Strange Things and Stranger Places

by Ramsey Campbell

A collection of outstanding horror fiction contains two novellas, Needing Ghosts and Medusa, along with eight shorter works about such places as forbidden castle ruins where children's games can be transformed into chilling reality. Reprint.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Collections

256 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 1, 1993

About the author

Ramsey Campbell is a British writer considered by a number of critics to be one of the great masters of horror fiction. T. E. D. Klein has written that "Campbell reigns supreme in the field today," while S. T. Joshi has said that "future generations will regard him as the leading horror writer of our generation, every bit the equal of Lovecraft or Blackwood."

Reviews

[Graham P · Rating 3 out of 5]

The real reason to buy this collection is 'Needing Ghosts', a surreal novella-length farce containing many of the Ramsey Campbell devices: amnesia, urban dread, a writer's paranoia, and a landscape complete with moving mannequins, haunted tenements, and pale and puffy things indecipherable to the human eye. Also, it contains some of Campbell's most humorous writing (the mall library scene is deliciously sadistic slapstick). This is the extreme nightmare version of the film, 'After Hours', an endless night where one bad thing leads to another. You'll never look at dentures the same way again.

'Passing Phase' is a great revision of 'The Midwich Cuckoos'. A teacher notices that his students are fixated on a new toy, a small glittering globe, in which he soon finds out may not be of this earth. 'The Next Sideshow' is a claustrophobic take on the desolate carnival. A man is coerced into a maze of mirrors only to find that his reflections show an inner glimpse to what he really is inside. The rest of the tales seemed culled from leftovers that didn't make the cut for Campbell's prior collections. Many have an EC comic feel, the tidy nasty ending, the just desserts and such.

If you're new to Ramsey Campbell, I think his 'Alone with Horrors' is the place to start.

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

A whole heap of weirdlit and horror here! More weirdlit than horror mostly. A couple of very short ones, but still ‘nice’ and disturbing! My fave was sf-themed ‘Medusa’, and the very disturbing longer story ‘Needing Ghosts’.

[Jeannie Sloan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think that Campbell is a better short story writer than novel writer.These stories were concise,well written and scary.I had read a few of them before since this is an older book but the rest were new to me.
Another library book that I probably won't but at Amazon because it was a little short and I do have some of the stories anthologized in other books.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible, just terrible.

[Nikki Hutchinson · Rating 2 out of 5]

It could be me, but there were points where these stories were just confusing. Not in a captivating "I can't wait to find out what happens" way, in a "huh" way. There were points where he had shifted focus or switched to a new idea, and I didn't catch it until a couple sentences in.
And the stories themselves felt somewhat cliche. Each story has little twists, little subversions from other horror, but it's all the same tropes. The small subversions don't make up for it. For Rising Generation, I knew it was going to be super cliche. I knew the end by a few paragraphs in. Then, for Run Through, I didn't guess the ending, but it was still unsatisfying. I thought the story might be something new, and then it wasn't. It was a boring twist. Which I hated because it felt like the beginning was setting up for something at least more complex.

[Kurt Dahlke · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars as it's a mixed bag of stories, at least one of which (Medusa) Campbell himself doesn't think is very successful. That one is a sci-fi novella, which is fine, but not exactly Campbell's forte. The final novella, Needing Ghosts, makes up for it.

[Dion · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almost 3star but Needing Ghost revive it.

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Needing Ghosts, Passing Phase, and the Next Sideshow were the saving grace of this book. The other stories were middling to awful. I'm a casual fan of Campbell, but this left me almost as underwhelmed as his Lovecraft-era stories. However, the three stories I mentioned above were both brilliant and seriously creepy. I'd say if you can't get Needing Ghosts as a stand-alone, it's worth getting a copy of this book.

As for Passing Phase and The Next Sideshow, they'r classic Campbell in all the best ways. Creepy, ethereal, and ambiguous--but lacking the unnecessary level of ambiguity and denseness that make his other stories in this collection head-scratchers.

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have liked Campbell's short stories in the past but this collection is just a bunch of cliche and obvious twists on old horror tropes.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been reading Ramsey Campbell since I was a teenager...even before Stephen King. His stories always make you think and uncontrollably scary. Sometimes its like reading a lunatic's thoughts...

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent collection