We've finally made it to the end! In this final installment of our Very Best Classic Ghost Stories series, we are – to quote Bob Ross – just going to have a little fun. I’ll be the first to admit that I am out of my depth as a consumer of postwar horror, but I certainly don't disparage it, and have a long list of beloved stories which are younger than my parents. So, in short, I certainly don’t claim this list to be definitive – but every single story listed here is a dear favorite of mine – an old friend with whom I would love you to become acquainted.
Since I am less acquainted with the postwar canon, many of these tales are rarely read gems to whom I happened to take a shine. Of course there are many classics here as well – Aickman, Bradburry, Campbell, Derleth, Lieber and Oates – but the number of lingering, tightly-written fantasias included here which have only been anthologized three or four times should be something of a scandal to publishing.
The date range that we’re looking at here is roughly 1950 to 2010 -- an era defined by defiant deconstructionists, rebelious iconoclasts, and three young generations rolling through repetitive cycles of expression, violence, and cynicism. There are several recurring themes that typify horror fiction written during the Cold War and up through early Internet Age: modern malaise, existential anxiety, social alienation, violence towards the vulnerable, the loss of innocence, and the ubiquitous breakdown of the family unit (viz., domestic abuse, divorce, estrangement, dysfunction).
This is where the trope of kids in horror stories really comes from (“Turn of the Screw” notwithstanding), and it shows in the sudden explosion of child protagonists. Typically ignored by the family and community, they rove their suburbs in pairs or posses until the inevitable tragedy strikes: one or all of them fall prey to the monsters prowling the shadowy perimeters unnoticed by adults. While vulnerable children pop up in Victorian, Edwardian, and Modernist horror, they are usually props for the protagonists (almost always single, eligible men or women, occasional young couples) to guard and ring their hands over. After World War II, however, the protagonists are just as likely (if not more likely) to be anxious latchkey kids as they are single, young adults.
Another pervasive theme in these stories is the loneliness of said, single adults. Women are depicted as either unprotected victims, dangerously adrift and vulnerable to sexual violence or as sexually-liberated femme fatales. Men are depicted as either spiraling victims, dangerously adrift and vulnerable to self-harming violence, or as sexually-rapacious psychopaths. Whereas Victorian and Edwardian ghost stories place the locus of fear inwardly (viz., the real terror is the evil that lurks within our own, individual souls), postmodern ghost stories turn that locus outward (viz., the real terror is the evil that lurks in the predators hiding in our own families and communities – the prowling, unnoticed “others”).
There is a genuine paranoia – especially as regards male/female relationships – in these stories that may find its roots in the poorly-communicated goals of the Sexual Revolution and the surge of social unrest, serial killings, and terrorism that followed the fall of Kennedy’s Camelot in the United States.
However, some of these stories break rank and – instead of dwelling on violence and anxiety – offer gently mournful meditations on the human condition. Some are more sad, some more bittersweet, but each story of this variety harkens back to the wispier, melancholy ghost stories of the Victorians (albeit with a uniquely modern spin). They are less cynical and more anguished, less frustrated and more disappointed. These are often my personal favorites, and provide a cool respite from the heat of the raging, anarchic, Stephen King-like tragedies that were popularized during the ‘70s – though they are no less tragic (the former are more like Macbeth – savage and shocking – the latter more like King Lear – soulful and lingering).
Finally – as befits postmodern literature – many of these tales are what I’ll term “puzzlers”: enigmatic riddles requiring multiple reads to "solve" them. Some of these have never made complete sense to me, but I don’t spite them for it – they’re old, eccentric friends of mine, whose curious ways charm rather than annoy me. But confounding they certainly are. These stories often will use absurdity, non-chronological story-telling, juxtaposed doppelgangers, surreal imagery, or unreliable narrators to make both the meaning and the plot obscure. Several readings will be required, but they're well worth the investment.
To be included, these stories had to fit four criteria:
They were specifically short tales about a haunting (a pervasive, paranormal disturbance to people or places that -- though typically caused by spirits of the dead -- can also include demons, elementals, premonitions, manifestations, or obsessions) written in English between 1950 and the 2010 (or so).
