges.
He was a Guggenheim Fellow, a senior fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, a Constitutional Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a Fulbright Lecturer in Scotland. The Christopher Award was conferred upon him for his book Eliot and His Age, and he received the Ann Radcliffe Award of the Count Dracula Society for his Gothic Fiction. The Third World Fantasy Convention gave him its award for best short fiction for his short story, “There’s a Long, Long Trail a-Winding.” In 1984 he received the Weaver Award of the Ingersoll Prizes for his scholarly writing. For several years he was a Distinguished Scholar of the Heritage Foundation. In 1989, President Reagan conferred on him the Presidential Citizens Medal. In 1991, he was awarded the Salvatori Prize for historical writing.
More than a million copies of Kirk’s books have been sold, and several have been translated in German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Korean, and other languages. His second book, The Conservative Mind (1953), is one of the most widely reviewed and discussed studies of political ideas in this century and has gone through seven editions. Seventeen of his books are in print at present, and he has written prefaces to many other books, contributed essays to them, or edited them.
Dr. Kirk debated with such well-known speakers as Norman Thomas, Frank Mankiewicz, Carey McWilliams, John Roche, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Michael Harrington, Max Lerner, Michael Novak, Sidney Lens, William Kunstler, Hubert Humphrey, F. A. Hayek, Karl Hess, Clifford Case, Ayn Rand, Eugene McCarthy, Leonard Weinglass, Louis Lomax, Harold Taylor, Clark Kerr, Saul Alinsky, Staughton Lynd, Malcolm X, Dick Gregory, and Tom Hayden. Several of his public lectures have been broadcast nationally on C-SPAN.
Among Kirk’s literary and scholarly friends were T. S. Eliot, Roy Campbell, Wyndham Lewis, Donald Davidson, George Scott-Moncrieff, Richard Weaver, Max Picard, Ray Bradbury, Bernard Iddings Bell, Paul Roche, James McAuley, Thomas Howard, Wilhem Roepke, Robert Speaight
Dr. Kirk wrote and spoke on modern culture, political thought and practice, educational theory, literary criticism, ethical questions, and social themes. He addressed audiences on hundreds of American campuses and appeared often on television and radio.
He edited the educational quarterly journal The University Bookman and was founder and first editor of the quarterly Modern Age. He contributed articles to numerous serious periodicals on either side of the Atlantic. For a quarter of a century he wrote a page on education for National Review, and for thirteen years published, through the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, a nationally syndicated newspaper column. Over the years he contributed to more than a hundred serious periodicals in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, and Poland, among them Sewanee Review, Yale Review, Fortune, Humanitas, The Contemporary Review, The Journal of the History of Ideas, World Review, Crisis, History Today, Policy Review, Commonweal, Kenyon Review, The Review of Politics, and The World and I.
He is the only American to hold the highest arts degree (earned) of the senior Scottish university—doctor of letters of St. Andrews. He received his bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University and his master’s degree from Duke University. He received honorary doctorates from twelve American universities and colleges.
He was a Guggenheim Fellow, a senior fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, a Constitutional Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a Fulbright Lecturer in Scotland. The Christopher Award was conferred upon him for his book Eliot and His Age, and he received the Ann Radcliffe Award of the Count Dracula Society for his Gothic Fiction. The Third World Fantasy Convention gave him its award for best short fiction for his short story, “There’s a Long, Long Trail a-Winding.” In 1984 he received the Weaver Award of the Ingersoll Prizes for his scholarly writing. For several years he was a Distinguished Scholar of the Heritage Foundation. In 1989, President Reagan conferred on him the Presidential Citizens Medal. In 1991, he was awarded the Salvatori Prize for historical writing.
More than a million copies of Kirk’s books have been sold, and several have been translated in German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Korean, and other languages. His second book, The Conservative Mind (1953), is one of the most widely reviewed and discussed studies of political ideas in this century and has gone through seven editions. Seventeen of his books are in print at present, and he has written prefaces to many other books, contributed essays to them, or edited them.
