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Best Ghost Stories

Best Ghost Stories

List Price: $10.95
Your Price: $8.21
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Victorian-era horror
Review: I did enjoy these stories, but wanted to warn the potential reader that they may find them highly dated. His ideas are based on the psychoanalysis of the time, relying heavily on Roscrucians, 19th century spiritual faddishness, and the like (a la Crowley or Dion Fortune.) Although well written, with a great sense of scene, our more jaded King era readers or anyone up on modern Magick will find these mild and the ideas just plain passe.

Note, of course, we still read the classics regardless of era, but Lovecraft's work is far more durable.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Unsurpassed Fiction That Will Change Your Life
Review: It's unfortunate that this collection of unequalled horror and suspense pieces goes by the name "ghost stories." In fact, there are almost no ghosts to be found in this book. Blackwood (1869-1951), who must rank as one of the greatest English language fiction writers ever, is also one of literature's best-kept secrets, a genius who exquisitely married mind-bending metaphysical revelation with unbearable suspense.

Calling these "ghost stories" is like calling Moby Dick a "fishing tale" or Les Miserables a "detective story" -- it simply doesn't begin to reveal the scope and depth of what is contained. It's hard to compare Blackwood with any other writer, because he was so unique. He was a major influence on H. P. Lovecraft, but was vastly more compelling, subtle and profound. You might think of him as Hermann Hesse meets a maturer version of H. P. Lovecraft.

The place to start in the collection is with Blackwood's hallmark stories, The Willows and The Wendigo. They could just as well be titled The Camping Trip From Hell and The Hunting Trip From Hell respectively, and I do mean Hell. Presumably the movie The Blair Witch Project drew its inspiration from those metaphysical shockers, in comparison to which The Blair Witch Project is just a romp in the woods (no pun intended!).

Yet Blackwood is not difficult to follow or to begin to understand. His prose ceaselessly crackles with sublime, cumulative thrills on every page. A suggestion: Read Blackwood slowly, without distractions, so you can savor and ponder every line. You won't be disappointed, but be prepared to never look at the world quite the same again.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Unsurpassed Fiction That Will Change Your Life
Review: It's unfortunate that this collection of unequalled horror and suspense pieces goes by the name "ghost stories." In fact, there are almost no ghosts to be found in this book. Blackwood (1869-1951), who must rank as one of the greatest English language fiction writers ever, is also one of literature's best-kept secrets, a genius who exquisitely married mind-bending metaphysical revelation with unbearable suspense.

Calling these "ghost stories" is like calling Moby Dick a "fishing tale" or Les Miserables a "detective story" -- it simply doesn't begin to reveal the scope and depth of what is contained. It's hard to compare Blackwood with any other writer, because he was so unique. He was a major influence on H. P. Lovecraft, but was vastly more compelling, subtle and profound. You might think of him as Hermann Hesse meets a maturer version of H. P. Lovecraft.

The place to start in the collection is with Blackwood's hallmark stories, The Willows and The Wendigo. They could just as well be titled The Camping Trip From Hell and The Hunting Trip From Hell respectively, and I do mean Hell. Presumably the movie The Blair Witch Project drew its inspiration from those metaphysical shockers, in comparison to which The Blair Witch Project is just a romp in the woods (no pun intended!).

Yet Blackwood is not difficult to follow or to begin to understand. His prose ceaselessly crackles with sublime, cumulative thrills on every page. A suggestion: Read Blackwood slowly, without distractions, so you can savor and ponder every line. You won't be disappointed, but be prepared to never look at the world quite the same again.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Fine, old-fashioned horror stories
Review: Just a note to agree with your reviewer and the "Reader from Illinois". "The Wendigo" and "The Willows", in particular, are creepy and effective stories that most fans will enjoy, and anyone interested in the history of the horror genre should read.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Two great classics
Review: The title is a little misleading, since it hints at creaky old victorian tales about spectres haunting the houses where they died. Anyone stumbling blindly into this volume will therefore be shocked by "The Willows" and "The Wendigo", two of the best horror stories ever written. Most people today don't find the idea of ghosts terribly scary because they are so easy to understand (spirits of the dead). "The Willows" is frightening because the forces involved are almost impossible to understand! And "The Wendigo" will scare you away from wintry forest landscapes (and probably most of Canada) for a good long while!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Supernatural horror at its best
Review: There are thirteen stories in this book, and while only four of them really stand out, they are all certainly worth reading. Don't let the title fool you, by the way. I can't give you any numbers-it's been a while since I've read some of the stories-but I would say that less than half of the stories are "ghost stories," at least in the traditional sense. One of the stories-"Max Hensig"-isn't even about the supernatural, neither "The Willows" or "The Wendigo"-which most people seem to consider his best works-involve ghosts. The four stories I think really shine, by the way, are "The Willows," "The Wendigo," "The Listener," and "Max Hensig." If you want to know what they're about, you'll have to read them, but I will say that "The Listener" is the only ghost story of the four. Although King, Lovecraft, and Blackwood are all "horror" writers, fans of the first two should realise that Blackwood's style is completely different. He builds horror through suspense, not blood and gore, an art that modern horror writers seem to have lost (actually, King has shown that he can write horror without blood (although he does include a lot of it in most of his books), and Lovecraft is such a lousy writer that I can't actually remember if he uses it to any great extent. To be honest, I used those two because they were the only "modern" horror writers I could think of. Although Lovecraft isn't really that modern.)

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good campfire tales
Review: These short stories are not exactly ghost stories (well some are) but good creepy tales that are great to read. They are not the general genre of horror, there's no full scale slaughter or people dangling anywhere but are eerie stories full of suspense. Some are a bit wordy, not as in diction, but as in over explaining the scene. This helps build the suspense most of the time, but in a few of the stories it slows things down a little too much. Blackwood has a great style for setting vivid backgrounds and characters that make his stories just so readableand and likable, that I think most people will like it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good campfire tales
Review: These short stories are not exactly ghost stories (well some are) but good creepy tales that are great to read. They are not the general genre of horror, there's no full scale slaughter or people dangling anywhere but are eerie stories full of suspense. Some are a bit wordy, not as in diction, but as in over explaining the scene. This helps build the suspense most of the time, but in a few of the stories it slows things down a little too much. Blackwood has a great style for setting vivid backgrounds and characters that make his stories just so readableand and likable, that I think most people will like it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: black wood
Review: this collection contains many of his finest. wndigo, willows, glamor of the snow.... Blackwood is great at creating the setting, no the greatest. and in describing the conflict between ancient and modern. also he is great at describing the lure of the dark. some of the stories are nor so great, like max hensig. which is why it's four stars

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Wonderful Ghost Stories
Review: This is a wonderful anthology of Algeron Blackwood's Stories. The Willows and The Wendigo are two of my all-time favorites. There are some rare gems that are missing from the collection, such as The Kit-bag and The Scamp; and I don't think the novella Max Hensig was an appropriate closing to a book of "Ghost Stories".

I must also admit that I'm not a fan of psychic investigator John Silence. I think that horror tales lose a lot when there is a pseudo-scientific attempt to rationalize the events at the end. However, the writers of the Victorian and Edwardian period were enchanted by spiritualism. And some of the barmy explanations of the occult can be mildly amusing (such as the re-occurring notion that places suck up the bad influences of previous happenings like tobacco smoke, and project them on the mind like a camera lucida), but it becomes tedious when this sort of twaddle goes on and on for a dozen pages or so.

But in truth, you're not going to find a more comprehensive anthology of Blackwood's ghost stories, which is both in print and affordable, than this Dover edition.


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