The Winter Spirits
Ghostly Tales for Frosty Nights
The Winter Spirits is a follow-up volume to The Haunting Season, and like its predecessor, it taps into the tradition of recounting ghostly tales at Christmas. I had enjoyed the earlier anthology without being too enthusiastic about it. The individual stories were good enough, but there was a general sense of “sameness”, with a particular emphasis on feminist Gothic which I like, in reasonable helpings.
As a collection, I think that The Winter Spirits is much better. For a start, while the original eight authors have been retained, (Bridget Collins, Natasha Pulley, Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Elizabeth Macneal, Imogen Hermes Gowar, Jess Kidd, Laura Purcell and Andrew Michael Hurley), another four have been featured (Susan Stokes Chapman, Laura Shepherd-Robinson, Stuart Turton and Catriona Ward), allowing for a wider pick of talent. The subject-matter of the stories is thematically more unified, in the sense that each featured work has some association with Advent or Christmas. At times, the plot is directly inspired by the folklore of the season, as in the case of Laura Purcell’s “Carol of the Bells and Chains” which is a riff on the Krampus legend.
As in any such volume, some stories stand out for being different, original or simply closer to the reader’s taste. In my case, three were particularly memorable in this sense. Andrew Michael Hurley’s “The Old Play” transplants the typical folk horror trope of ritual violence from a rural setting into the theatre world. In “The Salt Miracles”, Natasha Pulley delivers a powerful tale of terrifying supernatural visitations set on a remote Scottish island. And Catriona Ward gives us “Jenkin”, which is just plain weird. That said, there are no duds here.
This is the full list of stories:
Host
by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Inferno by Laura Shepherd-Robinson
The Old Play by Andrew Michael Hurley
A Double Thread by Imogen Hermes Gowar
The Salt Miracles by Natasha Pulley
Banished by Elizabeth Macneal
The Gargoyle by Bridget Collins
The Master of the House by Stuart Turton
Ada Lark by Jess Kid
Jenkin by Catriona Ward
Widow's Walk by Susan Stokes-Chapman
Carol of the Bells and Chains by Laura Purcell
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