Dr. Kirk debated with such well-known speakers as Norman Thomas, Frank Mankiewicz, Carey McWilliams, John Roche, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Michael Harrington, Max Lerner, Michael Novak, Sidney Lens, William Kunstler, Hubert Humphrey, F. A. Hayek, Karl Hess, Clifford Case, Ayn Rand, Eugene McCarthy, Leonard Weinglass, Louis Lomax, Harold Taylor, Clark Kerr, Saul Alinsky, Staughton Lynd, Malcolm X, Dick Gregory, and Tom Hayden. Several of his public lectures have been broadcast nationally on C-SPAN.
Among Kirk’s literary and scholarly friends were T. S. Eliot, Roy Campbell, Wyndham Lewis, Donald Davidson, George Scott-Moncrieff, Richard Weaver, Max Picard, Ray Bradbury, Bernard Iddings Bell, Paul Roche, James McAuley, Thomas Howard, Wilhem Roepke, Robert Speaight
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
September 27, 2019
Note, Sept. 27, 2019: I just made a minor edit that doesn't affect any of the substance of the review.
Kirk was, as the Goodreads description notes, a major thinker in the 20th-century American conservative movement; but there are significant differences within that movement --and these are significant for an understanding of his fiction, too, since his view of the world profoundly shaped what he set out to say in all of his novels and stories. He was what is variously called a paleo-, traditional or classical conservative: one who isn't enamored of internationalism and "globalism," who doesn't view "efficiency" and "rationality" as ultimate values, or change as automatically good, and who is strongly distrustful of bigness for its own sake, whether it be that of Big Government or Big Business. The importance of small human communities bound together by traditional attachments and face-to-face relations, of religious faith (he was an adult convert to Catholicism) and a commitment to personal and social ethics deriving from it, of what his favorite poet T. S. Eliot called the "permanent things," all bulk large in his thought. Against the excesses of modern materialistic capitalism (which is as hostile a force to the "conserving" of anything of genuine social value as it's possible to imagine), he defended the rights and interests of small communities, small farmers, small business, rural and urban neighborhoods, and all those generally shoved into the gutter by the onslaught of totalitarian modernity. Nor did he support a bellicose foreign policy of imperial hegemony and perpetual "wars to end war." (He was not a supporter of the first invasion of Iraq, and it's not likely he would have supported the second one.)
All of these concerns underlie the 19 stories collected here, and find expression, both subtle and direct, in these pages. The stories themselves are drawn from the three collections he published in his lifetime: The Surly, Sullen Bell (1962), The Princess of All Lands (1979), and Watchers at the Strait Gate (1984); they usually feature ghosts, who may be malevolent entities with an evil agenda, lethal agents of divine vengeance, or something else entirely, but sorcery, spirit-possession, and temporal slips also appear here. Indeed, the relativity of time is a fairly common theme in many of the stories, including "There's A Long, Long Trail A-Winding" (which won the World Fantasy Award), "An Encounter by Mortstone Pond" and "The Last God's Dream." (The titular "last god" is Diocletan, the last man to be deified by the Roman Senate.) Settings vary from the author's native rural Michigan; Scotland (where he did his graduate work); Africa; Split, Yugoslavia; and other locales, all of them well-realized. Christian content --often of a specifically conservative Catholic or Anglo-Catholic sort-- is prominent in several of the stories.
Manfred Arcane, perhaps Kirk's most fascinating and complex character, who was introduced in the non-supernatural novel A Creature of the Twilight (1966) appears in two of the stories. Later, the author would take a character's persona from one of these stories and the Edinburgh setting of another, "Balgrummo's Hell" (in which Arcane doesn't appear --but which is later shown to have an unsuspected tie-in to him) as major elements in his only supernatural novel, Lord of the Hollow Dark, which also stars Arcane. I'd like to give the novel a try sometime; I'm intrigued by the connections to these stories.
Kirk's style is perfectly adapted to his subject matter in these stories; his psychological and moral insights ring true, and I find his social commentary, for the most part, right on. The supernatural atmosphere of the stories can be broodingly menacing or poignant and beautiful (and sometimes both in the same story), but they always draw the reader in. My personal favorite is "The Reflex-Man in Whinnymuir Close" (and the Scots dialect of the narrator's voice there is pitch-perfect!); but there isn't a clunker in the whole book.
