Classic Ghost Stories

by E.F. Benson, Mary Elizabeth Braddon (Contributor), F. Marion Crawford (Contributor)

As the winter nights draw in and you settle in front of a cosy fire, it's the perfect time for a dash of the supernatural...embrace the gloom with spine-chillers from Charles Dickens, H.G. Wells, Edith Wharton and many more

Do you believe in ghosts?

Ghosts, spirits, spectres or spooks, we have always felt the presence of someone - or something - hovering in the darkest corners of our imaginations.

The great writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, from Elizabeth Gaskell to Rudyard Kipling, also produced some of the most influential ghost stories ever written, defining the genre for generations of writers to follow.

Gathered in this thrilling collection are some of the most iconic Victorian ghost stories, from Charles Dickens's The Signalman to M.R. James's A Warning to the Curious, alongside more unexpected contributions from masters of the form such as J.S. Le Fanu and H.G. Wells.

You may think you don't believe in ghosts, but these stories will haunt you nonetheless.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Classics, Fiction, Gothic, Ghost Stories, Halloween

451 pages, Paperback

First published October 5, 2017

About the author

Edward Frederic "E. F." Benson was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist and short story writer.

E. F. Benson was the younger brother of A.C. Benson, who wrote the words to "Land of Hope and Glory", Robert Hugh Benson, author of several novels and Roman Catholic apologetic works, and Margaret Benson, an author and amateur Egyptologist.

Benson died during 1940 of throat cancer at the University College Hospital, London. He is buried in the cemetery at Rye, East Sussex.

Last paragraph from Wikipedia

Reviews

[Liam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some if the short stories I liked more and others I liked less, but I feel like they gathered quite a span of authors and different kinds of ghost stories. So it was quite fun to get to read a couple authors for the first time.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of different stories were featured in this collection. There were different types of ghost stories in here, and I am glad to have been introduced to some writers I haven't heard before. There is just something about ghosts that is a perfect mix between uncanny and tragic

[Nena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Soms snap ik echt geen kut man. Oud Engels is NIET voor mij.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Most of these were actually kind of dull, but I reckon they’d be great to study just not too good for entertainment in this day and age. I really did enjoy the works by MR James and Arthur Conan Doyle so I’ll have to seek out more of their ghost stories

[Miki · Rating 4 out of 5]

*4.5

[Hope Maynard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Help! I can’t stop talking like the train conductor chap from the Dickens story…

[James Tidd · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book features nineteen stories, mainly from the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Charles Dickens, M R James, Henry James, the three more well-known writers appear with their classic stories: the Signalman, A warning to the curious and the Friends of the Friends. Then there are those who are familiar to us, but in other genres, such as Arthur Conan Doyle, H G Wells, and Rudyard Kipling, they make an appearance with the Captain of the Polestar, the Red Room, and They. Then there are those unfamiliar, at least to me: such as O Henry, Lafcadio Hearn, Catherine Wells (the wife of H G Wells) and Francis Marion Crawford, alongside the usual favourites: Braddon, Wharton, Nesbit, E F Benson, Landon, J S Le Fanu, Quiller-Couch, Oliphant, and Gaskell.

Here is the list:

The Signalman by Charles Dickens
At Chrighton Abbey by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
The Triumph of Night by Edith Wharton
In the Dark by Edith Nesbit
A Warning to the Curious by M R James
The Face by E F Benson
The Captain of the Polestar by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Furnished Room by O Henry
The Friends of the Friends by Henry James
The Red Room by H G Wells
Nightmare-Touch by Lafcadio Hearn
The Ghost by Catherine Wells
Thurnley Abbey by Perceval Landon
The Upper Berth by Francis Marion Crawford
The Authentic Narrative of the Ghost of a Hand by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
A Pair of Hands by Arthur Quiller-Couch
The Open Door by Margaret Oliphant
The Nurse's Tale by Elizabeth Gaskell
They by Rudyard Kipling

[R.L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Κριτική στα Ελληνικά πιο κάτω...

