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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Insanely chuckling frogs,
By E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
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This review is from: 65 Great Tales of the Supernatural (Hardcover)
As what seems to be the case with most sizeable anthologies of the supernatural, editor Mary Danby has collected a mixed bag of old, oft-read favorites, obscure gems, and a sprinkling of dreck. One of the stories about the god, Dagon who somehow ended up in a Cornish bog was so amateurishly written, I chortled throughout. Chortling was probably not the effect the author was striving for, but "The voices laughed, chuckling insanely at his plight: voices which he knew instinctively were not human." We never do find out who is chuckling insanely. I guess it is just one of those froggy sound effects one finds in Cornish bogs.
The really wonderful stories of '65 Great Tales' are already in print in several anthologies, most notably "The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories," the twenty Fontana books of 'Great Ghost Stories,' and the classic "Great Tales of Horror and the Supernatural." These eerie tales are always worth reading again, and they include "The Monkey's Paw" (W. W. Jacobs), "Lost Hearts" (M. R. James), "An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street" (J. Sheridan Le Fanu), "The Upper Berth" (F. Marion Crawford) and "The Phantom Coach" (Amelia B. Edwards). Probably half the stories in this book fall into the oft-printed, oft-read category. However, there were a few stories I'd never seen before that are definitely worth savoring. Among them: "Carnival on the Downs" by Gerald Kersh--A man sees an advertisement for "!!! Jolly Jumbo's Carnival !!!" in the local pub and tracks down two of the performers, who are in desperate straits in an old, abandoned barn. He goes to fetch the doctor and becomes the unwitting catalyst of an old curse. "South Sea Bubble" by Hammond Innes--"She lay in Kinlochbervie in the north-west of Scotland, so cheap I should have known there was something wrong." A man buys the ship of his dreams and discovers that there is indeed something wrong with her, and it's not just her leaky hull. "The Mark of the Beast" by Rudyard Kipling--I can see why this particular tale of Kipling's India might not have appealed to other editors. There is one scene where two British soldiers torture an old leper. However gruesome, it's an absorbing tale of friendship, and a warning not to insult the local deities. "All Souls" by Edith Wharton--A woman is incapacitated with a broken ankle in her old Connecticut farmhouse and for some reason finds herself deserted by all of her servants.
5.0 out of 5 stars
An eerie and dark compendium of ghost stories and tales of horror,
By Gary Selikow (Great Kush) - See all my reviews
This review is from: 65 Great Tales of the Supernatural (Hardcover)
From the eerie and mysterious to the downright frightening, and some which require a lot of concentration, there are both classics and undiscovered gems here.
Ranging from the dark and Gothic to the spine chilling and eerie, some downright horrific and others sad and haunting.Some begin in a ghostly and eerie fashion, and in others you only realize there is a ghost or are ghosts at the end. Often the skeptical are rewarded with horrific experiences of proof of paranormal phenomena A married couple spend the night in an strange village where church bells loudly contend with each other, and the sea coast is seemingly invisible, before being attacked at midnight by a large host of the undead and they are changed forever. A young woman's mind is destroyed by gunshots in her head after a jilted lover commits suicide. A little boy's seemingly imaginary friend leads him to his death in sand dunes by the sea, and a wealthy man's dead wife possesses the body of his second wife. An obnoxious and spoiled young heir is killed and shrunken by a puppet theater he has defiled. Murderers are destroyed by their victim's spirits and people are driven out of houses and other abodes by all manner of ghosts and ghouls. In some cases the situation is resolved when the ghosts and spirits are given what they have sought. Memorable and spine-chilling stories include Ringing the Changes by Robert Aickmann, The Middle Toe of the Right Foot by Ambrose Bierce, Browdean Farm by AM Burrage, The Brown Hand by Arthur Conan-Doyle, The Engelmeyer Puppets by Mary Danby, The Whistling room by William Hope Hodgson, A Fair Lady by Roger Malisson, The Apple Tree by Daphne de Maurier, Mary by Roger B Pile, A Ghost Story by Mark Twain, The Red Room by HG Wells. Will definitely on the whole be a treat for lovers of ghost stories and tales of the paranormal, and should keep your mind busy while reading this digest of eerie and dark tales.
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