Kirk was, as the Goodreads description notes, a major thinker in the 20th-century American conservative movement; but there are significant differences within that movement --and these are significant for an understanding of his fiction, too, since his view of the world profoundly shaped what he set out to say in all of his novels and stories. He was what is variously called a paleo-, traditional or classical conservative: one who isn't enamored of internationalism and "globalism," who doesn't view "efficiency" and "rationality" as ultimate values, or change as automatically good, and who is strongly distrustful of bigness for its own sake, whether it be that of Big Government or Big Business. The importance of small human communities bound together by traditional attachments and face-to-face relations, of religious faith (he was an adult convert to Catholicism) and a commitment to personal and social ethics deriving from it, of what his favorite poet T. S. Eliot called the "permanent things," all bulk large in his thought. Against the excesses of modern materialistic capitalism (which is as hostile a force to the "conserving" of anything of genuine social value as it's possible to imagine), he defended the rights and interests of small communities, small farmers, small business, rural and urban neighborhoods, and all those generally shoved into the gutter by the onslaught of totalitarian modernity. Nor did he support a bellicose foreign policy of imperial hegemony and perpetual "wars to end war." (He was not a supporter of the first invasion of Iraq, and it's not likely he would have supported the second one.)
All of these concerns underlie the 19 stories collected here, and find expression, both subtle and direct, in these pages. The stories themselves are drawn from the three collections he published in his lifetime: The Surly, Sullen Bell (1962), The Princess of All Lands (1979), and Watchers at the Strait Gate (1984); they usually feature ghosts, who may be malevolent entities with an evil agenda, lethal agents of divine vengeance, or something else entirely, but sorcery, spirit-possession, and temporal slips also appear here. Indeed, the relativity of time is a fairly common theme in many of the stories, including "There's A Long, Long Trail A-Winding" (which won the World Fantasy Award), "An Encounter by Mortstone Pond" and "The Last God's Dream." (The titular "last god" is Diocletan, the last man to be deified by the Roman Senate.) Settings vary from the author's native rural Michigan; Scotland (where he did his graduate work); Africa; Split, Yugoslavia; and other locales, all of them well-realized. Christian content --often of a specifically conservative Catholic or Anglo-Catholic sort-- is prominent in several of the stories.
Manfred Arcane, perhaps Kirk's most fascinating and complex character, who was introduced in the non-supernatural novel A Creature of the Twilight (1966) appears in two of the stories. Later, the author would take a character's persona from one of these stories and the Edinburgh setting of another, "Balgrummo's Hell" (in which Arcane doesn't appear --but which is later shown to have an unsuspected tie-in to him) as major elements in his only supernatural novel, Lord of the Hollow Dark, which also stars Arcane. I'd like to give the novel a try sometime; I'm intrigued by the connections to these stories.
Kirk's style is perfectly adapted to his subject matter in these stories; his psychological and moral insights ring true, and I find his social commentary, for the most part, right on. The supernatural atmosphere of the stories can be broodingly menacing or poignant and beautiful (and sometimes both in the same story), but they always draw the reader in. My personal favorite is "The Reflex-Man in Whinnymuir Close" (and the Scots dialect of the narrator's voice there is pitch-perfect!); but there isn't a clunker in the whole book.
April 4, 2016
Ancestral Shadows by Russell Kirk are some of the most amazing short stories I've ever read. They are also not for the faint of heart, because they task both your vocabulary and imagination. I took my time reading them the first time (in 2011) and here I am on my second go-round ... savoring them again. Some stories are frightening, others crazily eerie, some thought-provoking, some puzzling, a couple I don't think I understood at all—even this time—although I know I did better. I would love to read these in a book club!
Kirk reminds me of cross between Flannery O'Connor and Daphne du Maurier, somewhere between the bizarre and the terrifying. But every story leaves you with the sense that all of life and every single choice has consequence—for good or ill.
