Strange Stories of the Supernatural

by W.W. Jacobs, F. Marion Crawford, Wilkie Collins

The monkey's paw..."just an ordinary little paw, dried to a mummy." But, according to a mysterious old soldier from India, the paw has evil, supernatural powers-the power to grant any wish...the power to give people exactly what they ask for...

The ominous tale of "The Monkey's Paw" is a mere foreshadowing of the horror that follows in these Strange Stories of the Supernatural. Here is a collection of ghosts and ghouls guaranteed to chill your bones.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies, Mystery, Classics

135 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

William Wymark Jacobs was an English author of short stories and novels. Quite popular in his lifetime primarily for his amusing maritime tales of life along the London docks (many of them humorous as well as sardonic in tone). Today he is best known for a few short works of horror fiction. One being "The Monkey's Paw"(published 1902). It has in its own right become a well-known and widely anthologized classic.


~Literary Works

Many Cargoes (1896)
The Skipper's Wooing (1897)
Sea Urchins (1898) /aka More Cargoes (US) (1898)
A Master of Craft (1900)
The Monkey's Paw (1902)
The Toll House (1902)
Light Freights (1901)
At Sunwich Port (1902)
The Barge (1902)
Odd Craft (1903) : contains The Money Box, basis of Laurel and Hardy film Our Relations (1935)
Dialstone Lane (1902)
Captain's All (1905)
Short Cruises (1907)
Salthaven (1908)
Sailors' Knots (1909)
The Toll House (1909)
Ship's Company (1911)
Night Watches (1914)
The Castaways (1916)
Deep Waters (1919)
Sea Whispers (1926)

Reviews

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decent collection of horror stories from the late 1800s. The Monkey's Paw and The Upper Berth are the standouts and true classics. Dream Woman was okay but a little nebulous. The Mortal Immortal was more a gothic romance than a horror story. The Ghost Ship was interesting but really comedy. If you like the old European style of horror stories from the 19th century then you'd like this collection. Not bad for a Halloween season read.

[Rashmi · Rating 5 out of 5]

These stories aren’t scary at all. They’re so beautifully written (19th century) that I wish people still wrote horror like this 😐
I remember reading this book when I was a child and finding it thrilling. 5 stars for the precious nostalgia this brought on.

[Mihai · Rating 1 out of 5]

This yellowed paperback rode up a mountain in my backpack, since I judged its slim size to be just enough reading material for an overnight trip. I was intrigued by the subtitle 'Five Spine-Chilling Tales,' only to be promptly put to sleep in my tent by the first two stories. I finished the other three later at home, yawning all the while. This is a pretty boring collection of not-so-great writing, made all the more painful by the fact they are all by stuffy British writers of the 19th century, and all protagonists/narrators are male, with women relegated to little more than background props.

If I had to pick a best story, it'd have to be 'The Upper Berth' - it's got a good pace to it, along with a decent plot around the haunting of a passenger cabin on an ocean liner of yesteryear. Supposedly 'The Monkey's Paw' is among author's W.W. Jacobs' most famous work; if that's the case, then I feel sorry for him and it's no wonder he's not better known. The story features the stereotypical talisman/souvenir from an exotic place with a curse attached, which ignorant Brits are quick to put to the test. 'The Dream Woman' is about country bumpkins who trip over themselves when the woman from a murderous dream shows up in real life and becomes part of the family. Mary Shelley is unquestionably the most well-known author in this collection, but her story 'The Mortal Immortal' is bland and entirely predictable. Here is a young man anguished by a love betrayal who is warned by his crazy scientist boss to not drink the potion he's concocting. What could possibly happen? Finally, the last writer doesn't even get a mention in the bio blurbs at the end, which is for the best since his piece is about a strange village on the English coast where all sorts of odd things take place, such as a ghost ship setting anchor in a turnip field and people real and imaginary communing with each other.

I suppose this book would be ok to check out for the lack of other reading material, but on its own it has little value and is not worth the time.

[C. (Comment, never msg). · Rating 3 out of 5]

Have you ever felt unexpectedly free, seeing something expressed that no one has dared to say in decades? The reading community tries to revere academics and be flexible to styles. I especially hate the worshipful gushing over historical fiction. It was enormously gratifying that someone called out tiresome crap. Uncharacteristically, I quote a reviewer!

