Classic Horror Lovers discussion

Here are the links to my reviews of a couple of vampire fiction classics, Dracula and LeFanu's Carmilla:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Our recent discussion of H. P. Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model" (and other Lovecraft works) reminded me that I've reviewed a couple of Lovecraft collections here on Goodreads: The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre and The Transition of H. P. Lovecraft: The Road to Madness, Introduction by Barbara Hambly. My reviews are here:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

After a long hiatus, I've finally had time to look up, and post links to, a few more of my old reviews in this genre. These are of short story collections that I rated pretty highly:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

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http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

The collections reviewed in these links are (in order): Famous Ghost Stories, edited by Bennett Cerf; Tales of Terror: The World's Most Terrifying Stories Presented by a Leading Icon of Fear, edited by Boris Karloff; and Mummy: Stories of the Living Corpse, edited by Peter Haining.

Here are links to a few more reviews of short story collections; all of these are anthologies that include works by multiple writers. (As you can tell, I have a liking for the short fiction format!)

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

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The collections reviewed in these links are (in order): Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, edited by Phyllis Wagner and Herbert Wise; Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Scared Even Me; Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories for Late at Night; Shudders, edited by Ross R. Olney; and Great Irish Tales of Horror: A Treasury of Fear, edited by Peter Haining.

An excellent ghost story collection I recently finished reading is Classic Ghost Stories, edited and illustrated by Charles Keeping. My review is here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... .

Some nice reviews there; thank you

Thanks, James!

Thanks for the excellent reviews, Werner!

Thank you, Danielle; glad you liked them!

Reading a friend's review of Roald Dahl's Book Of Ghost Stories just now prompted me to do some checking, and I discovered that I've never linked from this thread to my review of that collection (which I liked better than my friend did). So, for anyone who's interested, here's that link: www.goodreads.com/review/show/18369362 .

Manly Wade Wellman is one of my all-time favorite writers of classic supernatural fiction. Here's my review of his posthumous collection, Valley So Low: Southern Mountain Stories: www.goodreads.com/review/show/968026907 .

In reading over this thread just now, I realized that messages 3 and 4 would be a lot easier to refer to if I'd named the books being reviewed in the links, rather than making it necessary to click each one of them to find out! So I'm now going to edit those two posts to correct that oversight. :-)

Here/'s the link to my review of another Manly Wade Wellman collection, John the Balladeer, which collects all of his stories featuring Appalachian folksinger and supernatural troubleshooter Silver John: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . (A few Silver John stories appear in the collection mentioned in my post above, Valley So Low.)

Wellman also wrote several novels featuring Silver John; I've read and greatly liked all of these, but so far the only one I've reviewed is the fourth one, The Hanging Stones. Here's the link to that one. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

Another of several supernatural troubleshooter/occult detective characters Wellman created is John Thunstone. My review of his John Thunstone novel What Dreams May Come is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . (Both of these are excellent novels of their type, which got five stars from me!)

Danielle and Martha, I've also read a fair number of anthologies that have some modern stories which depart from the classic mold, but that are mostly or to a large extent made up of classic-type tales. Are those reviews fair game to be linked to here?

Russell Kirk (1918-94) wrote a considerable corpus of supernatural fiction that's very definitely in the classic tradition. Here's my review of his Ancestral Shadows: An Anthology of Ghostly Tales, a collection I highly recommend to members of this group: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

For members of this group, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-73) probably needs no introduction. My review of Best Ghost Stories of J.S. Le Fanu is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

Above, I linked to my reviews of a couple collections of H. P, Lovecraft's voluminous short fiction. But I've also reviewed one of the two novel-length works he wrote, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. That review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

Shirley Jackson's classic The Haunting of Hill House definitely fits into our group's paradigm. Here's my review of that outstanding novel: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

Two horrific Victorian masterworks in the classic tradition are Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. My reviews of these are here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

It's been a while since I posted anything on this thread! Here's my review of the excellent ghost story collection I just read by my Goodreads friend Andrew M. Seddon, Tales from the Brackenwood Ghost Club: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . It's newly published this year, but very much in the classic tradition!

Here'd my review of another story collection by Andrew Seddon, In Death Survive: Ghostly Tales posted this past weekend: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915) was, among other things, an able writer of scary fiction in the classic tradition. At Chrighton Abbey and Other Horror Stories collects a very small sample of her work in this vein; my four-star review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .

Above, I linked to my reviews of two story collections by a contemporary master of the tradition, Andrew M. Seddon. Here's my review of another of his excellent collections, What Darkness Remains: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .