Customer Reviews

The Screaming Skulls, and Other Ghost Stories: The Collected True Tales and Legends of Elliott O'Donnell.

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This book is subtitled "a collection of true and legendary ghost stories." The author is a sort of British Hans Holzer and many of the stories are told in the first person. Some are mere two- or three-page sketches---good for a plot outline if you're ever in the mood to write a ghost story.

Elliott O'Donnell was born in Bristol in 1872, a parson's son like M. R. James but there the similarity ends. Antiquarian and Cambridge scholar M.R. James's ghost stories have been republished and reread, and have been frightening new generations of readers for over a century. His stories, except perhaps for "A Vignette" are fiction. He wrote them to entertain his friends and was never involved in spiritualism or ghost-hunting.

On the other hand Elliott O'Donnell made a career out of the supernatural, beginning at the turn of the last century, and it shows in his stories. Those told in the first person singular are especially breathless, loaded with clichés like "the wind moaned and sighed and rattled" or "stiff and lifeless" or "nothing would induce them to stay another hour in the house." All of the stories are told as true, and this sometimes leads the reader to chuckle rather than shiver while the author is racing through his vast collection of adverbs and adjectives.

Sprinkle a bit of salt on these tales, wait for a dark and stormy night, turn up the gas-light and enjoy. Here are some of my favorites:

"The Nun of Digby Court"--A deceased nun in horrible smelling wool causes the new owners of Digby Court to abandon their mansion to "cobwebs, stillness and ghosts."

"The Haunting of St. Giles"--A hospital ward is haunted by a wicked anesthesiologist, who murdered his rival in love.

"The Phantom Trumpeter of Fyvie"--Lord Fyvie, Earl of Dunfermline is cursed by a dying trumpeter. Always before the death of a Gordon of Fyvie, "his trumpet would be heard either within or immediately without the castle walls." O'Donnell tells stories about other harbingers of death, including a phantom drummer, a phantom rider, a phantom clock, and an assortment of banshees. One sometimes wonders why bassoonists or sackbut players never seem or return after death to haunt their former clients.

"Will-O'-The-Wisp and Corpse Candles"--This isn't really a story, just the author's commentary on various electrical and gaseous phenomena. He is firm in his belief that electricity is not the sole explanation for St. Elmo's Fire.

"The Fatal Phantom of Eringle Truagh"--A kissing phantom lures young men and women to their doom.

"A Haunted Hampstead House"--While the author is investigating a haunted house, he drops his flashlight. Something picks it up and hands it back to him.