Great Ghost Stories: 11th Series [Paperback]

Throughout the 1970s, Fontana published a remarkable skein of ghost story collections, piloted by R. Aikman and later by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, no mean supernatural authors themselves. Some of the paperbacks in this series, which winds its way up to the "20th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories" are now collectors' items and worth over a hundred dollars apiece.

R. Chetwynd-Hayes has assembled an anthology of ghost stories that are both superbly chilling and relatively unknown for this eleventh book in the series. This editor tends to include too many humorous stories in his collections, but even the humor in this book has a ghastly twist.

These are the stories in the 11th Fontana Book:

"Justice" by 'The Gibsons'--A short short about the voice you may hear behind you some day. Try not to grumble.

"Aunt Cassie" by Virginia Swain--A tiresome old live-in aunt can't be stopped from holding conversations with her dead kinfolk.

"The Woman's Ghost Story" by Algernon Blackwood--A ghost-hunter spends a night in a deserted house and finds it haunted by a man who died of fright.

"The Ghost of U65" by G.A. Minto--If you enjoy this story of a haunted WWI U-Boat, check out the website madladdesigns.co.uk/unexplained/hauntings/uboat.htm for the 'true' story of U65. There are even photographs of the jinxed submarine.

"Footsteps Invisible" by Robert Arthur--A blind newspaper vendor learns to identify his customers by their footsteps and voices. Then an amateur Egyptologist begs for the blind man's help in alerting him to something that has been tracking him across the face of the Earth. Excellent story with a nasty twist at the end.

"The Night-Doings at 'Deadman's'" by Ambrose Bierce--Thomas Hobbes once remarked that the life of man is nasty, brutish, and short. The same could be said for the supernatural stories of Ambrose Bierce. In this one, a man is haunted by what could be more than one ghost in the ruins of a California mining camp.

"The Earlier Service" by Margaret Irwin--A very haunted Anglican church is the site of a young girl's horrifying First Communion.

"Scots Wha Ha'E" by Dorothy K. Haynes--"Braveheart" fans might enjoy this story of a new subdivision haunted by the ghosts of William Wallace and his wife.

"The Whittakers Ghost" by G.B.S.--Standard Victorian fare about a ghostly coach-and-four, plus the apparition of a monk whose appearance foretells death.

"Lady Celia's Mirror" by Roger Malisson--A haunted mirror is bought cheaply by a pair of antiques dealers. After a horrifying incident with the mirror, they sell it cheaply to a monastery. But not even the monks are safe from Lady Celia.

"The Lonely Inn" by Thomas Burke--There are many haunted inns in Great Britain, and this is one of the ghastliest. This story makes my list of 'Top Fifty Greatest Ghost Stories.'

"The Green Scarf" by Alfred McLelland Burrage--An artist and a writer live peacefully together in a tumbledown old mansion, until the writer discovers a secret compartment that contains a mouldering green scarf.

"The House of Desolation" by Alan Griff--Lady Merle and her young daughter are invited to attend the sixteenth anniversary celebration of the marriage of her friend to a dabbler in the occult. After arriving at their desolate, oddly-built mansion, Lady Merle and the other guests have trouble sorting the living from the dead.

"The Man in the Mirror" by Sydney J. Bounds--A chess player up from London meets his ultimate opponent in a rural pub.

"The Attic" by Pamela Vincent--A newly married couple inherit an old terrace house in London that seems to shelter half-seen shapes in its attic.

"The Woman in Black" by Peter Hackett--A man catches the late train from Fenchurch Street station and shares his coach with a woman dressed in black. A shocker with a neat twist at the end.

"Haunted Ground" by Oliver la Farge--This one fooled me completely. The man I thought was dead wasn't--at least not until after the story's end. A young man tries to drown himself when his one true love is killed by a robber.

"The Man Who Sold Ghosts" by Roger F. Dunkley--A traveling salesman has a rather odd product line as Lord and Lady Snood soon discover. Funny but also horrible.

"Matthew and Luke" by R. Chetwynd-Hayes--A successful young businessman is brought back to life after a near-drowning. This story starts out as one of the editor's rather heavy-handed attempts at a humorous ghost story, but it has an appalling climax.

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