Ghostly
Reviews
I fully admit that I originally grabbed this book off the shelf because it was about ghosts and had a picture of a cat on it. Not every story has cats, but all of them were about ghosts, and it was a delightful collection of mostly classic stories I had not read yet! Some were creepy, some melancholy, and there were even a few humorous takes on the genre! Standouts from the volume are Honeysuckle Cottage (PG Wodehouse), an absolutely hilarious haunted house story (a type of story I didn't know I needed more of!); the Mezzotint (MR James), which was delightfully unnerving in its description of a mysteriously changing piece of art; Playmates (AM Burrage), a bittersweet tale of an orphaned girl whose only friends were ghosts; The Pink House (Rebecca Curtis), an unsettling, but quiet tale about possession; and August 2026 (Ray Bradbury) which is possibly one of the most frightening and eerie short stories that I have ever read.
Highlights
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground The swallows circling with their shimmering sound: And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum-trees in tremulous white; Robins will wear their feathery fire, Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire; And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done. Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, If mankind perished utterly: And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone.
There Will Come Soft Rains, Ray Bradbury
The house, accepting another day at end, as it had accepted an hundred thousand gone, seemed to settle deeper into its rest among the shadows.
They - Rudyard Kipling
It has been remarked that silence obtains its fullest and most impressive quality when it is broken by some minute sound; and, truth to tell, the place was never still.
The Beckoning Fair One - Oliver Onions