The Best Ghost Stories

Fülszöveg

The ghost story is very old. There are supernatural tales throughout literature, as far back as Homer, before they were written down, and it would have been a poor storyteller - entertaining Greek lords in the megaron, or shepherds around a campfire - who did not take advantage of the universal fear of the dark and include at least one ghost tale in his repertory. The more inventive would build on the atmosphere of unease that comes with darkness, weaving the sounds of the night into their stories and peopling the smoke from the fire with hideous shapes, until even the unimaginative spent a restless night.
It is reasonable to suppose that these early storytellers, recounting anecdotes, myths and sagas with a supernatural theme, fulfilled another purpose beyond the entertainment value of a good thrill. To mention the horrors which lurk in the unconscious of all human beings, to give them form and involve them in stories, is to go some way towards exorcising them - or at least... Tovább

Fülszöveg

The ghost story is very old. There are supernatural tales throughout literature, as far back as Homer, before they were written down, and it would have been a poor storyteller - entertaining Greek lords in the megaron, or shepherds around a campfire - who did not take advantage of the universal fear of the dark and include at least one ghost tale in his repertory. The more inventive would build on the atmosphere of unease that comes with darkness, weaving the sounds of the night into their stories and peopling the smoke from the fire with hideous shapes, until even the unimaginative spent a restless night.
It is reasonable to suppose that these early storytellers, recounting anecdotes, myths and sagas with a supernatural theme, fulfilled another purpose beyond the entertainment value of a good thrill. To mention the horrors which lurk in the unconscious of all human beings, to give them form and involve them in stories, is to go some way towards exorcising them - or at least learning to live with them. The main reason for fearing the dark is, after all, because the dangers are unseen, and a good tale can be therapy for both teller and listener.
The aim of this anthology is, quite simply, to collect the very best ghost stories in one volume. Because these are the finest in the genre some, like the nightmarish Count Magnus and Oliver Onions' masterpiece The Beckoning Fair One, are well known. But there are many others, including The Shout by Robert Graves and E. M. Forster's Story of the Siren, which - although written by world-famous writers, and in themselves magnificent supernatural stories -are comparatively unknown.
Every type of ghost story is represented, from Sheridan Le Fanu's carefully understated vampire tale Camilla, with its subtle sexuality, to the explicit horror of H. P. Lovecraft's Pickman's Model and E. F. Benson's Negotium Perambulans, from the clipped, ironic style of Saki's terrifying werewolf story Gabriel-Ernest, to the cumulative horror of Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan. Vissza