“This collection is painful because it is all by stuffy British writers of the 19th century, all male narrators, with women relegated to background props. She amused me further by declaring: “If The Monkey’s Paw” is W.W. Jacob’s best work, no wonder he is poorly known!”

I hate that often reprinted story. It is eerie but its execution is stupid. Magic is strong enough to grant wishes but misinterprets words? However, Parents desperate to resurrect their Son, can avoid evil by ignoring a door. In the year 1994, there were scores of superior authors to print and much more modernly!

I was interested in the famous Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Wilkie Collins. I admired the creativity of “The Mortal Immortal” and “The Dream Woman”; extended as short stories go but characters made dumb moves in each of them. No one admires stories that have us yelling in astonishment at mistakes that are easy to prevent. Dismay compounded with dour outcomes but I know they are a frequently used horror trope, that I happen to loathe. We can be afraid and come out all right!

I was surprised that among the five “Strange Stories Of The Supernatural” tales, my favourites were “The Ghost Ship” by Richard Middleton and “The Upper Birth” by F. Marion Crawford of whom I had not heard. I am disappointed “Wilkie” and “Marion” are not women, as they sound. These colourful adventures, unsurprising to me, have positive endings! They clinch three stars overall.

[Chandler · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was not spine chilling AT ALL IT WAS A SNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!

[Rick Vickers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although most of the stories were written long ago, they still have a chilling effect when reading them
.

[Dan Dalton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Watermill was a company whose goal was to introduce children to classic literature by offering complete, unabridged literary masterpieces printed in a friendly, easy to read typeface, and sized to easily fit in your pocket (this would later change, unfortunately.) The iconic covers were cleverly designed to get attention, and the books were usually sold at school book fairs for an irresistible low price ($1.50 compared to their competitor's $3.99) which proved quite successful.

Watermill understood that children have a fascination with the macabre and supernatural, so most of their short story collections tended to cater to that.

Since short stories are less intimidating and more enticing to first time readers, it was hoped these collections would serve as an introduction to reading the classics (that pesky gateway drug theory.) To that end, the stories were not necessarily chosen because they were truly frightening, but rather because they were written by well known classic authors such as Poe, Stoker or Shelly, and thus children would find themselves lured into reading a story by Charles Dickens without realizing that what they were reading was educational or culturally significant.,

Of course not all the stories were obscure, they made sure to pepper each collection with a couple of famous works serving as additional bait. The Monkey's Paw was the one that got me to read this book. I had seen the movie and was interested in reading the story from whence it was based; it in turn led me to read The Upper Berth, a real skin crawler which became one of my all time favorite ghost stories.

Like with any short story collection, not all of the entries will appeal to everyone. Most of the stories were written at a time when people had huge vocabularies of large multisyllabic words, and a firm understanding of grammar and sentence structure wielded with such expertise that, well, some of the stories can be a little bit difficult to read or worse, dry (aka. boring,) so just be aware of what you're getting into before reading.

"The Monkey's Paw", "The Upper Berth", "The Dream Woman", "The Mortal Immortal, and "The Ghost Ship" are all in the public domain, so hunting down this book to read them is not really necessary unless it's for nostalgic reasons connected to childhood. So if you're really dying to read them, perhaps a trip to Project Gutenberg would be in order. The book is probably only of interest to sentimental 80's kids anyway.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of two books of its type, left over from my grade school bookfair ordersheets. Apparently, at the time, Watermill, through Troll Bookclub, was attempting to cash in on the trend of kids going for light-horror: from Are You Afraid of the Dark on TV to Goosebumps between covers, it was a time to profit from such things, and this volume, along with Midnight Fright (next on the list) existed in hopes of capitalizing on this not only for the financial gain, but in hopes of introducing kids to "classic" authors through haunting stories, instead of leaving them in the "capable" hands of RL Stine.

This first collection works about as well as you could hope. It's got at least one stone-cold classic story in "The Monkey's Paw," a story which builds suspense in the inevitability, the simplicity, and the "careful what you wish for" nature of the moral. Also strong and supremely eerie is Wilkie Collins' "The Dream Woman," which plays with foreshadowing and premonition. Crawford's "The Upper Berth" is less successful given its pomp and properness, but nevertheless gives a mood of chilliness if only from the omnipresent sea air.