In these stories, what you never know is who is alive, who is dead, and who is somewhere in between—in some nebulous state of being not quite one yet not the other. Sometimes the good person has returned from the dead to visit the evil living person to exact justice for the ill done them during life. In other cases, it might be an evil spirit allowed to wreak havoc on someone because they won't listen to anyone, or they're too greedy, mean-spirited or whatever. But whenever I get to thinking I've figured out Kirk's modus operandi so far as ‘justice’ is concerned, then I'll start a new story and it will be totally different. Amazing collection!
I don't even like the genre of horror, but these aren't scary to no purpose. They aim to teach without being overtly didactic. MOST highly recommended! Each tale doesn't get the 5 star rating but it goes to the collection and to the author overall. (Last read 2014; due to read again!)
Kirk reminds me of cross between Flannery O'Connor and Daphne du Maurier, somewhere between the bizarre and the terrifying. But every story leaves you with the sense that all of life and every single choice has consequence—for good or ill.
In these stories, what you never know is who is alive, who is dead, and who is somewhere in between—in some nebulous state of being not quite one yet not the other. Sometimes the good person has returned from the dead to visit the evil living person to exact justice for the ill done them during life. In other cases, it might be an evil spirit allowed to wreak havoc on someone because they won't listen to anyone, or they're too greedy, mean-spirited or whatever. But whenever I get to thinking I've figured out Kirk's modus operandi so far as ‘justice’ is concerned, then I'll start a new story and it will be totally different. Amazing collection!
I don't even like the genre of horror, but these aren't scary to no purpose. They aim to teach without being overtly didactic. MOST highly recommended! Each tale doesn't get the 5 star rating but it goes to the collection and to the author overall. (Last read 2014; due to read again!)
December 4, 2017
Russell Kirk is best known for starting the Modern Conservative movement. A devout Catholic, his beliefs permeate each and every story. Therefore, the stories are not simply ghost tales but stories with a higher, other worldly message.
"...the tale of the preternatural- as written by George Macdonald, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and other masters- can be an instrument for the recovery of moral order." -Kirk
All of the stories are surreal, whether they are talking about demon possession, haunted houses, or Native America spiritism. In one story, a man stumbles into a place where dead friends dwell. At first he thinks he is dead, but it turns out that he made a "wrong turn" somewhere. If it was supposed to be heaven, it was a little bleak.
They are not traditional or run of the mill but they are extremely suspenseful and I found them to be rather frightening. Some people will enjoy these stories and some probably won't understand what he's getting at.
You'll have to read them for yourself and decide.
"...the tale of the preternatural- as written by George Macdonald, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and other masters- can be an instrument for the recovery of moral order." -Kirk
All of the stories are surreal, whether they are talking about demon possession, haunted houses, or Native America spiritism. In one story, a man stumbles into a place where dead friends dwell. At first he thinks he is dead, but it turns out that he made a "wrong turn" somewhere. If it was supposed to be heaven, it was a little bleak.
They are not traditional or run of the mill but they are extremely suspenseful and I found them to be rather frightening. Some people will enjoy these stories and some probably won't understand what he's getting at.
You'll have to read them for yourself and decide.
June 15, 2015
This is a genuinely delightful collection of tales of, as Kirk put it, the 'uncanny'—episodes of the worlds beyond the veil breaking or stepping through to our own, for both good and ill. They're beautifully, engrossingly written, as one expects from Kirk; thus it is with wonderful ease that the reader can slip into the worlds and lives woven for us. Here we read of spirits both vengeful and heroic, yet in each case things are so much deeper. Of course, these are so much more than mere ghost stories, but I hate to say anything lest I spoil any tale in particular! Though in several cases I could see exactly where things were going, that didn't lessen my enjoyment at all; we have Kirk's skill to thank for that.
I enjoyed every story deeply. Upon finishing the volume, I actually went back and re-read a few of the stories, and particularly incredible bits of others.
Also, as a fan of Kirk's, I will confess to being surprised at blurbs by writers such as Ray Bradbury praising this collection. Apparently Kirk's supernatural stories were quite renown in his day; how his fiction has slipped the cultural mind, I don't know.
My only caution is that this is not a book one clips gaily through. Each tale is rich, and a couple of them left me rather drained, to tell the truth. No, these are short stories to truly savor. Of course, doing so only lengthens the amount of time the reader will spend with this book—and the time is very worthwhile indeed!
