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The Ruskin Bond Horror Omnibus
Here is another collectible for young The Ruskin Bond Horror Omnibus addicts edited by none other than veteran author Ruskin Bond.Welcome to the terrifying world of horror. And there is only one way to survive.Master your fear.This is a collection of some of the spookiest tales ever written. Terror fans will surely devour these incredible spine-chillers from masters of the genre. Featuring Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’s Guest’, Jerome K. Jerome’s ‘The Skeleton’, C.A. Kincaid’s ‘The Werewolf’, Thomas Burke’s ‘The Hollow Man’, and other period chillers, this volume will surprise and horrify hardcore devotees of the genre and newcomers alike.So prepare to be haunted, and retell these grisly tales to your friends to see if you can make their spines tingle.
447 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
About the author
Ruskin Bond
743 books3,668 followersRuskin Bond is an Indian author of British descent. He is considered to be an icon among Indian writers and children's authors and a top novelist. He wrote his first novel, The Room on the Roof, when he was seventeen which won John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written several novellas, over 500 short stories, as well as various essays and poems, all of which have established him as one of the best-loved and most admired chroniclers of contemporary India. In 1992 he received the Sahitya Akademi award for English writing, for his short stories collection, "Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra", by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters in India. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1999 for contributions to children's literature. He now lives with his adopted family in Landour near Mussoorie.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
September 24, 2012
To many a person who asks me what kind of genres I prefer in reading, one that I always talk about is horror. My reading on this area however, is very limited. Still there is a very strong pull I feel towards the macabre in literature. There is one episode in my childhood which I still remember vividly. Back during the time of VHS tapes, I rented this B-movie about a werewolf ( I cannot recall the name of it now !) and returned it to the shop a few hours later and told the guy there er...I couldn't watch this completely, scared me silly ! Can I rent another tape ? The guy looked at me with a raised eyebrow and burst out laughing after which he said Kid, everyone who took this tape brought this back saying its the lousiest horror flick they ever saw ! Go ahead and pick something else from the shelves. I grinned and went on my way and that I think was my first brush with horror in a medium.
It is really unfair to this little book that it is just named The Ruskin Bond here in the site. The name in fact is The Ruskin Bond Horror Omnibus and has a jolly good collection of stories in the genre to match its name. A lot many masters have a representation here including Rudyard Kipling , Hugh Walpole, C. A. Kincaid and Bram Stoker. I liked the way the book was structured for unlike the usual anthology structure, the quality of the stories are well maintained except for two or three odd ones. Interestingly, I found myself cuddling up more to the stories where horror was more psychological than physical. A fine example of this was The Last Match which focussed exclusively of one woman stuck in a lonely home right amidst a brutal snowstorm. The horror mounts in steps here and by the time you reach the top, it is as taut as a string. Another one of my favorites was The Staircase where the central character is a whole house and a gothic feel adds more vivid colors to the sketch.
I was under a spell I suppose, reading has been at a snail's pace and not entirely to my satisfaction. I can offer a thousand excuses for the slow down in my reading but of late I have realized the truth behind the maxim If it is really important to you, you will find a way. If it is not, you will find an excuse. Upon returning from a long trip, I could practically sense the books in my shelf looking at me in a way that made me feel guilty.
Mea culpa my dear friends mea maxima culpa !
I have revived at the hand of a master from the world of Malayalam literature now. O.V. Vijayan's Gurusagaram feels like nectar brimming over with heavenly language. Let me see if I can find it in this site.
It is really unfair to this little book that it is just named The Ruskin Bond here in the site. The name in fact is The Ruskin Bond Horror Omnibus and has a jolly good collection of stories in the genre to match its name. A lot many masters have a representation here including Rudyard Kipling , Hugh Walpole, C. A. Kincaid and Bram Stoker. I liked the way the book was structured for unlike the usual anthology structure, the quality of the stories are well maintained except for two or three odd ones. Interestingly, I found myself cuddling up more to the stories where horror was more psychological than physical. A fine example of this was The Last Match which focussed exclusively of one woman stuck in a lonely home right amidst a brutal snowstorm. The horror mounts in steps here and by the time you reach the top, it is as taut as a string. Another one of my favorites was The Staircase where the central character is a whole house and a gothic feel adds more vivid colors to the sketch.