These stories are full of prejudices and the weird or irking ideas of the eras they were written, as well as full of their authors' bias. But still something makes them very enjoyable, many feature the usual traits of the Victorian era even when they are written later, some feature plots of a different direction and ambiance.

I found this collection very decent and varied too, featuring some "classic" authors and stories, often included on this kind of collections but some less common authors and stories too. This book offers variety and quality, if this is your kind of read it's a good choice!

The Signalman by Charles Dickens
At Chrighton Abbey by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
The Triumph of Night by Edith Wharton
In the Dark by Edith Nesbit
A Warning to the Curious by M.R. James
The Face by E.F. Benson
The Captain of the Polestar by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Furnished Room by O. Henry
The Friends of the Friends by Henry James
The Red Room by H.G. Wells
Nightmare-Touch by Lafcadio Hearn
The Ghost by Catherine Wells
Thurnley Abbey by Perceval Landon
The Upper Berth by Francis Marion Crawford
The Authentic Narrative of the Ghost of a Hand by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu
A Pair of Hands by Arthur Quiller-Couch
The Open Door by Margaret Oliphant
The Nurse's Tale by Elizabeth Gaskell
They by Rudyard Kipling

Αυτές οι ιστορίες είναι γεμάτες προκαταλήψεις και τις περίεργες ή ενοχλητικές ιδέες των εποχών που γράφτηκαν, καθώς και γεμάτες με προκαταλήψεις των ίδιων των συγγραφέων τους. Ωστόσο, κάτι τις κάνει πολύ ευχάριστες, το διασκεδάζω όταν τις διαβάζω! Πολλές παρουσιάζουν τα συνήθη χαρακτηριστικά της βικτωριανής εποχής ακόμη και όταν έχουν γραφτεί αργότερα, ενώ μερικές παρουσιάζουν πλοκές με αρκετά διαφορετική κατεύθυνση και ατμόσφαιρα.

Βρήκα αυτή τη συλλογή πολύ αξιοπρεπή και ποικίλη, παρουσιάζοντας μερικούς «κλασικούς» συγγραφείς και ιστορίες, που συχνά περιλαμβάνονται σε τέτοιου είδους συλλογές, αλλά και μερικούς λιγότερο συνηθισμένους συγγραφείς και ιστορίες. Προσέφερε αρκετή ποικιλία, αξίζει να να επιλέξει κανείς το βιβλίο αν του αρέσουν οι ιστορίες του είδους.

[Roy McCarthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stories written when the world was slower, mainly during the second half of the 19th century. The writing process slower by hand, the scenes evolving gradually, words carefully chosen, sentences and paragraphs formed with care. Not so much insistence on progressing the story, more that it meanders along at a pace that can be savoured with each bite. Though I fear that the modern reader, like I, will be frustrated and skip ahead to the next meaningful action. These are the best writers of their age - Dickens, Kipling, Doyle, James, Wells. They present their ghostly mysteries in the Gothic manner - stormy days and nights, fleeting shadows, unseen children giggling, silent old ladies, forbidding old men. Their phantoms present themselves in their own good time, either telling old tragedies or presaging new. It's good for the soul to kick back and let the journey proceed at its own pace to its often gentle ending, tipping one's hat to the spirits invoked.

[Miss Bookiverse · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is exactly what you'd expect from the title: a decent collection of classic English ghost stories. They're not my favorite type of stories because they're often slow and not as spooky as I'd like them to be, but it was nice to get more acquainted with the genre and time period. Some surprised me because they felt rather modern and some even managed to creep me out. Among my favorites were In the Dark by Edith Nesbit, The Friends of the Friends by Henry James, and A Pair of Hands by Arthur Quiller-Couch. I also really liked the brief author biographies and illustrations before every story but I wish they had included the release date of the individual stories as well.

