Great Ghost Stories, Tales of Mystery and Madness
edited by R. Chetwynd-Hayes & Stephen Jones
Cemetery Dance, $40, 360 pages, ISBN: 1587671034
reviewed by Barry Hunter

Here is a chance for a new generation to discover the origins and the writers that are not thought of today in the context of ghosts and horror. They have also collected some of the top writers of today to make these twenty-five stories memorable and to show that mystery and madness are ageless.

Guy de Maupassant, Washington Irving, S. Baring-Gould, Sir Walter Scott, and Daniel Defoe are all well known and have many other works for which they are well known. Ambrose Bierce, F. Marion Crawford, and J. Sheridan Le Fanu are remembered for their darker works but are almost impossible to find anywhere. The volumes of works by Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Brian Lumley and Gary Kilworth assure you that you know a scare is in store.

We have ghosts on unlit country roads, on trains, and untraveled rivers. There are ghosts looking for revenge and some looking for love. There’s even a story about one looking for a new body. There is a ghost here to give most everyone a shiver or a shudder, so pick it up and find out for yourself.