The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories

Mysteries written in the 1800's and early 1900's were among the best ever written. I don't know why but today's writers just do not have the experise these writers had. You have Charlotte Riddell (remember the door on the old house that would not close). Charlotte was one of the very best. Also, M. R. James, E. F. Benson, Ellen Glasgow (unfortunately Ellen did not write many ghost stories; I wish she had written more. Her "The Shadowy Third" is thrilling about a NY physician and his invalid wife and a little girl no one can see except the wife's nurse and the wife-the ending is great. Sometimes in collections of stories there can be some one doesnt like but I was enchanted with all of them.

The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories is a vast collection of stories touching on hauntings in about every situation one could imagine. The book is divided into topical sections: Haunted Places, Avenging Spirits, Shadowy Corners (restless spirits), Phantom Lovers, Little Terrors (Ghosts of Children), Psychic Phenomena, and Houses of Horror (favorite stories of movie stars like Vincent Price). For me, the overwhelming majority of the stories were new with The Judge's House (by Bram Stoker) and Lost Heart's (M. R. James) being the most familiar. There are stories that are frightening and others that struck me as quite tame by comparison. The beauty of this volume is that all voices from the literary world are heard and I am sure that some stories that I found less rewarding would appeal to other readers. For me the most frightening was the first story The Haunted and the Haunters by Bulwer-Lytton. It is the kind of story that has one jumping at minor sounds in the house. Equally scary was Authentic Narrative of a Haunted House, a story by Le Fanu that I was not familiar with. The Grey House by Basil Cooper was nicely written and atmospheric but not particularly frightening; it would make an interesting film. The House of Dust is a nicely written story injecting a bit of sex into haunted house tales. A story that I was very interested in reading was In Letters of Fire by Gaston Leroux (who also wrote The Phantom of the Opera. I would not strictly categorize this story as involving a haunted house but one that has an evil room. The book has a nice selection of stories with an informative introduction to each providing us with the location and peculiarities of the haunted house and some brief biographical data about the author. There also is a helpful appendix that describes haunted house novels that I found intriguing.

This huge anthology is a wonderful treat for any lover of the spookiest of all horror genres - the haunted house. The selections are highly eclectic, although weighted toward the coziness of the British 19th century tradition (although there's NOTHING cozy about "Lost Hearts," the M.R. James tale included here!). You'll find a terrific balance between familiar names like William Hope Hodgson and Robert Bloch (best known for Psycho) and the more obscure - this anthology was my introduction to Basil Copper and H. Russell Wakefield, whose "Ghost Hunt" is a highly enjoyable bit of pulp. Also included are a number of stories by "literary" writers not known for the horror genre, including Penelope Lively, Fay Weldon, and Virginia Woolf.Some of the stories are mostly of historical interest - modern tastes aren't likely to be thrilled by misers getting tediously Victorian comeuppances in the afterlife, and the "funny" stories are painful to sit through. But this eclectic collection offers gem after gem as well, and if you want a survey of the breadth and depth of the haunted neighborhood, here is your field guide.

This book was excellent! It's suspenful and he uses very vivid description to build you up to the moment. He should follow through with detail's more though cause he sometime's says things that make you wonder or make you kind of lost. But otherwise he did a wonderful job! It was very interesting and entertaining to read, and I would like to read more of his novel's, if there is anymore like these stories. This book was a real pageturner, the suspense was great after each end. To wrap it all up I would suggest this book to anybody because if you're looking for something to do on a stormy evening, the best thing to do is to grab a good book and this is a good book to do that with.