[[nid:6409]]This collection is a little different in that it presents writers in a type of chronology that allows the reader to enjoy the development of the ghost story from the early l8th century ballads to the 21st century. Sir Walter Scott’s “The Tapestried Chamber” and Edith Wharton’s “The Lady Maid’s Bell” are included—old classics—as well as Olivia Howard Dunbar’s “The Shell of Sense” and Georgia Wood Pangborn’s “The Substitute” give a taste of the new and obscure, while not failing to instill the sweet, old dread of the classic haunted tale.
Another interesting feature of this book is that we have the usual pantheon of ghost writers found in any good collection: Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Henry James, Poe, Mark Twain, M.R. James, Ambrose Bierce—but mostly presenting stories that are not the usual fare in anthologies, so we get to enjoy an exposure to the authors and their craft that we, perhaps, have not seen before. This was the part of the whole book that I enjoyed best – the refreshing new air of stories I had not read before but whose authors I already knew.
