A spirited Black Lizard anthology with over a thousand pages of haunted-and haunting-ghost tales. Includes eerie vintage ghost illustrations.
The ghost story is perhaps the oldest of all the supernatural literary genres and has captured the imagination of almost every writer to put pen to the page. Here, Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler has followed his keen sense of the supernatural to collect the most chilling and uncanny tales in the canon. These spectral stories span more than a hundred years, from modern-day horrors by Joyce Carol Oates, Chet Williamson and Andrew Klavan, to pulp yarns from August Derleth, Greye La Spina, and M. L. Humphreys, to the atmospheric Victorian tales of Rudyard Kipling, Edith Wharton, and H. P. Lovecraft, not to mention modern works by the likes of Donald E. Westlake and Isaac Asimov that are already classics. Some of these stories have haunted the canon for a century, while others are making their first ghoulish appearance in book form. Whether you prefer possessive poltergeists, awful apparitions, or friendly phantoms, these stories are guaranteed to thrill you, tingle the spine, or tickle the funny bone, and keep you turning the pages with fearful delight.
Including such classics as "The Monkey's Paw" and "The Open Window" and eerie vintage illustrations, and also featuring haunted mansions, midnight frights, lovers from beyond the grave, rapping, tapping, wailing shades, and ghosts, ghouls, and specters galore! AlsoFeaturing haunted mansions, midnight frights, lovers from beyond the grave, rapping, tapping, wailing shades, and ghosts, ghouls, and specters galore!
Otto Penzler is the proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. He was publisher of The Armchair Detective, the founder of the Mysterious Press and the Armchair Detective Library, and created the publishing firm Otto Penzler Books. He has twice received the Edgar Award, for The Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection and The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives, as well as the Ellery Queen Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his many contributions to the field. He is the editor of The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, which was a New York Times bestseller, and several more Vintage Crime/Black Lizard anthologies, including The Big Book of Black Mask Stories, The Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries, The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories, and The Big Book of Jack the Ripper. He is also the series editor of The Best American Mystery Stories of the Year. His other anthologies include Murder for Love, Murder for Revenge, Murder and Obsession, The 50 Greatest Mysteries of All Time, and The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century. He wrote 101 Greatest Movies of Mystery & Suspense. He lives in New York City.
Show moreA spirited Black Lizard anthology with over a thousand pages of haunted-and haunting-ghost tales. Includes eerie vintage ghost illustrations.
The ghost story is perhaps the oldest of all the supernatural literary genres and has captured the imagination of almost every writer to put pen to the page. Here, Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler has followed his keen sense of the supernatural to collect the most chilling and uncanny tales in the canon. These spectral stories span more than a hundred years, from modern-day horrors by Joyce Carol Oates, Chet Williamson and Andrew Klavan, to pulp yarns from August Derleth, Greye La Spina, and M. L. Humphreys, to the atmospheric Victorian tales of Rudyard Kipling, Edith Wharton, and H. P. Lovecraft, not to mention modern works by the likes of Donald E. Westlake and Isaac Asimov that are already classics. Some of these stories have haunted the canon for a century, while others are making their first ghoulish appearance in book form. Whether you prefer possessive poltergeists, awful apparitions, or friendly phantoms, these stories are guaranteed to thrill you, tingle the spine, or tickle the funny bone, and keep you turning the pages with fearful delight.
Including such classics as "The Monkey's Paw" and "The Open Window" and eerie vintage illustrations, and also featuring haunted mansions, midnight frights, lovers from beyond the grave, rapping, tapping, wailing shades, and ghosts, ghouls, and specters galore! AlsoFeaturing haunted mansions, midnight frights, lovers from beyond the grave, rapping, tapping, wailing shades, and ghosts, ghouls, and specters galore!
Otto Penzler is the proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. He was publisher of The Armchair Detective, the founder of the Mysterious Press and the Armchair Detective Library, and created the publishing firm Otto Penzler Books. He has twice received the Edgar Award, for The Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection and The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives, as well as the Ellery Queen Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his many contributions to the field. He is the editor of The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, which was a New York Times bestseller, and several more Vintage Crime/Black Lizard anthologies, including The Big Book of Black Mask Stories, The Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries, The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories, and The Big Book of Jack the Ripper. He is also the series editor of The Best American Mystery Stories of the Year. His other anthologies include Murder for Love, Murder for Revenge, Murder and Obsession, The 50 Greatest Mysteries of All Time, and The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century. He wrote 101 Greatest Movies of Mystery & Suspense. He lives in New York City.