That's really the thing that cuts Watermill's attempt off at the knees. These stories are largely written in such a clunky, antiquated style that few children would want to bother with them (I guarantee that's why I haven't pulled this off the shelf to read over the last 25 years). "The Monkey's Paw" itself is example enough, though the attempt at humor in Middleton's "The Ghost Ship" is also particularly poorly aged, to say nothing of the sort of "kids these days" fuddy-duddy narrator as this has being completely unpalatable to a child. "This boring place is full of ghosts and therefore better than a city." Ok, grampa. Tell me more about how cities are ruining culture with their horse drawn buggies and their loose morals. The kiddos LOVE that.

Still, as an adult, I appreciate the idea. It's a quick, cheap pocket volume of classic stories, and with the halloween season upon us, it's a good appetizer to more expansive horror. I imagine the second volume will leave me with about the same feeling.

[Phil Giunta · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recently discovered Strange Stories of the Supernatural tucked away in one of our bookcases at home. It is a thin anthology consisting of only five tales, the best of which is the “The Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs. A military veteran returns home from India with a mummified monkey’s paw, which grants its owner three wishes—at a terrible cost. While visiting a friend, the soldier tosses the trinket into the fire, but his friend hastily retrieves it and insists on trying it, despite the soldier’s warning…

The remaining four stories range from mildly enjoyable ("The Upper Berth" and "The Ghost Ship") to disappointing ("The Mortal Immortal" and "The Dream Woman").

In “The Upper Berth” by F. Marion Crawford, an Englishman named Brisbane recounts a ghostly encounter while crossing the Atlantic aboard a ship where six previous passengers threw themselves overboard during previous voyages. As it happens, every one of them slept in the same stateroom as Mr. Brisbane.

While spending the night at a secluded inn, Isaac Scatchard dreams that a young woman with a knife tries to murder him in his bed. Upon arriving home, Isaac describes the dream to his mother, who takes detailed notes. Years later, he meets an attractive woman and eventually arranges for her to meet his mother, who recognizes her instantly from Isaac’s description of “The Dream Woman.” This story by Wilkie Collins is among the better ones in the book.

“The Ghost Ship” by Richard Middleton. In the English town of Fairfax, ghosts are a common sight and are, in fact, taken for granted. However, it is unusual for a tall ship to materialize in the middle of a turnip field after a violent storm. The ghost ship’s captain assures the town that he will return to sea in a few days—after taking on new recruits.

In Mary Shelley’s “The Mortal Immortal,” an alchemist’s young apprentice drinks a solution that might have made him immortal, for his outward appearance never changes throughout his decades-long marriage. Yet, he drank only half the bottle, so is he truly immortal or merely aging slowly?

[Reagan Busbee · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Strange Stories of the Supernatural is a collection of five short stories about the eerie and spooky. As someone who has trouble vomiting to long tales I really enjoyed this book. While most of the stories are a little cheesy and cliche they are still really fun. They are more like a victorian feel with more emphasis on the atmosphere than cheesy jump scare entertainment.
While meant for children I like the smaller commitment of these stories and I liked that they went overwhelmingly scary. My favorite was probably money's paw, its trick on the classic three wishes with a catch is as classic as it comes. If you enjoy the twilight zone tv show, then this book is great for you.

[Becca Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a fun little anthology of short stories by famous horror writers back in the 1800s-early 1900s (I think), but it wasn't as scary as I was hoping it'd be - two or three of them were interesting enough and they were fun to read out loud but overall, fairly mid.

[Nomar Slevik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun and classic collection of "horror" stories. 'The Monkey's Paw' is the best of the bunch but shoutout to Mary Shelley's 'The Mortal Immortal' and Ghost Ship.

Quick read and a great book to introduce those new to horror, some classic material.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good collection of supernatural stories. I really liked The Monkey's Paw and The Upper Berth, while The Ghost Ship was an enjoyable comedy. The other two were just ok.

[Amanda Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars for nostalgia

[☆Angel☆ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I gave it three stars based solely on "The Monkey's Paw". I've always liked that story.

[Courtney Schafer · Rating 3 out of 5]

In no way scary but 4 out of the 5 stories held my interest.

[Billy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Got this in a random little book store for 2 bucks. I liked Monkeys Paw, kind of. Other then that pretty boring.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Includes the wonderfully creepy story The Monkey's Paw (remember the movie?).

[Belle Meade School]

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