The 7th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories

This is the penultimate Aickman-edited volume, and here he contributes an introduction and a story, repeating his theme that “scientific advance and naked horror are rapidly becoming hard to differentiate” and that ghost stories provide a “world elsewhere” in which we can be free.  The 7th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories contains:

“Levitation”, by Joseph Payne Brennan.  Set in the always unsavory world of the carnival, this very short story is quickly read, enjoyed, and forgotten.

“Dearth’s Farm”, by Gerald Bullett.  The protagonist visits a country cousin whose husband has a close relationship with his horse.  Aickman talks this story up in his introduction, and it is unusual, but pretty flat.

“Esmeralda”, by John Keir Cross.  This story of a middle-aged tobacconist with an unhappy marriage is vividly written and unexpectedly savage.  A highlight of the collection.

“The Dead Valley,” by Ralph Adams Cram.  Cram was known more for architecture than fiction, but this story of, well, a dead valley, is certainly memorable.  Aickman says it “describes the border landscape between the outer vision and the inner.”

“The Visit to the Museum”, by Vladimir Nabokov.  A man’s trip to a provincial museum becomes increasingly surreal, and he may never exit, at least not to a destination he desires.

“Gone Away”, by A.E. Coppard.  Aickman (perhaps not much of a traveler?) claims that anyone crossing the English Channel will have, at times, the feeling expressed in this story of three tourists encountering inexplicable events as they drive through France.  Coppard skillfully portrays a quickly burgeoning panic here.

“Governor Manco and the Soldier,” by Washington Irving.  Irving is far from New York in this enjoyable Spanish tale.

“The Cicerones,” by Robert Aickman.  For me, at least, this is one of Aickman’s more opaque tales (which is saying something).  Trent tours a Flemish cathedral with some unexpected guides.  “The Cicerones” is full of religious allusions and sustained menace.

“Old Mrs. Jones,” by Mrs. Riddell.  In this Victorian novella, a new family rents an old house in London, only to learn that the ghost of Mrs. Jones is said to roam about at night.  The Joneses mysteriously disappeared (“The Kilkenny cats left their tails behind them, but the doctor and his wife took away every bit of their bodies”), hence the availability and affordability of the house.  “Solid literary craftsmanship” here, as Aickman puts it.

“Over an Absinthe Bottle,” by W.C. Morrow.  Down on his luck, Kimberlin plays dice with a stranger in a San Francisco restaurant.

“Where the Woodbine Twineth,” by Davis Grubb.  Grubb, best known for Night of the Hunter, lays on the Southern flavor in this concise tale of New World fairies.