The Literary Ghost: Great Contemporary Ghost Stories

This book is full of old ghost legends. Some of them are really great, old interesting yarns, others are sort of flat and bland. That's the reason this didn't get a five-star rating. Otherwise, I'm happy with this anthology and I do recommend it.

By "literary" I mean stories that are original instead of anecdotal. These stories are not campfire tales--not that there's anything wrong with that!--but readers who are used to "told-for-true" stories ought to explore the literary ghost story as a complement to the other type, not because it's good for you like oatmeal, but because it takes you to a whole new level of fun. And ghost stories ought always to be--in one way or another--fun. Think of the stories of Sheridan Le Fanu and M.R. James, those of the Victorian women writers like Cynthia Asquith, Amelia Edwards. THE GHOST STORIES OF EDITH WHARTON are among my personal favorites. Novella and novel-length stories such as Henry James' THE TURN OF THE SCREW, Shirley Jackson's THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, and Peter Straub's GHOST STORY, fall into the category, "literary," although nothing beats the short ghost story for a quick trip into the Twilight Zone, which may be why collections of short ghost stories are becoming collectors items. Beyond being just plain fun to read, literary ghost stories are often character driven, and contain some psychological depth. They might make powerful feminist statements, as Kay Weldon does in "Angel, All Innocence," in this collection. Literary ghost stories can explore spiritual issues as does Isaac B. Singer's "A Crown of Feathers." Other great stories in THE LITERARY GHOST are Joyce Carol Oates' "The Others," Muriel Spark's classic and often-anthologized "The Portobello Road," and Graham Greene's creepy "A Little Place Off the Edgware Road." In the introduction to THE LITERARY GHOST, editor Larry Dark concludes that this kind of story, "at its best, ...can be immensely satisfying to our mortal souls and their yearning for completion."