I enjoyed every story deeply. Upon finishing the volume, I actually went back and re-read a few of the stories, and particularly incredible bits of others.
Also, as a fan of Kirk's, I will confess to being surprised at blurbs by writers such as Ray Bradbury praising this collection. Apparently Kirk's supernatural stories were quite renown in his day; how his fiction has slipped the cultural mind, I don't know.
My only caution is that this is not a book one clips gaily through. Each tale is rich, and a couple of them left me rather drained, to tell the truth. No, these are short stories to truly savor. Of course, doing so only lengthens the amount of time the reader will spend with this book—and the time is very worthwhile indeed!
July 24, 2008
Last night my husband read "Lex Talionis," aloud to myself and our kids. Now finding a story we could all agree on, with 2 teens and a preteen, was tricky, but we did it. Russel Kirk is an artist with words. He paints images of dark scenes, that remind me of stories I listened to long ago on the old "Radio Mystery Theater." The stories from "Ancestral Shadows" are ghostly tales, yet they have a Christian morality. He calls his own tales, "experiments in the moral imagination." My husband and I enjoy his stories so much , that we ordered this anthology from Amazon...Well, I had to read just one more before bed.
So I chose to read, "Watchers at the Straight Gate." A chilling story of a priest, Father O'Malley and his encounter with a visitant looking to be absolved from his sins at 3AM. I won't tell you what he did...oooh but it was chilling! Ah the unusual twists and turns of the plot, the curios possibilities arising, and the ending...ah, satisfying and something to go to sleep ruminating on.
So I chose to read, "Watchers at the Straight Gate." A chilling story of a priest, Father O'Malley and his encounter with a visitant looking to be absolved from his sins at 3AM. I won't tell you what he did...oooh but it was chilling! Ah the unusual twists and turns of the plot, the curios possibilities arising, and the ending...ah, satisfying and something to go to sleep ruminating on.
October 28, 2014
These 19 short stories written over 25 years of Russell Kirk's life are remniscient of some of the best gothic and ghost stories of the turn-of-the-century. At times I found I had to remind myself that many of these stories were written in the mid-1900s, and not in the late-1800s. His stories cover the supernatural ("preternatural" as Kirk described his own ghost stories) and the occult, mixed with a dash of theology, a toss of history, and a wallop of politics. These are probably some of the best short stories I have read, and certainly some of the best ghost stories, similar to Henry James (but not so dry), Edith Wharton, a little bit of Poe, a little bit of Hawthorne - even a little Flannery O'Connor in the darkness of writing style (and that, to me, is highest of praise); but all very much Kirk (as I have not read anything else by Kirk yet, this is just supposition).
Favorites: "Ex Tenebris", "Lex Talionis", "Fate's Purse" and especially "The Princess of All Lands".
Favorites: "Ex Tenebris", "Lex Talionis", "Fate's Purse" and especially "The Princess of All Lands".
May 14, 2008
Read this book for a college class - loved it. Dark, yet spiritual.
October 5, 2017
"Ghost stories" invariably makes me think of legends and folklore, but Ancestral Shadows is an altogether different anthology. Instead, its stories all feature ghostly characters and themes of redemption, revenge, or realization. The ghosts here are not transparent wraiths, scaring mortals or playing tricks with the furniture. They are in the midst, caught in the veil between the living and the dead, dwelling in their own moments of time. Some are corporeal enough that they believe themselves still living, and the news of their death comes as a surprise to both them and the reader. Ancestral Shadows enmeshes its characters in tradition and place; ghosts are inherently localists, but most of the the living featured here are likewise bound to their villages, family homes, and familiar places. The collection opens, for instance, with a ailing woman who lives in a mostly-abandoned village that is targeted for destruction by the local planning authorities. Living more in her memories than reality, she visits a church graveyard regularly to sweep the tombstones; her distress at the hands of the bully-planner, and devotion to the departed, bring an unexpected ally in the form of a vicar who died mysteriously decades ago. Time makes itself substantial in these stories; in one, a pecuilar man faced with a blizzard breaks into an abandoned home, and experiences a violent moment in the home's history -- but was it a moment etched into the memory of the house, or was it his? The stories are set in the United States, Great Britain, the Italio-Austrian border, and even east Africa, and each draw the reader and the main character deeper into a mystery, until -- fully enveloped by it -- there is a line dropped, a corner turned, and suddenly both parties realize something that had been hitherto hidden . These stories aren't written just to envelope the mind in mystery; the clarity of the end-page doesn't dispel a puzzle so much as it centers the character; before they were lost, now they are found. That's not to say they're feel-good parables, for the tales also include moments of vengeance and retribution.