[Ranjit Gedhu · Rating 3 out of 5]

The problem with this collection of stories is they are all too similar. Successful tales about ghosts create tension and fear with a combination of language, setting and plot. All the authors have written a good piece of fiction and there isn’t any one I disliked. Read on their own, separate of this book, they are good. However, lumped together they become tiresome and repetitive. After all you can only read so much of haunted houses and ghostly apparitions without becoming immune to the scary effects the stories are trying to create. In my opinion the order of each tale should have been better organised ie. not having haunted house stories one after the other.

Three of the works did however stand out for me. The Signal Man by Charles Dickens, A Warning to the Curious by MR James and They by Rudyard Kipling. The language flows easily, they all build up a feeling of anticipation and quiet dread. These are perfect examples of how horror fiction should be from three masters.

[April]

A lot of the stories fall into the traps a lot of lesser Victorian literature falls into: wandering to a point of boredom, heightened language prioritized over enticing narrative, empty narrators. But there were some highlights, like the dramatic seafaring Frankenstein-esque tale: Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Captain of the Pole-Star, or the rare sweet ghost story: A Pair of Hands by Arthur Quiller-Couch, and also probably the longest but also what seemed to me the most compelling narrative, The Open Door by Margaret Oliphant. That last one reminded me a bit of The Exorcist which probably played into my preference.

[Soph · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite stories were:
The Captain of the Polestar
The Friends of the Friends
The Red Room
Nightmare-Touch
The Ghost
Thurnley Abbey
The Authentic Narrative of the Ghost of a Hand
A Pair of Hands
They

The rest were a wash, but these were strong (for different reasons but also you can definitely tell I have a brand lol)

[Elif Kutukcuoglu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love ghost stories and I love anything Victorian. So this was a bonus book for me. The best ones in my opinion were as follows: At Chrighton Abbey by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, The Furnushed Room by O. Henry, The Ghost by Catherine Wells, The Open Door by Margaret Oliphant, The Nurse’s Tale by Elizabeth Gaskell and The Face by E.F.Benson.

[Plateresca · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent anthology! I can't say I enjoyed each and every story here, but I think they're all very representative both of the genre and of each author's writing. All of the stories here are atmospheric; a lot of them are creepy; some are very original, and most stay with you long after you finish them.

[Cath · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection such as this is always going to vary in quality and according to your own tastes but overall it was enjoyable enough. I felt like most of the better stories are around half way through the book and beyond.

[Jeff Howells · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of old school chillers, mostly from the late 19th & early 20th centuries - a mixture of familiar names (Dickens, Kipling & MR James) and less well known. A perfect accompaniment for the darkening nights as winter creeps closer.

[Helix · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't finish anything recently. DNF. Very good, but I'm not in the mood for classics apparently.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars

[Tiffany · Rating 5 out of 5]

These were horror in it's amazingly psychological classic sense - the creation of general terror over specific gruesomeness. The stories were so much fun, and this is a great collection.

[Katrine Engelhardt Thomsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stays with you like your own Victorian ghost.

[Paritosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing collection of ghost stories... Perfect for this time of the year as the days grow shorter, colder and darker... Very much recommended if you enjoy Victorian horror literature.

[Rose Haskins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ghostly

Greatest percent of the stories were really good. Some read like a lawyer had written them. Though there was some written by lawyers that was pretty good.

[Rebecca Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous book! Loved the stories within!

[Yin Ling · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you think about that those story is happen in 1910 something then this story book is quite spooky during that period of time

[Josephine Jensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the stories were at little slow and dull, but overall i liked the old english, and it was interessting to read a bit about the old days, and be entertaint at the same time.

[Victoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listened to much of these on audio and I, some of them are really good. Highly recommend Thurnley Abbey, A Warning For The Curious and The Ghost in this collection.

[Dan Howarth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some belters in here. A few misses. Standard for any anthology.

[BlueSeagullJam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read during Christmas. Thank me later.

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

IDK why I was expecting more but I was...