Haunted by Old Forms : Contemporary ghost story anthologies by "The Fiction Desk" and "Shadows at the Door"

 Haunted by Old Forms  

two ghost story anthologies

As October starts, many of my more Goth-minded friends start a countdown to Halloween. Or so it seems from my twitter feed, which right now is rich in suggestions for horror novels, ghostly tales and scary movies.  Here’s my own small contribution to this ghoulfest – reviews of two collections of contemporary ghost stories which reveal that the form is alive and kicking.  Or should I say, undead? 

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New Ghost Stories III : A Fiction Desk Anthology

The heyday of the "classic English ghost story" was in the 19th and early 20th Century, when a host of authors - some brilliant, others clearly less so - shaped the genre as we know it. The ghost story is, of course, a much wider cultural phenomenon, with its roots in the folklore and traditions of different societies. Even within the supposedly limited confines of the literary genre, the sheer variety of supernatural manifestations portrayed is surprising. There are the "proper" ghosts, souls returning from the dead to communicate with the living, complete unfinished business, wreak vengeance or, on occasion, for purposes as elusive as their diaphanous shapes. In the folk-horrorish works of Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood, the otherworldly beings have pagan overtones or are closely related to the faerie folk. Some apparitions are "demonic" and monster-like in nature - in M.R. James, the horrors are often unexpectedly physical - whilst, at the other end of the spectrum, the reader is occasionally left wondering whether the supposed hauntings are "all in the mind".

New Ghost Stories III is the eleventh Fiction Desk anthology and the third one to be exclusively dedicated to this genre. It features seven tales - six of which are the winners of the latest two ghost story competitions organised by the publication. Editor Rob Redman provides an introduction to the collection, as well as a brief preface to each story.

Refreshingly, the featured pieces are authentic supernatural tales, rather than exercises in “magical realism” or metaphorical interpretations of the “ghost” figure. They also owe much to the literary canon. Look closer, however, and you will realise that the same horror tropes which make them familiar to the reader are subtly being undermined. A case in point is The Crypt Beneath the Library by Barney Walsh. The setting is one which M.R. James would have recognised – a crypt housing a collection of medieval illuminated manuscripts possibly haunted by a spectral monk and/or a demonic figure. The protagonist, however, couldn’t be more different than James’s male professorial types. Bethany, in fact, is a young undergraduate “atheist medievalist” and the story itself can be read as a protest against the patriarchal university and college hierarchies implied in James’s stories. Similarly, Jerry Ibbotson’s The Intruder and Richard Agemo’s The House Friends both explore the “haunted house” genre and take it into new and intriguing directions. The Archivist, by Philippa East, evokes a different tradition – that of American scary movies. It is set in the sanatorium of an abandoned boarding school which will soon be pulled down. An archivist sent to catalogue the old school files comes across past horrors in the old documents, but also faces other terrors in the shape of an uncanny doll and strange nocturnal noises. It’s all very unsettling, but can we rely on the narrator?

Two of the tales struck me for their originality. Des Nuits Blanches by Will Dunn starts off as a sports story, a tale about an ambitious French cyclist and his strict regime of night-time training. When the supernatural element does kick in, it evokes ancient Alpine lore and its tales of evil spirits lurking in the mountains. Reads like Machen on a skiing holiday. Seth Marlin’s "The Dead Lie Dreaming", on the contrary, ventures into science fiction and presents us with a society in the near future where memories of dead persons are kept electronically alive. Like one of the oldest (Biblical) ghost stories – Saul’s meeting with the Witch of Endor – it is a cautionary tale which suggests we should keep away from the spirits of the dead, even when summoned by science.

This anthology shows that the ghost story is still very much alive, even if haunted by old forms. It is indeed telling that the collection ends with the most primeval fear of all. When the lights go out and the candles splutter – in other words, “When the Dark Comes Down”, as in Amanda Mason’s concluding piece of the same name – our oldest terrors are rekindled. And we get an idea of how the 'ghost story' might have begun.

Published September 2017 by The Fiction Desk

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The website Shadows at the Door is a digital platform where horror writers are given the opportunity to publish their supernatural tales. Curator Mark Nixon himself a writer of ghost stories, took this concept to another level with the publication of an anthology featuring authors associated with the website. Launched  following Kickstarter crowd-funding, the book is a joy to hold and behold – a high-quality hardback printed on glossy paper, with beautifully atmospheric black and white illustrations by Barney Bodoano.

But what about the collection itself? Shadows at the Door prefers its horrors subtle and favours stories with an old-fashioned touch. The thirteen tales in this anthology are mostly in the tradition of M.R. James and other purveyors of the “classic ghost story” – K.B. Goddard in particular (represented by A Macabre Melody) even manages to evoke the language beloved of late-Victorian authors. This is not to say that there are no grisly moments or sudden eruptions of violence (for instance in Mark Nixon’s own contributionQuem Infra Nos or in J.C. Michael’s Gytrash), but the emphasis is on atmospheric storytelling, where the horrors are implied rather than crudely spelt out. The types of haunting portrayed are varied – whilst some of the tales are clearly ghost stories (including one of my favourites – Caitlin Marceau’s moving Run) others touch upon dark fantasy (Christopher Long’s The Gallow Glass), fairytale (Deep by M. Regan) or folk horror (Pete Alex Harris’s Under Shiel Croft). Most of the stories have a strong sense of place. Indeed, the various settings range from English towns to the Scottish Highlands, New York and Melbourne and provide not just the backdrop to the action but, in some cases, a folk legend or tradition which serves as a germ of inspiration.

Published December 14, 2016 by Shadows at the Door Publishing

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I'll leave you with a track by composer Stephen Montague:  A crippled ghost at Halloween.  Sweet dreams.