If you can find it, this is an excellent collection of stories, both chilling and thoughtful. I obtained a copy through interlibrary loan.
If you can find it, this is an excellent collection of stories, both chilling and thoughtful. I obtained a copy through interlibrary loan.
September 30, 2014
Russell Kirk is a well-known political conservative who wrote many books and columns on the subject. Much less well-known are his ghost stories, the best of which are collected in this volume. As Vigen Gurion so eloquently put it in his introduction, "...Kirk's rich imaginative mind vividly casts the drama of the soul's struggle with good and evil in relation to a transcendent realm of meaning and purpose. ....[He] infuses into his stories his most deeply held religious, moral, and political convictions...[and] develops a unique style, distinguished by strong ethical, metaphysical,, and theological insights." Sounds deadly dull and earnest, right? It isn't. Think "Supernatural" without the brothers' wise-ass attitudes. These are some truly terrifying tales. You won't be disappointed.
June 3, 2015
I'm not ussually into ghost stories. I got this after it was recommended at The Hational Review Online around halloween. Russell Kirk was (apparently) a famous conservative writer and a contributor to National review. The first few stories are great! Creepy, fun, and the villians tend to be central planners and other such intrusive-government beurocrat busibodies. Fun stuff. I read a story at bedtime about once a week.
March 3, 2020
The stories are fine, as a rule, and some are very effective, but almost every one is marred by Kirk's charmless editorializing. Some are icky rather than frightening, tending toward the pulpy, sensational, and misogynistic. Times change, but most of these tales are more dated in their way than MRJ's. Devout Jamesians might be conflicted or even annoyed, as I often was.
May 31, 2020
I DO NOT LIKE GHOSTLY TALES THEY ARE VERY HAUNTING HOW IAM A STRONG MINDED WOMAN. I NOW BELIEVE AND KNOW THAT HAUNTING DO EXZISTS I HAD AND HAUNTING EXPERIENCE. VERY HAUNTING.HEAVY BREATHING REMEMBER WHEN THE HOUSE WAS BOARDED UP THE HOUSE WAS HAUNTED I USE TO LAUGH AND SAY YEAH RIGHT. IAM A VERY HARD BELIEVE SHOW ME PROOF. WELL IT DO EXZIST I MOVED INTO A BOARDED UP HOUSE. GAVE ME THE GIGGERS I FELT NOT COMFORTABLE. ALL SUDDEN. REMEMBER IAM A HARD BELIEVER. IT HAS BEEN 3 MONTHS BORN CURIOUS, STILL VERY ALERT. OK NOW MY SON IS NOW SLEEPING MY FRIEND IS NOW SLEEPING. IAM STILL ALERT AND VERY AWAKEABLE. ALL SUDDEN, I HEAR A VERY DEEP .ROARING HEAVY BREATHING I WAS SHOCK. TO AFRAID TO COVER UP MY HEAD I WAS EVEN TO AFRAID TO WAKE UP ANY ONE THIS HEAVENLY BREATHING LAST FROM THIS GHOST. AT LEASE 5. MINUETS. I SLEPT WITH ONE EYE 👁 OPEN AND ONE 👁 CLOSE .I DONT DONT REALLY KNOW IF I HAD SEEN A FIGURE TO BE HONEST I WOULD PROBABLY BE SITTING IN PLACE UN KNOWN WHO IAM BECAUSE THE HEAVY BREATHING WAS SCARES ENOUGH THAT FIGURE WOULD HAVE DROVE ME TOTALLY INANE. I MOVED AWAY FROM THAT YELLOW HOUSE OWN OWNES STREET IAM NOW A BELIEVER.