I was under a spell I suppose, reading has been at a snail's pace and not entirely to my satisfaction. I can offer a thousand excuses for the slow down in my reading but of late I have realized the truth behind the maxim If it is really important to you, you will find a way. If it is not, you will find an excuse. Upon returning from a long trip, I could practically sense the books in my shelf looking at me in a way that made me feel guilty.
Mea culpa my dear friends mea maxima culpa !
I have revived at the hand of a master from the world of Malayalam literature now. O.V. Vijayan's Gurusagaram feels like nectar brimming over with heavenly language. Let me see if I can find it in this site.
December 21, 2023
আপনি যদি মনে করেন যে বইটা পড়ার পর আপনার শরীর শিরশির করে উঠবে, তাহলে কিন্তু ভুল ভাবছেন। ভয়ের ভ তো নেই, সেই সাথে কোনো ভৌতিক আবহের ছিঁটেফোঁটা তৈরির কোনো চেষ্টাই করা হয়নি। কী পড়লাম আর কেন পড়লাম, বুঝতেই পারছি না। স্রেফ সময় কাটানোর জন্যও বইটা রেকমেন্ড করবো না৷ এর চেয়ে সত্যজিৎ রায়ের 'বারো ভূতের গপ্পো' ঢের ভালো!
August 11, 2026
26 vintage horror stories (and one horror poem) spanning from 1844-1955 mostly. As far as I know Ruskin Bond has also issued two other horror collections, Ghost Stories from the Raj (2002) & Penguin Book of Indian Ghost (2003), but this one is not restricted to an India theme. We get werewolves, vampires, zombies, haunted houses, possessed dolls, and even a nightmare insect that wants to crawl inside your ear and use your brain as a nest to lay eggs. There are a lot a familiar authors here whose stories you can easily read in a dozen other collections, but Ruskin Bond has included a few hard-to-find selections which I will try my best to describe.
All Souls' (1937)
EDITH WHARTON ****
Its November 2, All Souls Day, and a wealthy Connecticut widow sees an odd looking woman walking up the road and approaching her property. She gets up to intercept the woman but injures her foot and collapses. Her doctor orders her to bed where she must be attended to by her servants. But in her delirium she awakes in the middle of the night and finds all the servants have vanished. Furthermore the electricity is off, so she wanders around in the dark for hours. This was a creepy tale about paranoia and witch rituals with a sinister ending that makes me long for an un-discovered Shirley Jackson novel.
The Werewolf (1936?)
C.A. KINCAID **
Two Brits en route through Punjab have the misfortune to stay the night in a small town where racist rumors swirl about a local madman who sells sausage made from human flesh. That night they get a rude awakening when they discover this cannibal turns out to also be a werewolf-hyena … and he’s just crashed thru their hotel window! The story had a little bit of good action in the last pages, but the first half was filled with stuffy descriptions of sweltering summer weather. I also found it hard to take the two Brits seriously with all their silly claptrap: “My dear chap, I'm not going to sleep in your saloon.” This story also appears in Bond’s Penguin Book of Indian Ghost (2003).
The Last Match (1932?)
EDWARD FITZ-GERALD FRIPP ****
Alone in her cabin in the Canadian wilderness, a resourceful woman desperately copes with her everyday chores… while a raging blizzard cruelly torments her and shakes the house to its foundation. There is nothing supernatural in this story but it is a wonderfully written example of reality horror. Edward Fitz-Gerald Fripp is an obscure author who wrote a non-fiction book titled The Outcasts of Canada (1932).
