Books in Ghastly Ghost Stories series

The Body-Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson - Short Ghost Stories. The Body Snatcher (1884) is a short story by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. First published in the Pall Mall Christmas "Extra", in December 1884, the story is based on characters in the employ of Robert Knox, around the time of the Burke and Hare murders. The story begins with a group of friends sharing a few drinks, when an eminent doctor, Wolfe MacFarlane, enters. One of the friends, Fettes, recognizes the name and angrily confronts the new arrival. Although his friends all find this behaviour suspicious, none of them can understand what might lie behind it. It transpires that MacFarlane and Fettes had attended medical school together, under the famous professor of anatomy, Robert Knox. Their duties included taking receipt of bodies for dissection, and paying the pair of shifty and suspicious men who supplied them. On one occasion, Fettes identifies a body as that of a woman he knew, and is convinced she has been murdered. But MacFarlane talks him out of reporting the incident, lest they are both implicated in the crime. Later, Fettes meets MacFarlane at a tavern, along with a man named Gray, who treats MacFarlane in a rude manner. The following night, MacFarlane brings Gray's body along as a dissection sample. Although Fettes is now certain that his friend has committed murder, MacFarlane again convinces him to keep his silence, persuading him that if he is not courageous enough to perform such manly deeds as these, he will end up as just another victim. The two men make sure the body is comprehensively dissected, destroying any forensic evidence. Fettes and MacFarlane continue their work, without being implicated in any crime. However, when a shortage of bodies leaves their mentor in need, they are sent to a country churchyard to exhume a recently buried woman. As they are driving back with the body seated between them, they begin to feel nervous and stop to take a better look. They are shocked to discover that the body between them is that of Gray, which they thought they had destroyed.

The Ghost Ship And Other Ghost Stories Richard Middleton TALES OF TERROR “I thought it was queer when I saw a drowned sailor float by in the thin air with his hair and beard all full of bubbles. It was the first time I had seen anything quite like that at Fairfield.” Middleton suffered from severe depression, known as melancholia. He spent the last nine months of his life in Brussels, where in December 1911 he took his life by poisoning himself with chloroform, which had been prescribed as a remedy for his condition. His literary reputation was kept alive by Edgar Jepson and Arthur Machen, the latter of whom wrote an introduction to Middleton's collection The Ghost Ship and Other Stories, and later by John Gawsworth. His stories have appeared in several anthologies. An encounter by Middleton with the young Raymond Chandler is said to have influenced the latter to postpone his career as writer. Chandler wrote, "Middleton struck me as having far more talent than I was ever likely to possess; and if he couldn't make a go of it, it wasn't very likely that I could."

The Signal-Man by Charles Dickens. "The Signal-Man" is a horror/mystery story by Charles Dickens, first published as part of the Mugby Junction collection in the 1866 Christmas edition of All the Year Round. The story begins with the narrator calling "Halloa! Below there!" into a railway cutting. The signalman standing on the railway below does not look up, as the narrator expects, but rather turns about and stares into the railway tunnel that is his responsibility to monitor. The narrator calls down again and asks permission to descend. The signalman seems reluctant. The railway hole is a cold, gloomy, and lonely place. The signalman still seems to be in fear of the narrator, who tries to put him at ease. The signalman feels that he had seen the narrator before, but the narrator assures him that this is impossible.