Customer Reviews

Bodies of the Dead: And Other Great American Ghost Stories

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Interesting - this book does include the category "Children's Books"; no wonder another reviewer complained about the big words! This is NOT a collection of tales for children (although bloody-minded kids like I was would certainly enjoy it!); no, this one contains a nice assortment of ghost and horror tales by some truly fine authors, including Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, and Ambrose Bierce.

Lafcadio Hearn's "The Boy Who Drew Cats" has been a long-time favorite of mine, and I was delighted to find it here. Poe's story is "Berenice" (aka "the one about the teeth"), which I find more chilling every time I read it. F. Marion Crawford's "The Doll's Ghost" is a rather sweet story (and utterly unlike his "Upper Berth," which, alas, is NOT in this collection, but is well worth hunting up - unless you're planning on taking a sea voyage any time soon). Bierce's "Bodies of the Dead" is perhaps the scariest tale of all, for it's a collection of vignettes about assorted strangeness having to do with dead bodies - and they're all recounted as if factual (which they may be, for all I know).

Great American ghost stories, indeed!

I do not recommend this book to anyone younger than 11. It has tough words and adult authors.