The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

“A Visit to the Museum” by Vladimir Nabokov © 1963. Reprinted by permission of Esquire Publications Inc.

“The Party” by William F. Nolan © 1967. Originally published in Playboy, April 1967. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Haunted” by Joyce Carol Oates © 1987. Originally published in The Architecture of Fear, 1987. Reprinted by permission of Sara Menguc Literary Agency.

“Underground” by J. B. Priestley © 1974. Originally published in Collected Stories of J. B. Priestley, 1974. Reprinted by permission of PFD.

“Video Nasty” by Philip Pullman © 1985. Originally published in Cold Feet, 1985. Reprinted by permission of A. P. Watt Ltd.

“Christmas Honeymoon” by Howard Spring © 1940. Originally published in the London Evening Standard, December 1940. Reprinted by permission of PFD.

“The Richpins” by E. G. Swain © 1912. Originally published in The Stoneground Ghost Tales, 1912. Reprinted by permission of W. Heffer & Sons.

“The Night the Ghost Got In” by James Thurber © 1933. Originally published in the New Yorker, September 1933. Reprinted by permission of the Estate of James Thurber.

“The Inexperienced Ghost” by H. G. Wells © 1902. Originally published in the Strand magazine, March 1902. Reprinted by permission of A. P. Watt Ltd.

“The Ghost” by A. E. Van Vogt © 1942. Originally published in Unknown Worlds, October 1942. Reprinted by permission of Forrest J. Ackerman.

“Clytie” by Eudora Welty © 1941. Originally published in The Southern Review, Number 7, 1941. Reprinted by permission of the Penguin Group.

“The Haunted Chateau” by Dennis Wheatley © 1943. Originally published in Gunmen, Gallants and Ghosts, 1943. Reprinted by permission of Hutchinson Publishers and the Estate of Dennis Wheatley.

“Full Fathom Five” by Alexander Woollcott © 1938. Originally published in the New Yorker, October 1938. Reprinted by permission of the New Yorker.

Foreword

I Have Been Ghost Hunting

Cambridge has the reputation of being a city of ghosts. With its centuries’ old colleges, streets of ancient buildings and a maze of small alleyways, the spirits of the men and women who once lived and died in the area are almost tangible. Legends have long circulated about wandering spooks, numerous eyewitness reports exist in newspapers and books about restless phantoms – the internet can also be employed to summon up details of several more – and a nocturnal “ghost tour” is a regular feature of the city’s tourist trail.

A story that is associated with one particular property, the Gibbs’ Building on The Backs, has intrigued me for years. The Gibbs is an imposing, three-story edifice, standing in the shadow of King’s College Chapel: that wonderful example of Gothic architecture built in three stages over a period of 100 years. King’s itself was founded in 1441 by King Henry VI as an ostentatious display of royal patronage and intended for boys from Eton College. It has, of course, boasted some distinguished if varied alumni over the years, including E. M. Forster, John Bird and, most recently, Zadie Smith, when the college became one of the first to admit women.

Gibbs’ Building lies on the banks of the River Cam which, as its name suggests, gave the city its name. The area was first settled by the Romans at the southern edge of the Fens, a stretch of countryside consisting mostly of marshes and swamps that were not properly drained until the 17th century. Cambridge evolved at the northernmost point, where the traveller was first confronted by the ominous, dank Fens. Even then, stories were already swirling in from the darkness of strange figures and unearthly sounds that only the very brave – or foolish – would think of investigating.