Charles Keeping's Book of Classic Ghost Stories

Rating:
Summary: Ghost stories.
Review: This is some of the most famous stories that he has gathered. Famous writers like Poe, Dickens and Wilde... In my oppinion this book is just as many others of this sort. They have the almost the same stories in every book. And after some of them you get pretty tired of them. I didn't like it at all, but i Know that some of you will.

Rating:
Summary: Good Collection of Familiar Classics, But Only Eight Stories
Review: This short book, like many other standard collections of ghost tales, includes The Body Snatcher (Robert Louis Stevenson), The Adventures of the German Student (Washington Irving), The Signalman (Charles Dickens), and something familiar from Edgar Allan Poe (in this case, The Black Cat).

The Body Snatcher has been abridged. The first four pages - largely context setting - have been deleted.

The remaining four stories were less familiar and the ghostly illustrations by the author do add a little flavor. Nonetheless, Charles Keeping's Book of Classic Ghost Stories is not likely to appeal to readers with much acquaintance with ghost stories. However, this little collection might be just the right book for a middle school reader new to ghost stories.

The other four stories include the Oscar Wilde's delightful and humorous The Canterville Ghost, The Escort by Daphne du Maurier, The Wailing Well by M. R. James, and The Sweeper by A. M. Burrage.

I recently read and reviewed Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M. R. James, but I have not previously encountered The Wailing Well. This short story is an effective blend of humor and terror; it is both funny and frightening. It is really quite different from the more serious ghost stories that I associate with the scholarly M. R. James.

The Escort and The Sweeper were interesting tales and I was surprised that I had not come across them earlier.