Выбрать главу

PETER HAINING has written and edited a number of bestselling books on the supernatural, notably the widely acclaimed Ghosts: The Illustrated History (1975) and A Dictionary of Ghosts (1982), which have been translated into several languages including French, German, Russian and Japanese. His companion volume to this anthology, Haunted House Stories, was published by Robinson in 2005. A former journalist and publisher, he lives in a sixteenth-century timber frame house in Suffolk that is haunted by the ghost of a Napoleonic prisoner of war.

Also available

The Mammoth Book of 20th Century Science Fiction

The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 5

The Mammoth Book of Best New Manga

The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 19

The Mammoth Book of Celebrity Murder

The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy

The Mammoth Book of Comic Quotes

The Mammoth Book of Dirty, Sick, X-Rated & Politically Incorrect Jokes

The Mammoth Book of Egyptian Whodunnits

The Mammoth Book of Erotic Photography

The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction

The Mammoth Book of Famous Trials

The Mammoth Book of Funniest Cartoons of All Time

The Mammoth Book of Great Detective Stories

The Mammoth Book of Great Inventions

The Mammoth Book of Hard Men

The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits

The Mammoth Book of How It Happened: Ancient Egypt

The Mammoth Book of How It Happened: Ancient Rome

The Mammoth Book of How It Happened: Battles

The Mammoth Book of How It Happened: World War I

The Mammoth Book of How It Happened: World War II

The Mammoth Book of Illustrated True Crime

The Mammoth Book of International Erotica

The Mammoth Book of IQ Puzzles

The Mammoth Book of Jacobean Whodunnits

The Mammoth Book of Jokes

The Mammoth Book of Kakuro, Worduko and Super Sudoku

The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large

The Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica

The Mammoth Book of New Terror

The Mammoth Book of On The Edge

The Mammoth Book of On the Road

The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Locked Room Mysteries

The Mammoth Book of Pirates

The Mammoth Book of Private Eye Stories

The Mammoth Book of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits

The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunnits

The Mammoth Book of SAS & Special Forces

The Mammoth Book of Secret Codes and Cryptograms

The Mammoth Book of Sex, Drugs & Rock ’n’ Roll

The Mammoth Book of Shipwrecks & Sea Disasters

The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels

The Mammoth Book of Short Spy Novels

The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

The Mammoth Book of Special Ops

The Mammoth Book of Sudoku

The Mammoth Book of True Crime

The Mammoth Book of True War Stories

The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes

The Mammoth Book of Vampires

The Mammoth Book of Vintage Whodunnits

The Mammoth Book of War Comics

The Mammoth Book of Wild Journeys

The Mammoth Book of Women’s Fantasies

THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF

Modern Ghost Stories

Great Supernatural Tales of The Twentieth Century

Edited by PETER HAINING

Collection and editorial material copyright © Peter Haining 2007

All rights reserved.

For my wife

Philippa

– who has shared a lifetime with ghosts

“Ghosts, to make themselves manifest, require two conditions abhorrent to the modern mind: silence and continuity.”

Edith Wharton, 1937

“The modern ghost story appears to be as much about longing as it is about dread.”

Sinclair McKay, 2001

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

FOREWORD

1. RAISING SPECTRES: The Modern Tradition

“OH WHISTLE, AND I’LL COME TO YOU, MY LAD”

M. R. James

THE HOUSE AT TREHEALE

A. C. Benson

THE RICHPINS

E. G. Swain

THE EVERLASTING CLUB

Arthur Gray

NUMBER SEVENTY-NINE

A. N. L. Munby

2. GHOST WRITERS: The “Golden Era”

PLAYING WITH FIRE

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

THE HOUSE SURGEON

Rudyard Kipling

THE GROVE OF ASHTAROTH

John Buchan

A MAN FROM GLASGOW

Somerset Maugham

THE LAST LAUGH

D. H. Lawrence

THE VISIT TO THE MUSEUM

Vladimir Nabokov

3. PHANTOM RANKS: Supernatural at War

THE BOWMEN

Arthur Machen

THE GHOST OF U65

George Minto

“VENGEANCE IS MINE”

Algernon Blackwood

THE PUNISHMENT

Lord Dunsany

THE HAUNTED CHATEAU

Dennis Wheatley

PINK MAY

Elizabeth Bowen

A GREMLIN IN THE BEER

Derek Barnes

MONEY FOR JAM

Sir Alec Guinness

4. THE GHOST-FEELERS: Modern Gothic Tales

THE LADY’S MAID’S BELL

Edith Wharton

THE DUENNA

Marie Belloc Lowndes

CLYTIE

Eudora Welty

THE POOL

Daphne du Maurier

A SPOT OF GOTHIC

Jane Gardam

5. ENTERTAINING SPOOKS: Supernatural High Jinks

THE INEXPERIENCED GHOST

H G. Wells

FULL FATHOM FIVE

Alexander Woollcott

THE NIGHT THE GHOST GOT IN

James Thurber

SIR TRISTRAM GOES WEST

Eric Keown

WHO OR WHAT WAS IT?

Kingsley Amis

ANOTHER FINE MESS

Ray Bradbury

6. CHRISTMAS SPIRITS: Festive Season Chillers

ONLY A DREAM . . .

Rider Haggard

THE HAUNTED HOUSE

Edith Nesbit

THE LIGHT IN THE GARDEN

E. F. Benson

THE PRESCRIPTION

Marjorie Bowen

CHRISTMAS HONEYMOON

Howard Spring

SOUTH SEA BUBBLE

Hammond Innes

RINGING IN THE GOOD NEWS

Peter Ackroyd

7. HAUNTING TIMES: Tales of Unease

SMOKE GHOST

Fritz Leiber