Customer Reviews

The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Many of the large ghost story anthologies seem to repeat a lot of familiar stories, but Peter Haining has included in this one many stories I've never read before -- both historical and contemporary. Among my favorites are "The Man from Glasgow" by Somerset Maugham about an olive merchant in Spain, "The House at Treheale" by A.C. Benson about a haunted composer, "The Prescription" by Marjorie Bowen about a doctor's strange night, "Haunted" by Joyce Carol Oates about the misfortune that befalls two young girls, "Video Nasty" by Philip Pullman about an eerie viewing of a snuff film, and "The Richpins" by E.G. Swain about a haunted field. I was also pleased to find Daphne Du Maurier's "The Pool" included here. It's a story I've searched out to read before without much success of finding it, since it was not included in her "Don't Look Now" collection.

I have to credit my good friend Tom for hooking me onto this one. Incredibly compiled collection of great writing, ghost stories or not. Somerset Maugham, Daphne DuMaurier, Joyce Carol Oates, even John Gielgud before he was a "Sir." Most of them deliver genuine creeps, but the whole collection was SO well selected. I will read more in this series.

Editor Peter Haining does a good job choosing the selections for this collection of ghost stories. Rather than emphasizing pieces featuring moaning phantoms, clanking chains and other staple but simplistic fare common to the genre, Haining sought stories heavy with eerie mood and tone. As with any anthology like this one, some vignettes are better or more effective than others. That said, the overall quality of the selections is consistently high. Some of the tales surely will curdle a reader's blood late in the dead of a stormy night. The compilation makes clear ghosts are as often specters within us as without, and there can be no haunting absent the haunted.

Not one single one of these was outstanding. Even the stories by well-known authors (M.R. James, for example) were the ones I liked the least from their individual anthologies. I started every story with high hopes of chills and prickles, and put down the book after each with a disgusted feeling that the editors got together a selection that they knew for sure would have extremely low royalty costs. There's a good reason these stories are ones you probably haven't read before! They aren't very good !! In some cases the idea was good but the execution was poor, or the writing was good but the story itself was poor, or both. One more note - the typesetting is anything but classic, with cheesy illustrations and a distracting page of synopsis before each story. I think that was for the purpose of seeming to add value, but it didn't.

This is a really great collection. Some of the best ghost stories you could possibly choose.

Anyone giving this book low marks is probably looking for *horror* stories which is a completely different genre.

If you own The Phantastic Book of Ghost Stories, this is the same book. But under either title, it's a fabulous book

This one took me a very long time to complete since nearly half of the collection of stories were either painfully dull and tame (surprisingly by well known authors whose stories may have frightened or terrified readers at the first-half of the 20th century, but are "ho-hum" by today's horror standards), or had little or nothing to do with ghosts (just a vague notion of the supernatural), and still others read like bad urban legends with predictable endings. But nonetheless I read them all from beginning to end. However, the book is by no means a complete loss since the other half of stories collected are well worth the read (which is why I gave the book an overall 3-star rating). So, if you happen to pick up this book, the stories I recommend reading are: A.C. Benson's "The House at Trehale", Arthur Gray's "The Everlasting Club", A.N.L. Munby's "Number Seventy-Nine", Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "Playing With Fire", Rudyard Kipling's "The House Surgeon", John Buchan's "The Grove of Ashtaroth", Somerset Maugham's "A Man from Glasgow", George Minto's "The Ghost of U65", Algernon Blackwood's "Vengeance is Mine", Sir Alec Guiness' "Money for Jam", Edith Wharton's "The Lady's Maid's Bell", Eudora Welty's "Clytie", Daphne du Maurier's "The Pool", James Thurber's "The Night the Ghost Got In", Eric Keown's "Sir Tristram Goes West", Ray Bradbury's "Another Fine Mess", E.F. Benson's "A Light in the Garden", Hammond Innes' "South Sea Bubble", Fritz Leiber's "Smoke Ghost", A.E. Van Vogt's "The Ghost", and Philip Pullman's "Video Nasty".

Once again everything in perfect order and in time. All my packages arrived to the hotel on the estimated date and in perfect conditions

This book does contain alot of stories. Modern stories? I'm not so sure of that. These stories date back to the 1800's and while I'm sure they were frightful then, not so much now. If you enjoy reading well written verse and aren't too concerned with the fright factor, you'll enjoy this book.

This is a wonderful collection of unusual and, apparently, hard to find stories. A lot of fun.