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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Things that go bump in the night,
By E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Eighth Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories (Paperback)
Throughout the two decades from 1964 to 1984, 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
The eighth book in this series is the last that Robert Aickman (1914 - 1981) piloted. As he says in his many introductions, he believes ghost stories are more akin to poetry than horror or science fiction. His own stories in volumes 1 through 8 (excepting only volume 4) are darkly disturbing occult fantasies, with hardly a traditional ghost to be seen. Nevertheless, two of them ("The Cicerones" and "The Inner Room") are on my list of the 50 greatest ghost stories. These are the stories in the 8th Fontana Book: "The Haunted Haven" by A.E. Ellis--A summer tourist learns why the fishermen of Ticklas Haven do not use the southern cove, "although it appears more sheltered and suitable in every way for use as a harbour..." This story has a particularly nasty twist at its end. "The Red Lodge" by H.R. Wakefield--A family rents a summer house by a river and then learns that it is already inhabited by something that leaves patches of green slime on the floor, and in one memorable scene, on the narrator's face. "Meeting Mr. Millar" by Robert Aickman--A London writer is almost forced to give up his attic apartment when a noisy firm of chartered accountants moves onto one of the lower floors. The noises at night are especially disturbing. "Midnight Express" by Alfred Noyes--"The Never-ending Story" with a horrific twist. There is one illustration in a battered old book that a boy cannot bear to look at. He pins two pages together to avoid the sight of "an empty railway platform--at night--lit by a single dreary lamp." Many years later, he finds himself on that platform at night, but not alone. "The Gorgon's Head" by Gertrude Bacon--A ship's captain narrates the story of a Greek island he once visited, where he found a valley filled with tall, black stones. "The Tree"--An Indian woman wishes her dying husband could gain the strength and life of an old oak outside her bedroom window. Her husband regains his health and the oak dies, but at what cost? "The Haunted and the Haunters" by Lord Lytton--There is the kernel of a really decent ghost story in the midst of a whole lot of mystical blah-blah. A man, his servant, and his dog attempt to spend the night in a haunted house. The dog dies. The servant runs screaming out the door and emigrates to Australia. The man barely survives the night. This is where you should stop reading. "Bezhin Lea" by Ivan Sergeivitch Turgenev--A grouse hunter gets lost on the steppes and is drawn to the camp fire of a group of horse drovers. They have some very strange tales to tell. "The Last Séance" by Agatha Christie--A man persuades his mediumistic fiancée to perform just one more séance for a woman who has lost her only child--with predictably disastrous results.
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