The Bordeaux Diligence (1936)
LORD HALIFAX *****
Have you ever heard about the Bordeaux diligence? Do you have any idea WTF a diligence is even? I didn’t have a clue, but it really doesn’t matter. In this story a man walks up to random lady on the street and casually asks “I beg your pardon, but could you tell me at what hour the Bordeaux diligence starts?” Before he knows it he is thrown in jail. When the judge asks him what he did, he says he was just asking about the Bordeaux diligence. When the jury hears this they immediately find him guilty and give him seven years. Every time he mentions the Bordeaux diligence his life in prison turns for the worse. Years later when he finally gets out, the man returns to the same street where it all started and sees the same lady as before. He sheepishly approaches her and asks… too good to spoil this.
The Doctor's Ghost (1862, AKA True Ghost Story)
NORMAN MACLEOD **
A house guest awakes after a night of “supernatural” torment only to discover that a pitiful house cat had been stuck to a loose fishing line hook. So-so suspence has also been published in Chancellor Press’ Great Tales of Terror (1991).
Haunted Villages (1844)
LT. CoL. W.H. SLEEMAN ***
A British administrator arrives with high expectations to a Company-ruled settlement in central India “…in which man can accumulate property with the confidence of being permitted by its rulers freely to display and enjoy it.” But he quickly discovers that there is a supernatural price for the ownership of private property: “…their cattle and children were, in consequence, always liable to serious accidents of one kind or another. Sometimes they were bitten by snakes, sometimes became possessed by devils; and at others, were thrown down and beaten most unmercifully.' Any person who falls down in an epileptic fit is supposed to be thrown down by a ghost, or possessed by a devil. They feel little of our mysterious dread of ghosts—a sound drubbing is what they dread from them; and he who hurts himself in one of these fits is considered to have got it. 'As for himself, whenever he found any one of the villages upon his estate haunted by the spirit of an old patel (village proprietor), he always made a point of giving him a neat little shrine; and having it well endowed and attended, to keep him in good humour: this he thought was a duty that every landlord owed to his tenants!' ” This is the oldest story in Bond’s collection and it can also be found in his earlier collection, Ghost Stories from the Raj (2002).
The Vampire (1930)
SYDNEY HORLER **
A man who is working on a story inspired by Bram Stoker has invited his Priest-friend over for drinks. They get to talking and the Priest reluctantly shares a confession he was once told long ago by a murderer, who also happens to be IRL a vampire. Dull reading that can also be found in Otto Penzler’s The Vampire Archives (2009).
The Overcoat (2007)
RUSKIN BOND ***
A guy who goes to a party and meets the girl of his dreams, quite literally. This is taught streamlined prose that was fun to read. Surely Ruskin wrote this to be included here as some kind of obscure homage to the past. I would have liked it a lot better if this had been the first time I read this particular plot, unfortunately Lady Dilke already done did it.
The Mirror (2003?)
REETA DUTTA GUPTA ****
The kids tell their parents they can talk to ghosts and of course nobody takes them seriously. But that all changes when an oddly dressed gentleman stranger shows up at their house and it seems he’s stepped out of an antique mirror they’ve recently installed. I’m not sure where this story originates but Gupta has 2 collections that look promising, Grandmothers Tales (2003) & The Midnight Train and Other Ghost Stories (2013). She has also co-written filmmaker Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s memoirs titled The Stranger in the Mirror (2025).
At the Pit's Mouth (1888)
RUDYARD KIPLING *
A throwaway piece by Kipling that felt unfinished and was not even enjoyable. Besides here, it can be found in a posthomously edited collection of his, Phantoms and Fantasies: 20 Tales (1965), but nobody else has bothered to reprint it.