June 5, 2013
I was honored to be able to create the cover art and design for "Ancestral Shadows." It was a dream for several years before the publisher went ahead with the book. Great to see so many readers enjoying Russell Kirk's ghostly tales!
April 9, 2022
I appreciated the introductory essay about how Kirk's fiction evolved over time and was surprised to see that the last chapter, "A Cautionary Note on the Ghastly Tale," isn't the essay of the same title included in at least one other Russell Kirk collection.
October 4, 2011
This author is known more for his non-fiction writings, but I really enjoyed these strange tales.
November 1, 2014
The creepiest ghost stories I have ever read.
December 17, 2015
Terrific book which is even more scary if you know some Catholic understanding of death and afterlife. The stories really make you thnk.
October 5, 2022
The title is accurate. These are ghostly tales, viz., preternatural short stories often (but not always) involving ghosts of an ancestral (read: Burkean generational compact) nature.
Kirk is best when writing historical settings and characters using a documentary, semi-epistolary, or antiquarian narrative voice. In contrast, his attempts at inner city settings populated by post-modern characters just do not work. The latter stories suffer from wooden dialogue and stereotyped inner monologues, but the former can be extremely effective and ingenious.
The collection as a whole succeeds despite weaknesses of style (and Kirk’s ineluctable traditionalism, which sometimes doesn't fit the story). This success is due in part to Kirk’s absolute conviction in the validity of the moral nature of his writing. In short, Kirk believes that scientism and rationalism have bled out essential parts of human nature from modern man. Stories of the supernatural - not fantasy and science fiction - are perhaps the only literary remedy left to corral modern man back into a state of humility about transcendent things.
In other words, these are moralizing stories written in full knowledge of their agenda and based on a rational principle for advancing that agenda. (He outlines this principle and defends it in his closing essay, which would have been more helpful as a preface.) Kirk's faith in this mission elevates his work.
They also succeed because they deftly handle timeless themes. Love, honor, regret, vengeance, jealousy, faith, etc. These are humane and humanizing themes. Is Kirk the Anglo-Catholic a reliable and rigorous theologian? No, and you’d do well to study the theology of the soul under a more Biblical guide.
But Kirk does expand one’s mental model of what it means to be human.
Kirk is best when writing historical settings and characters using a documentary, semi-epistolary, or antiquarian narrative voice. In contrast, his attempts at inner city settings populated by post-modern characters just do not work. The latter stories suffer from wooden dialogue and stereotyped inner monologues, but the former can be extremely effective and ingenious.
The collection as a whole succeeds despite weaknesses of style (and Kirk’s ineluctable traditionalism, which sometimes doesn't fit the story). This success is due in part to Kirk’s absolute conviction in the validity of the moral nature of his writing. In short, Kirk believes that scientism and rationalism have bled out essential parts of human nature from modern man. Stories of the supernatural - not fantasy and science fiction - are perhaps the only literary remedy left to corral modern man back into a state of humility about transcendent things.
In other words, these are moralizing stories written in full knowledge of their agenda and based on a rational principle for advancing that agenda. (He outlines this principle and defends it in his closing essay, which would have been more helpful as a preface.) Kirk's faith in this mission elevates his work.
They also succeed because they deftly handle timeless themes. Love, honor, regret, vengeance, jealousy, faith, etc. These are humane and humanizing themes. Is Kirk the Anglo-Catholic a reliable and rigorous theologian? No, and you’d do well to study the theology of the soul under a more Biblical guide.
But Kirk does expand one’s mental model of what it means to be human.
March 6, 2021
It was a great idea to re-read this collection. Though he's not as revered in the horror community, Kirk's ghost stories deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the venerable M. R. James. Indeed, you could consider Kirk the American Antiquarian version of James, though not all of his stories take place in the U. S. exclusively.
What's really pleasing about these tales - for me, anyway - is how SOLID they are. Each story's premise is built on methodical, carefully constructed foundations, and all their causation makes sense, and works toward carefully plotted conclusions. They don't exactly end with "moral of the story" finishes, but all of Kirk's tales possess moral backbones which would translate very easily into something like Twilight Zone episodes.