Show moreBUT I’M NOT DEAD YET
Conrad Aiken: Mr. Arcularis
William Fryer Harvey: August Heat
I’LL LOVE YOU—FOREVER (OR MAYBE NOT)
Ellen Glasgow: The Shadowy Third
Ellen Glasgow: The Past
David Morrell: But At My Back I Always Hear
O. Henry: The Furnished Room
Paul Ernst: Death’s Warm Fireside
Andrew Klavan: The Advent Reunion
R. Murray Gilchrist: The Return
Rudyard Kipling: The Phantom Rickshaw
Ambrose Bierce: The Moonlit Road
Lafcadio Hearn: The Story of Ming-Y
Lafcadio Hearn: Yuki-Onna
THIS OLD HOUSE
Amyas Northcote: Brickett Bottom
E. F. Benson: How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery
G. G. Pendarves: Thing of Darkness
Edward Lucas White: The House of the Nightmare
Hector Bolitho: The House on Half Moon Street
Dick Donovan: A Night of Horror
Vincent O’sullivan: The Burned House
KIDS WILL BE KIDS
Rosemary Timperley: Harry
Michael Reaves: Make-Believe
A. M. Burrage: Playmates
Ramsey Campbell: Just Behind You
A. E. Coppard: Adam And Eve and Pinch Me
Steve Friedman: The Lost Boy of the Ozarks
THERE’S SOMETHING FUNNY AROUND HERE
Mark Twain: A Ghost’s Story
Donald E. Westlake: In At The Death
Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Ghost of Dr. Harris
“Ingulphus”: The Everlasting Club
Isaac Asimov and James Maccreigh: Legal Rites
Albert E. Cowdrey: Death Must Die
Frank Stockton: The Transferred Ghost
Oscar Wilde: The Canterville Ghost
A NEGATIVE TRAIN OF THOUGHT
August Derleth: Pacific 421
Robert Weinberg: The Midnight El
STOP—YOU’RE SCARING ME
Frederick Cowles: Punch and Judy
Henry S. Whitehead: The Fireplace
H. F. Arnold: The Night Wire 400
Fritz Leiber: Smoke Ghost 406
Wyatt Blassingame: Song of the Dead
I MUST BE DREAMING
Wilkie Collins: The Dream Woman 437
Washington Irving: The Adventure of the German Student
A SÉANCE, YOU SAY?
Joseph Shearing: They Found My Grave
Edgar Jepson: Mrs. Morrel’s Last Séance
Joyce Carol Oates: Night-Side
CLASSICS
M. R. James: “Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come To You My Lad”
W. W. Jacobs: The Monkey’s Paw
W. W. Jacobs: The Toll-House
Edith Wharton: Afterward
Willa Cather: Consequences
Cynthia Asquith: The Follower
Cynthia Asquith: The Corner Shop
H. P. Lovecraft: The Terrible Old Man
Erckmann-Chatrian: The Murderer’s Violin
Saki: The Open Window
Saki: Laura
Fitz-James O’Brien: What Was It?
Alexander Woollcott: Full Fathom Five
H. R. Wakefield: He Cometh and He Passeth By
Perceval Landon: Thurnley Abbey
THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES
Algernon Blackwood: The Woman’s Ghost Story
Victor Rousseau: The Angel of the Marne
Olivia Howard Dunbar: The Shell of Sense
Marjorie Bowen: The Avenging of Ann Leete
BEATEN TO A PULP
Greye La Spina: The Dead-Wagon
Urann Thayer: A Soul with Two Bodies
Arthur J. Burks: The Ghosts of Steamboat Coulee
Thorp Mcclusky: The Considerate Hosts
Cyril Mand: The Fifth Candle
August Derleth and Mark Schorer: The Return of Andrew
Bentley
M. L. Humphreys: The Floor Above
Manly Wade Wellman: School for the Unspeakable
A. V. Milyer: Mordecai’s Pipe
Julius Long: He Walked by Day
Dale Clark: Behind the Screen
MODERN MASTERS
M. Rickert: Journey into the Kingdom
H. R. F. Keating: Mr. Saul
Chet Williamson: Coventry Carol
OTTO PENZLER is the proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. He was publisher of The Armchair Detective, the founder of the Mysterious Press and the Armchair Detective Library, and created the publishing firm Otto Penzler Books. He has twice received the Edgar Award, for The Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection and The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives, as well as the Ellery Queen Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his many contributions to the field. He is the editor of The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, which was a New York Times bestseller, and several more Vintage Crime/Black Lizard anthologies, including The Big Book of Black Mask Stories, The Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries, The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories, and The Big Book of Jack the Ripper. He is also the series editor of The Best American Mystery Stories of the Year. His other anthologies include Murder for Love, Murder for Revenge, Murder and Obsession, The 50 Greatest Mysteries of All Time, and The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century. He wrote 101 Greatest Movies of Mystery & Suspense. He lives in New York City.
"Volumes of frightfulness. . . . No one should go through life (let
alone death) without experiencing W.W. Jacobs’s 'The Monkey’s Paw,'
Perceval Landon’s 'Thurnley Abbey,' Ambrose Bierce’s 'The Moonlit
Road' and M.R. James’s 'Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You My Lad.'
But Penzler also includes many stories that should be equally well
known. This year, for instance, I read for the first time Ellen
Glasgow’s 'The Shadowy Third'."
—The Washington Post
"If you enjoy, as I have since childhood, a great ghost story well
told, this book is required reading."
—Paste Magazine
"Wonderful. . . . A list on your computer is one thing. A big, fat,
juicy, paperback anthology like this is something else
altogether."
—The Buffalo News (editor's choice)
"Jam packed with enough classic horror and otherworldly stories to
keep you having nightmares through the month of October. . . . This
collection of short stories coupled with eerie vintage
illustrations is a must-have for the nightstand. The only thing
that can make it better is a flashlight under the covers."
—The Long Island Press
"This mountain-sized omnibus contains every wrinkle of the form you
could ever want. . . . There’s enough in this volume to
please both dilettantes and devotees among ghost story
readers."
—Publishers Weekly
"Penzler has done an excellent job of collecting interesting,
unnerving, and fascinating stories as well as providing nifty
tidbits in the introductions. Reading most of these stories just
before trying to sleep, though, is not recommended."
—Booklist
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