All Souls' (1937)
EDITH WHARTON ****
Its November 2, All Souls Day, and a wealthy Connecticut widow sees an odd looking woman walking up the road and approaching her property. She gets up to intercept the woman but injures her foot and collapses. Her doctor orders her to bed where she must be attended to by her servants. But in her delirium she awakes in the middle of the night and finds all the servants have vanished. Furthermore the electricity is off, so she wanders around in the dark for hours. This was a creepy tale about paranoia and witch rituals with a sinister ending that makes me long for an un-discovered Shirley Jackson novel.
The Werewolf (1936?)
C.A. KINCAID **
Two Brits en route through Punjab have the misfortune to stay the night in a small town where racist rumors swirl about a local madman who sells sausage made from human flesh. That night they get a rude awakening when they discover this cannibal turns out to also be a werewolf-hyena … and he’s just crashed thru their hotel window! The story had a little bit of good action in the last pages, but the first half was filled with stuffy descriptions of sweltering summer weather. I also found it hard to take the two Brits seriously with all their silly claptrap: “My dear chap, I'm not going to sleep in your saloon.” This story also appears in Bond’s Penguin Book of Indian Ghost (2003).
The Last Match (1932?)
EDWARD FITZ-GERALD FRIPP ****
Alone in her cabin in the Canadian wilderness, a resourceful woman desperately copes with her everyday chores… while a raging blizzard cruelly torments her and shakes the house to its foundation. There is nothing supernatural in this story but it is a wonderfully written example of reality horror. Edward Fitz-Gerald Fripp is an obscure author who wrote a non-fiction book titled The Outcasts of Canada (1932).
The Bordeaux Diligence (1936)
LORD HALIFAX *****
Have you ever heard about the Bordeaux diligence? Do you have any idea WTF a diligence is even? I didn’t have a clue, but it really doesn’t matter. In this story a man walks up to random lady on the street and casually asks “I beg your pardon, but could you tell me at what hour the Bordeaux diligence starts?” Before he knows it he is thrown in jail. When the judge asks him what he did, he says he was just asking about the Bordeaux diligence. When the jury hears this they immediately find him guilty and give him seven years. Every time he mentions the Bordeaux diligence his life in prison turns for the worse. Years later when he finally gets out, the man returns to the same street where it all started and sees the same lady as before. He sheepishly approaches her and asks… too good to spoil this.
The Doctor's Ghost (1862, AKA True Ghost Story)
NORMAN MACLEOD **
A house guest awakes after a night of “supernatural” torment only to discover that a pitiful house cat had been stuck to a loose fishing line hook. So-so suspence has also been published in Chancellor Press’ Great Tales of Terror (1991).
Haunted Villages (1844)
LT. CoL. W.H. SLEEMAN ***
A British administrator arrives with high expectations to a Company-ruled settlement in central India “…in which man can accumulate property with the confidence of being permitted by its rulers freely to display and enjoy it.” But he quickly discovers that there is a supernatural price for the ownership of private property: “…their cattle and children were, in consequence, always liable to serious accidents of one kind or another. Sometimes they were bitten by snakes, sometimes became possessed by devils; and at others, were thrown down and beaten most unmercifully.' Any person who falls down in an epileptic fit is supposed to be thrown down by a ghost, or possessed by a devil. They feel little of our mysterious dread of ghosts—a sound drubbing is what they dread from them; and he who hurts himself in one of these fits is considered to have got it. 'As for himself, whenever he found any one of the villages upon his estate haunted by the spirit of an old patel (village proprietor), he always made a point of giving him a neat little shrine; and having it well endowed and attended, to keep him in good humour: this he thought was a duty that every landlord owed to his tenants!' ” This is the oldest story in Bond’s collection and it can also be found in his earlier collection, Ghost Stories from the Raj (2002).
The Vampire (1930)
SYDNEY HORLER **
A man who is working on a story inspired by Bram Stoker has invited his Priest-friend over for drinks. They get to talking and the Priest reluctantly shares a confession he was once told long ago by a murderer, who also happens to be IRL a vampire. Dull reading that can also be found in Otto Penzler’s The Vampire Archives (2009).