Also - and I risk horror heresy in this - much as I love M. R. James' tales, I found Kirk's prose a bit more accessible, his characters a bit more grounded. The prose is substantial, but it flows well without being overburdened with exposition.
What's really pleasing about these tales - for me, anyway - is how SOLID they are. Each story's premise is built on methodical, carefully constructed foundations, and all their causation makes sense, and works toward carefully plotted conclusions. They don't exactly end with "moral of the story" finishes, but all of Kirk's tales possess moral backbones which would translate very easily into something like Twilight Zone episodes.
Also - and I risk horror heresy in this - much as I love M. R. James' tales, I found Kirk's prose a bit more accessible, his characters a bit more grounded. The prose is substantial, but it flows well without being overburdened with exposition.
November 16, 2023
Ghost stories by the man responsible for the rebirth of the American conservative movement: what’s not to love? These atmospheric tales all offer moral lessons, rooted in the “eternal things” Kirk dedicated his life to preserving.
The stories are spooky on a spiritual level thanks to Kirk’s rejection of both secularism and materialism. Much modern horror fails in this regard, being too disinterested in or disdainful of religious, specifically Christian, themes.
I was surprised by the violence in some. It isn’t senseless violence, though. It serves a purpose, either to illustrate evil or to execute righteous judgment.
Overall, a thought-provoking read. I especially enjoyed “There’s a Long, Long Trail A-Winding” and “The Surly Sullen Bell.”
One last thing: Kirk gave an interview on what he called the “moral imagination,” expanding on the themes in his stories: https://vimeo.com/70964676
The stories are spooky on a spiritual level thanks to Kirk’s rejection of both secularism and materialism. Much modern horror fails in this regard, being too disinterested in or disdainful of religious, specifically Christian, themes.
I was surprised by the violence in some. It isn’t senseless violence, though. It serves a purpose, either to illustrate evil or to execute righteous judgment.
Overall, a thought-provoking read. I especially enjoyed “There’s a Long, Long Trail A-Winding” and “The Surly Sullen Bell.”
One last thing: Kirk gave an interview on what he called the “moral imagination,” expanding on the themes in his stories: https://vimeo.com/70964676
March 2, 2018
This is a collection of delightful Catholic ghost stories.
One of the things I like about these stories is that they are moral. Usually, the bad guy gets justice, at least ultimately. Sometimes good people are victims of foul play, but they go on to a better place.
How could one person think of so many good ideas for ghost stories (and similar stories that aren't technically about ghosts)?
In the afterward, Kirk lists George Macdonald, CS Lewis and Charles Williams as masters of tales of the preternatural. I have read almost all of their stories of that kind (I may be missing a few by Lewis), and I consider Kirk to be of their ilk (although that is high praise indeed.
I understand that Kirk is an arch-conservative. Some of his commentary was in that vein (e.g. interstate highways are always bad), but I did not find it distracting.
One of the things I like about these stories is that they are moral. Usually, the bad guy gets justice, at least ultimately. Sometimes good people are victims of foul play, but they go on to a better place.
How could one person think of so many good ideas for ghost stories (and similar stories that aren't technically about ghosts)?
In the afterward, Kirk lists George Macdonald, CS Lewis and Charles Williams as masters of tales of the preternatural. I have read almost all of their stories of that kind (I may be missing a few by Lewis), and I consider Kirk to be of their ilk (although that is high praise indeed.
I understand that Kirk is an arch-conservative. Some of his commentary was in that vein (e.g. interstate highways are always bad), but I did not find it distracting.
October 6, 2020
Contains some terrific tales:
Favorites:
"There's a Long, Long Trail A-Winding" and "The Reflex-Man in Whinnymuir Close"
- These two both made me cry.
Favorites:
"There's a Long, Long Trail A-Winding" and "The Reflex-Man in Whinnymuir Close"
- These two both made me cry.
December 29, 2009
Great book for a winter storm! The tales get better and better as you move through the book!
July 30, 2013
Tales from the October country.
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