The Big Book of Ghost Stories

Introduction
 

By Otto Penzler
 

Tales of the supernatural have been a fixture of the storytelling tradition since preliterate times, and the most popular form they have taken is the ghost story. This should not be at all surprising, as the fear of death and its aftermath has abided in the breasts of humans ever since they became cognizant of what it meant to no longer be alive in the manner in which it is traditionally understood. Animals, down to the most primitive invertebrates, share this fear without precisely being aware of what it means in a conscious sense, but they nonetheless do all they can to stay alive. The question of what follows the extinguishing of life probably does not keep mosquitoes or squirrels awake at night, but more than a few homo sapiens have pondered their uncertain futures with trepidation in the dark of night.
 
All cultures on the planet have superstitions about the dead returning as spirits or -phantoms -belief systems memorialized in drawings and writings from the very beginnings of civilization. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, departed people are shown to return, not merely looking as they did in life, but dressed in similar garments. Therefore, apparently not only do dead people have the ability to materialize, making themselves visible again after they are gone, but so do textiles, leather, and metal.
 
In the Bible, the story of King Saul calling on the Witch of Endor to summon the spirit of Samuel has been recorded, as have the questions surrounding whether Jesus after his resurrection was a living being or a ghost. From ancient texts in Greek mythology, various types of ghosts are described in Homer s Iliad and Odyssey, and Romans, notably Plutarch and Pliny the Younger, wrote about haunted houses.
 
Literature of all eras abounds in ghosts stories. William Shakespeare often used ghosts in his plays, most famously in Hamlet and Macbeth, and Charles Dickens wrote the greatest

BUT I M NOT DEAD YET
Conrad Aiken: Mr. Arcularis
William Fryer Harvey: August Heat
 
I LL LOVE YOU FOREVER (OR MAYBE NOT)
Ellen Glasgow: The Shadowy Third
Ellen Glasgow: The Past
David Morrell: But At My Back I Always Hear
O. Henry: The Furnished Room
Paul Ernst: Death s Warm Fireside
Andrew Klavan: The Advent Reunion
R. Murray Gilchrist: The Return
Rudyard Kipling: The Phantom Rickshaw
Ambrose Bierce: The Moonlit Road
Lafcadio Hearn: The Story of Ming-Y
Lafcadio Hearn: Yuki-Onna
 
THIS OLD HOUSE
Amyas Northcote: Brickett Bottom
E. F. Benson: How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery
G. G. Pendarves: Thing of Darkness
Edward Lucas White: The House of the Nightmare
Hector Bolitho: The House on Half Moon Street
Dick Donovan: A Night of Horror
Vincent O sullivan: The Burned House
 
KIDS WILL BE KIDS
Rosemary Timperley: Harry
Michael Reaves: Make-Believe
A. M. Burrage: Playmates
Ramsey Campbell: Just Behind You
A. E. Coppard: Adam And Eve and Pinch Me
Steve Friedman: The Lost Boy of the Ozarks
 
THERE S SOMETHING FUNNY AROUND HERE
Mark Twain: A Ghost s Story
Donald E. Westlake: In At The Death
Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Ghost of Dr. Harris
Ingulphus : The Everlasting Club
Isaac Asimov and James Maccreigh: Legal Rites
Albert E. Cowdrey: Death Must Die
Frank Stockton: The Transferred Ghost
Oscar Wilde: The Canterville Ghost
 
A NEGATIVE TRAIN OF THOUGHT
August Derleth: Pacific 421
Robert Weinberg: The Midnight El
 
STOP YOU RE SCARING ME
Frederick Cowles: Punch and Judy
Henry S. Whitehead: The Fireplace
H. F. Arnold: The Night Wire 400
Fritz Leiber: Smoke Ghost 406

OTTO PENZLER is the proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. He was publisher of The Armchair Detective, the founder of the Mysterious Press and the Armchair Detective Library, and created the publishing firm Otto Penzler Books. He has twice received the Edgar Award, for The Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection and The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives, as well as the Ellery Queen Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his many contributions to the field. He is the editor of The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, which was a New York Times bestseller, and several more Vintage Crime/Black Lizard anthologies, including The Big Book of Black Mask Stories, The Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries, The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories, and The Big Book of Jack the Ripper. He is also the series editor of The Best American Mystery Stories of the Year. His other anthologies include Murder for Love, Murder for Revenge, Murder and Obsession, The 50 Greatest Mysteries of All Time, and The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century. He wrote 101 Greatest Movies of Mystery & Suspense. He lives in New York City.

"Volumes of frightfulness. . . . No one should go through life (let alone death) without experiencing W.W. Jacobs s 'The Monkey s Paw,' Perceval Landon s 'Thurnley Abbey,' Ambrose Bierce s 'The Moonlit Road' and M.R. James s 'Oh, Whistle and I ll Come to You My Lad.' But Penzler also includes many stories that should be equally well known. This year, for instance, I read for the first time Ellen Glasgow s 'The Shadowy Third'."
    The Washington Post

"If you enjoy, as I have since childhood, a great ghost story well told, this book is required reading."
    Paste Magazine

"Wonderful. . . . A list on your computer is one thing. A big, fat, juicy, paperback anthology like this is something else altogether."
     The Buffalo News (editor's choice)

"Jam packed with enough classic horror and otherworldly stories to keep you having nightmares through the month of October. . . . This collection of short stories coupled with eerie vintage illustrations is a must-have for the nightstand. The only thing that can make it better is a flashlight under the covers."
     The Long Island Press

"This mountain-sized omnibus contains every wrinkle of the form you could ever want. . . . There s enough in this volume to please both dilettantes and devotees among ghost story readers."
  Publishers Weekly

"Penzler has done an excellent job of collecting interesting, unnerving, and fascinating stories as well as providing nifty tidbits in the introductions. Reading most of these stories just before trying to sleep, though, is not recommended."
  Booklist