The Overcoat (2007)
RUSKIN BOND ***
A guy who goes to a party and meets the girl of his dreams, quite literally. This is taught streamlined prose that was fun to read. Surely Ruskin wrote this to be included here as some kind of obscure homage to the past. I would have liked it a lot better if this had been the first time I read this particular plot, unfortunately Lady Dilke already done did it.
The Mirror (2003?)
REETA DUTTA GUPTA ****
The kids tell their parents they can talk to ghosts and of course nobody takes them seriously. But that all changes when an oddly dressed gentleman stranger shows up at their house and it seems he’s stepped out of an antique mirror they’ve recently installed. I’m not sure where this story originates but Gupta has 2 collections that look promising, Grandmothers Tales (2003) & The Midnight Train and Other Ghost Stories (2013). She has also co-written filmmaker Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s memoirs titled The Stranger in the Mirror (2025).
At the Pit's Mouth (1888)
RUDYARD KIPLING *
A throwaway piece by Kipling that felt unfinished and was not even enjoyable. Besides here, it can be found in a posthomously edited collection of his, Phantoms and Fantasies: 20 Tales (1965), but nobody else has bothered to reprint it.
December 18, 2022
The book is a collection of several horror stories compiled in one volume and contains only one short 2-3 page story written by Ruskin bond. Most of the stories were of ancient time and in old English- little irritating to go through and did not make my blood chill or my hair follicles rise. Some did not perk up my interest at all. Only one or two, I actually liked to read. Only 02 stars for this one.
February 3, 2024
#3
I have a terrible memory.. Memory like a sieve. And it helps! I loved when I met stories I'd read many years back, which I started recalling in bits and pieces as I continued reading this one and what I loved more was that try as I may, I couldn't recall their endings, which added to the chill. It was like reliving a horror experience without knowing how it would end.
Horror is truly the best genre. ♥ 👻
"The Horror Omnibus" by Ruskin Bond
It's a collection of 27 short stories - ranging from modern to period. And like a well assorted platter, it has vampires, werewolves, haunted houses and rickshaws and mirrors, horror without supernatural and even serial killers. Covers the whole syllabus if I may dare say.
To save you the spoilers, but raise your curiosity at the same time, I'll brief on the plots of my 3 favorites -
1. The Lodger (M. B. Lowndes) - The aged Buntings couple finally have a stroke of luck when they find a perfect lodger in Mr Sleuth. Sleuth is an introvert, a Bible lover (or a religious fanatic) and likes to be out at odd hours. But the things start going awry when the city starts reporting brutal murders. Buntings don't want to lose the lodger but don't want to risk their lives either. How the conundrum ends, well, read on to find out.
2. The Last Match (Edward Fitzgerald Fripp) - Imagine living in a Canadian countryside in a snowstorm which can freeze you to death in 5 minutes. We even have a Punjabi song on it - laija othe jithe paindi a snow. 🌨️😅
But you're alone. And there is no electricity. And it's countryside. So no phone. And the nearest neighbor is 5 miles.
And you're fancying some toast with butter and meat when just before lighting the fire, you realise that in a house full of food and wood, you're out of matches.
Trust me - this one had no ghosts, no serial killers, no lions or hunters. In fact it had no one other than Mrs Mawson and this story kept me on the edge of my seat. QED. Terror needeth no ghosts.
3. All Souls' (Edith Wharton) - Mrs Clayburn lives happily in the countryside with her band of househelp and has made peace with her loneliness when one night, when due to a fracture, her doctor commands her complete bedrest and the next day, she finds herself mysteriously all alone. All staff vanished. Pin drop solitude. Deafening silence. Eerie daylight and chilling house. No explanation.
But next day, everything is back to normal, like the day never existed.
