Horrors for Halloween

The Monster Makers, Edited by Peter Haining. Illustrated by David Smee.

There was a copy of this in high school, where I first read it. “Creators and Creations of Fantasy and Horror.” Stories about life and death, what it means to be human, and what makes a man a monster. From Mary Shelly to Poe, Bierce, and Benson, to Lovecraft, Bloch, and Bradbury. My favorite tales are probably “The Monster Maker” and “The Incubator Man” – one creature deprived of its mind, the other limited to an almost completely mental existence: monstrous losses of balance.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Horror Anthology. Hardback.

Hauntings: Tales of the Supernatural, Edited by Henry Mazzeo. Illustrated by Edward Gorey.

Now this one I read in middle school. It was here I read “The Lonesome Place” by August Derleth, and this story was worth the price of admission alone. But it also has Lovecraft, Benson, Bloch, James (both Henry and M. R.), Hodgeson, Collier, Wells, and others, all so good. And the pictures by Gorey are just the grim dusty shroud on the corpse. A grey book of twilight shadows and the past haunting the present, which is what a ghost story is. [Lacks this jacket.]

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Horror. Short Stories. Hardback.

The Ghouls, Edited by Peter Haining. With a Forward by Vincent Price and an Afterword by Christopher Lee.

Famous short works that have been adapted into movies and identified by the film name (i.e., Lovecraft’s ‘The Colour out of Space’ becomes ‘Die, Monster, Die!’ and so on). Illustrated with movie stills. From 1970, but it seems somehow older than that. Read it in high school; I think this copy used to belong to John.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Horror Anthology. Hardback.

Collected Ghost Stories, by M. R. James.

Wordsworth Classic. Some of the best ghost stories ever. “For all his academic achievements, James is best remembered for his masterly ghost stories. There are approximately forty supernatural tales (some incomplete). His first collection, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904), was followed by More Ghost Stories (1911),  A Thin Ghost and Others (1919), A Warning to the Curious (1925) and The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James (1931). Wordsworth Editions' Collected Ghost Stories remains the best-selling book in the series.’ – wordsworthclassics.com. ‘Casting the Runes’ was made into the great movie ‘Night of the Demon’. ‘The Haunted Doll House’ is one of the best, but there are so many good ones here.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Ghost Stories. Softcover

Classic Victorian and Edwardian Ghost Stories, Selected by Rex Collings.

So many good stories here, many included in Van Thal’s ‘Great Ghost Stories’. Gaskell, Thackery, Dickens, Le Fanu, Collins, Stevenson, Wilde, James and more. A wonderful anthology. Wordsworth Classics.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Ghost Stories, Softcover.

A Grave on Deacon’s Peak, by Bryan Babel.

I don’t know where Babel gets his ideas; the story seems like it’s a dream carried along on a stream of consciousness. A love song to American lore and legend that weaves together ghost stories, folk tales, and cryptozoology. The text is riddled with printing errors. I can hardly wait to see what the author produces next.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Fantasy. Novel. Hardback.