Product Description

United by a perfect chilling atmosphere and graceful literary style, these ghostly stories range from the horror of vampires, homicidal ghosts and monstrous spectral worms and slugs (appearing in the classic "Negotium Perambulans" and "And No Bird Sings") to the satire of humorous tales that poke fun at charlatan mediums and fake seances ("Spinach" and "Mr Tilly's Seance"). This new edition brings together E.F. Benson's greatest stories, making this the one book that no fan of Benson's or of things spectral can afford to miss.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #810799 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 635 pages

About the Author
E.F. Benson (1867-1940) was the son of an Archbishop of Canterbury and wrote over a hundred books during his lifetime, including many popular novels and biographies. He lived in Rye from 1919 to his death, and was mayor of this Sussex town. Several of his ghost stories are set in Rye, which has also been immortalized as 'Tilling' in his wonderful 'Mapp & Lucia' novels. He was best known in his day for his ghost stories.

Customer Reviews

"room for one more inside, sir!"
One of the greatest ghost-story writers who ever lived, E F Benson's "spook stories" (as he himself called them) are a vital read for anyone who likes a good spine-tingler. Collected in this volume are over 50 of them, not all of which will impress a modern reader, but those that do I guarantee will have the desired effect. Some of the themes can get a tad repetitive, for instance you get a bit tired of the wronged person returning from beyond the grave to wreck havoc on his/her tormentor, but this is offset by some startlingly imaginative ideas in other tales. A fair number are set in Cornwall, Norfolk, London, or in and around Benson's own beloved Rye (known as Tilling in his stories), but some are set in areas as diverse as Egypt and the London Underground.

I haven't the space here to mention all of them, but the ones that stood out for me are "The Bus-Conductor", about a man who sees a hearse standing outside his house in the middle of the night, driven by an improbably-cheery bus-conductor with the cry of "room for one more inside, sir!" This was subsequently dramatized in the classic 1945 British chiller "Dead Of Night". "The Man Who Went Too Far" is a strangely pagan-ish Arthur Machen-style tale about a man who seems to have regained his youth and vitality by communing with Nature. "The Horror-Horn" is a splendidly bloodthirsty and terrifying story about a forgotten tribe of primitive savage humans living up a mountain in Switzerland. "Negotium Perambulans" is rich in atmosphere, set in a remote Cornish village which houses a demonic giant slug (a similar theme explored less effectively in "And No Bird Sings"). "The Face" is genuinely very disturbing, about a young wife and mother haunted by the face in a portrait she has seen in a gallery. The mystery in this story is never cleared up, but that doesn't matter in the slightest as the denouement is truly horrifying.

The most disturbing tale of the whole collection for me though has actually very little in it of the supernatural. "The Corner House" is about a terrified little man who lives a hellish existence with his monstrously overbearing and bloated wife. There is something akin to the very best of the old "Tales Of The Unexpected" series about this one. As with all horror Benson is at his best when normal life is seen to take a dark turn. Much has been written about Benson's sexuality and his attitude towards women. It is true that many of the villains in these stories are women, but I think that was just Benson drawing from life, as all writers do. His own mother was formidably eccentric, and his sister had lapses of violent insanity in which she tried to kill her. Benson himself had a distaste of sex, a wish not to have anything to do with it, (so many of the main characters in these stories are young men taking celibate holidays together) and this comes out (sub-consciously or not I don't know) in many of the stories. So we have "Mrs Amworth", a vampire story about a middle-aged woman who preys on adolescent boys in a Miss Marple-type English village. (We can also see this attitude in "The Horror-Horn" when the central male character stumbles across one of the females of the tribe, and is horrified by the sight of her bestial, naked body). "Inscrutable Decrees" is a dark and unusual tale about a female sadist, who gets a quiet pleasure out of watching people or animals die. "The Outcast" is a about a woman considered to be so evil that when she dies neither the sea nor the earth will accept her body. "The Room In The Tower" has a menacing feel, about an evil old lady strongly reputed to have been a vampire. "At The Farmhouse" has an oddly D H Lawrence feel to it: an embittered artist plots to kill his alcoholic wife, only to find that her witchcraft is too much for him.

If you read just those stories you would think this man had a real problem with the female sex, but there are plenty of villainous men in this collection too. "The Step" is about a real nasty piece of work, a drunken bully, who goes around evicting poor people from their homes in Alexandria, only to get a very surreal come-uppance. "The Dance" is about a grotesque middle-aged man who plays cruel mind-games with his much younger wife. "James Lamp" is about a man who has done away with his wife, only to have her come to collect him after death. "Christopher Comes Back" is about an insufferably selfish and neurotic writer, who treats his wife like an unpaid dogsbody.

Having said all that though, and there are dark and sinister themes aplenty in this collection, there is also a strong feeling of escapism about them. Benson is writing about another world for us. A world where people dressed for dinner, were able to take month-long holidays by the sea, and had an inexhaustible supply of servants to take the everyday chores off their shoulders. It is a world strongly reminiscent of Agatha Christie and P G Wodehouse. If you want nostalgia mixed in with your horror then this is just the thing. Enjoy!

A must for true blue gothic ghost stories
E.F. Benson (to me anyhow) is one of the 'fathers' of the ghost story genre. He is up there with Algernon Blackwood, F. Marion Crawford, M.R. James and S. Le Fanu. Loved this book. I hunted everywhere for it, it has been out of print for some time. I couldn't believe my luck when I found it. MINE MINE MINE! I was soooo happy. It's wonderful to finally get a book that you have been searching for. Read some of his stories in other anthologies and wanted to read other stories by him. Lovely book to read while the rest of the house is asleep! Curl up in bed with a nice cup of tea, a cozy cat at your feet and get ready for a good old fashioned ghost story. Take this book on your holiday at the beach (not quite the same atmosphere - Maybe if you read it at night in a lonely cabin in the woods.) YUMMY! Catherine -

It stays with you!
I read this book years and years ago when I was 14, and it has never left me. Since then I have been looking for a book with the same potential to scare you half to death!

I strongly recommend these stories for old fashion spine tingling chills in the ghost story telling genre. Dont read it alone!