But it won't stop here. It will happen again. Is Mrs Clayburn delusional or is there a reason behind it? The explanation chilled me to the bones.
If you're a horror lover, this one is a piece de resistance for your library.
Find it on Amazon at https://amzn.eu/d/3E9i60S
#anamslibrary #anamsreview #nerdfest #ruskinbond #horror #vampire #werewolf #serialkiller #jacktheripper #scary #terror
I have a terrible memory.. Memory like a sieve. And it helps! I loved when I met stories I'd read many years back, which I started recalling in bits and pieces as I continued reading this one and what I loved more was that try as I may, I couldn't recall their endings, which added to the chill. It was like reliving a horror experience without knowing how it would end.
Horror is truly the best genre. ♥ 👻
"The Horror Omnibus" by Ruskin Bond
It's a collection of 27 short stories - ranging from modern to period. And like a well assorted platter, it has vampires, werewolves, haunted houses and rickshaws and mirrors, horror without supernatural and even serial killers. Covers the whole syllabus if I may dare say.
To save you the spoilers, but raise your curiosity at the same time, I'll brief on the plots of my 3 favorites -
1. The Lodger (M. B. Lowndes) - The aged Buntings couple finally have a stroke of luck when they find a perfect lodger in Mr Sleuth. Sleuth is an introvert, a Bible lover (or a religious fanatic) and likes to be out at odd hours. But the things start going awry when the city starts reporting brutal murders. Buntings don't want to lose the lodger but don't want to risk their lives either. How the conundrum ends, well, read on to find out.
2. The Last Match (Edward Fitzgerald Fripp) - Imagine living in a Canadian countryside in a snowstorm which can freeze you to death in 5 minutes. We even have a Punjabi song on it - laija othe jithe paindi a snow. 🌨️😅
But you're alone. And there is no electricity. And it's countryside. So no phone. And the nearest neighbor is 5 miles.
And you're fancying some toast with butter and meat when just before lighting the fire, you realise that in a house full of food and wood, you're out of matches.
Trust me - this one had no ghosts, no serial killers, no lions or hunters. In fact it had no one other than Mrs Mawson and this story kept me on the edge of my seat. QED. Terror needeth no ghosts.
3. All Souls' (Edith Wharton) - Mrs Clayburn lives happily in the countryside with her band of househelp and has made peace with her loneliness when one night, when due to a fracture, her doctor commands her complete bedrest and the next day, she finds herself mysteriously all alone. All staff vanished. Pin drop solitude. Deafening silence. Eerie daylight and chilling house. No explanation.
But next day, everything is back to normal, like the day never existed.
But it won't stop here. It will happen again. Is Mrs Clayburn delusional or is there a reason behind it? The explanation chilled me to the bones.
If you're a horror lover, this one is a piece de resistance for your library.
Find it on Amazon at https://amzn.eu/d/3E9i60S
#anamslibrary #anamsreview #nerdfest #ruskinbond #horror #vampire #werewolf #serialkiller #jacktheripper #scary #terror
July 3, 2019
"May no ill dreams disturb my rest,
No Powers of Darkness me molest."
The book is a collection of frightening short-stories by many other story tellers. Not very frightening but fascinating to read.
The white wolf of the hartz mountains and the overcoat are my favourite.
May 11, 2021
This book is very interesting
I suggest all to read this book
I suggest all to read this book
November 5, 2016
Perfect companion for a couple of quiet evenings. The element of horror is varied across the stories - from subtle, suggestive hints of the supernatural to the very explicit. Very much recommended if you are looking for some leisure reading on the go or for some quiet days.
November 7, 2013
Was not able to complete the work. The book was not captivating enough.
February 25, 2014
Mixed Bag.
Some stories were really great, but none of them made my skin crawl.
Some stories were really great, but none of them made my skin crawl.
January 16, 2015
Great for a rainy evening beside the fireplace.
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April 23, 2017Ruskin Bond's whispers in the dark
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews