The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

PETER HAINING has written and edited a number of bestselling books on the supernatural, notably the widely acclaimed Ghosts: The Illustrated History (1975) and A Dictionary of Ghosts (1982), which have been translated into several languages including French, German, Russian and Japanese. His companion volume to this anthology, Haunted House Stories, was published by Robinson in 2005. A former journalist and publisher, he lives in a sixteenth-century timber frame house in Suffolk that is haunted by the ghost of a Napoleonic prisoner of war.

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THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF

Modern Ghost Stories

Great Supernatural Tales of The Twentieth Century

Edited by PETER HAINING

Collection and editorial material copyright © Peter Haining 2007

All rights reserved.

For my wife

Philippa

– who has shared a lifetime with ghosts

“Ghosts, to make themselves manifest, require two conditions abhorrent to the modern mind: silence and continuity.”

Edith Wharton, 1937

“The modern ghost story appears to be as much about longing as it is about dread.”

Sinclair McKay, 2001

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

FOREWORD

1. RAISING SPECTRES: The Modern Tradition

“OH WHISTLE, AND I’LL COME TO YOU, MY LAD”

M. R. James

THE HOUSE AT TREHEALE

A. C. Benson

THE RICHPINS

E. G. Swain

THE EVERLASTING CLUB

Arthur Gray

NUMBER SEVENTY-NINE

A. N. L. Munby

2. GHOST WRITERS: The “Golden Era”

PLAYING WITH FIRE

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

THE HOUSE SURGEON

Rudyard Kipling

THE GROVE OF ASHTAROTH

John Buchan

A MAN FROM GLASGOW

Somerset Maugham

THE LAST LAUGH

D. H. Lawrence

THE VISIT TO THE MUSEUM

Vladimir Nabokov

3. PHANTOM RANKS: Supernatural at War

THE BOWMEN

Arthur Machen

THE GHOST OF U65

George Minto

“VENGEANCE IS MINE”

Algernon Blackwood

THE PUNISHMENT

Lord Dunsany

THE HAUNTED CHATEAU

Dennis Wheatley

PINK MAY

Elizabeth Bowen

A GREMLIN IN THE BEER

Derek Barnes

MONEY FOR JAM

Sir Alec Guinness

4. THE GHOST-FEELERS: Modern Gothic Tales

THE LADY’S MAID’S BELL

Edith Wharton

THE DUENNA

Marie Belloc Lowndes

CLYTIE

Eudora Welty

THE POOL

Daphne du Maurier

A SPOT OF GOTHIC

Jane Gardam