Status Updates From Chill Tidings: Dark Tales o...

** Told After Supper by Jerome K. Jerome (1891). Two stars. It's a silly novelette meant to parody Christmas ghost stories. The narrator spends Christmas with family and a group of the males get drunk and tell ghost stories.

*** Someone In the Lift by LP Hartley (1955) Three stars. Creepiest story in anthology, but it gets three stars because I didn't understand the ending and had to look it up! A little boy whose family is spending Christmas at a hotel thinks he keeps seeing someone in the hotel lift.

** A Christmas Meeting by Rosemary Timperley (1952) 2 stars. A woman spends Christmas Eve alone in her boarding room when an unexpected guest barges in. Short story with abrupt ending. Meh.

*** Christmas Re-Union by Andrew Caldecott. It's Christmas and a family is stuck with an unpleasant house guest. They try to celebrate by hiring a department store Santa. The story was fine. Nothing surprising but it kept my interest.

* Green Holly by Elizabeth Bowen. One star. I think this is a story about a small group of British government employees doing something secret during WWII. For their work, they move to a small rustic village. There is a romantic triangle between three of them, all rather unpleasant people. I guess the cottage is haunted but I don't really understand what is happening and why. It's a confused mess of a story. Boo!

**** The Crown Derby Plate by Marjorie Bowen 4 stars. An older woman visits a recluse who may have the missing piece of a valuable plate collection. I liked this one simply because the main character was a sensible older woman dealing with an odd situation. The ending was a surprise. Not a ground-breaking story but entertaining.

**** The Festival by HP Lovecraft. 4 stars. A problematic but reliable author for me. The streak continues with this story. The protagonist must visit an old New England village for some ritual to which is family is tied. Do I totally understand what happened? No, but the Necronomicon makes an appearance and the atmosphere was great. And, yes, it does take place during Christmas!

***. The Fourth Wall by AM Burrage (1915) Three stars. A group of friends decide to spend the Christmas holiday in an old cottage with a reputation for being haunted. This story was soooo close to being four stars but it just didn't stick the landing.

** Transition by Algernon Blackwood (1913) Two stars. Algernon Blackwood wrote one of my favorite stories ever. The Wendigo was written in 1910, three years BEFORE this mediocre story. It's about a man on his way home to his family for Christmas who narrowly misses a car accident crossing the street. Very predictable for our times, but maybe not for the time it was written.