Dixie Ghosts [Paperback]

Maybe it comes from have three editors, but this anthology is an unsettling mixture of modern horror (including one truly revolting story about a guy who strangles his young niece, then loads her into the passenger seat of his '55 T-Bird and sets off for Disney World), ante-bellum stories of cruel plantation owners and escaped slaves, plus a western (is Texas part of Dixie?), and a scattering of stories told in dialect. The seventeen stories within are:

1. "Wish You Were Here" - Richard Hardwick: a widower starts getting letters from his deceased wife.
2. "Drawer 14" - Talmage Powell: a night attendant at the city morgue discovers an undocumented body in drawer 14 that no one else can see.
3. "Poor Little Saturday" - Madeleine L'Engle: a rather beautiful fantasy of a young boy who is cured of malaria by the strange inhabitant of a decaying antebellum mansion.
4. "Dead Man's Story" - Howard Rigsby: a tough old Florida game warden gets the best of a murderous poacher, even after he's gunned down.
5. "One Foot in the Grave" - Davis Grubb: formulaic horror story of a man whose amputated foot won't stay buried.
6. "The Guns of William Longley" - Donald Hamilton: a young cowpoke wins a set of peculiar guns in a card game. They seem to have a mind of their own.
7. "The Soul of Rose Dédé" - M. E. M. Davis: a Victorian tale of frustrated romance, as told by the inhabitants of a Louisiana graveyard.
8. "The Stormsong Runner" - Jack L. Chalker: a well-intentioned young school teacher discovers that one of his students is shunned by her classmates because they think she is a weather witch.
9. "What of the Night" - Manly Wade Wellman: I like this author's supernatural tales of Silver John, the Appalachian balladeer. This story has a similar formula of good versus paranormal evil. A traveler finds shelter in an abandoned house, only to discover that he is not alone.
10. "The Remember Service" - John Bennett: a woman is lured to a graveside funeral service by the fine singing. One of the singers loans her an umbrella when it starts to rain. After the service ends, all of the other singers vanish, leaving her with the umbrella.
11. "No Haid Pawn" - Thomas Nelsom Page: a duck-hunter strays too far into the swamp, and is forced to spend the night in a haunted plantation called 'No Haid Pawn.'
12. "See the Station Master" - George Florance-Guthridge: the first-person narrator is travelling from Indianapolis to Orlando with his strangled niece, when he has to stop for gas out in the boonies near Chattanooga.
13. "Ghost and Flesh, Water and Dirt" - William Goyen: a widow is haunted by the ghost of her husband, in dialect with run-on sentences.
14. "Bond of Reunion" - Carl Carmer: Close friends, who used to spend the summers together, reunite after one of their number is murdered. He can't attend, but he can make his presence felt.
15. "Ride the Thunder" - Jack Cady: a sadistic long-distance truck driver swerves off of a rural highway and is killed. Other truckers soon start to avoid that particular stretch of road.
16. "Night Court" - Mary Elizabeth Counselman: a speeding motorist runs over a little girl, and is forced to visit the 'Night Court.'
17. "Moonlit Road" - Ambrose Bierce: Oft-collected story of a father and son's shadowy encounter on a moonlit road.

The best stories in "Dixie Ghosts" are available in other anthologies, so you might want to skip this uneven collection.

This book's stories are very slow to get into, and most of them are not set in the present day and age. Most of the stories use language of the early 1900's and so it is very hard to read and understand. Definately not something to read to the kids!

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