They are very well-written and engaging, with quality prose, atmosphere, and characters
They have memorable qualities, details, or plots which make them stand out from their contemporaries
They have a particularly moving atmosphere and resolution – either because of profound emotion (“The Faceless Thing”) or intense creepiness (“Where Angels Come In”) that makes them linger in the imagination
If someone wanted to ask me my very favorite post-modern ghost stories, these would be my picks.
1. Boxes by Al Sarrantonio
Just before suppertime, two boys creep to the edge of town where they spy on the isolated house of the Man Who Collects Boxes, and break into his strange home – furnished solely with thousands of boxes of all sizes, textures, colors, and dimensions. Some are cute, some enormous, some ominous. At first whimsical, the story begins to turn dark – along with the setting sun – as the boys realize that their fascination has caused them to become lost in the maze of boxes. Worse still, they remember that the house also comes with a man – a man who appears when one of the box lids slowly opens…
2. Cargo by E. Michael Lewis
Told from the perspective of a U. S. airman who is part of the crew of a cargo plane tasked with conveying dozens of coffins from the mass suicide at Jonestown, this story is subtle and believable, almost reading like a personal account of a creepy experience. It carries with it, however, the solemn gravitas of the historical scenario, and has a particularly unsettling dramatic tension when the airman and his crewmates begin to sense voices communicating between the bloated corpses stewing in the formaldehyde-filled coffins...
3. The Cicerones by Robert Aickman
An English traveler visits a deserted Flemish cathedral just before it shuts down for a midday break and finds himself entranced with its art – largely devoted to gruesome martyrdoms and the theme of sacrifice – but is repeatedly interrupted by increasingly uncanny expatriates who offer to guide him around (including a grinning Italian, a worldly American artist, and an English boy dressed like a Gainsborough portrait). With each encounter he comes nearer to the crypt, and when he finally arrives, he realizes – too late – that he has been guided there for his initiation.
4. Closing Time by Neil Gaiman
One of the most complex and unsettling ghost stories I’ve ever read, it begins with a group of barflies sharing their own personal ghost stories. The cake is taken, however, by an old man he describes his childhood misadventure when he encounters a group of rebellious boys who offer to lead him to a creepy little “playhouse” in the woods behind a manor. The doorknocker features a leering, red demon, and when the door is opened to a dark interior, the narrator must decide whether to follow his new friends or run away. The ending is infamously difficult to understand, but the vestigial instincts of fear and evil it stirs is powerful.
5. Come to the Party by Frances Garfield
A newly-signed author has been invited to his publisher’s party, but he, his wife, and the friend couple they invited to accompany them, can’t find his country house. After being almost run off the road by a grinning hippie, they stumble upon what seems to the right place, but one of the friends is put off by the place from the beginning: the partiers are all a little off, the food is suspicious, the house oddly dark, and everything smells of smoke. One by one, the newcomers disappear until the skeptical friend finds them waiting for her in the back room – and what she sees sends her running for her life.
6. Dead Call by William F. Nolan
One night a gloomy, middle-aged man – burdened with alcoholism, a floundering career, and a divorce – receives a disturbing phone call from a friend of his who recently traveled down a nearly identical path of substance abuse, depression, and interpersonal strife. The problem is – as the man tries to remind his caller – that his friend killed himself at the apex of his misery. But this isn’t a hard truth for his caller to accept: he isn’t trying to “cross over” or accept his fate – he wants his living friend to do those things, and that’s why he’s calling...
7. Different Kinds of Dead by Ed Gorman
A divorced, travelling salesman is driving down a lonely highway when he picks up a beautiful hitchhiker. She is dripping in elegance and mystery, and things become even more mysterious when the radio interrupts regular programming to report a local murder committed by a woman fitting her description – a description which the report notes is admittedly bizarre since it matches that of the dead man’s murdered wife. The following conversation explores the nature, definition, and states of death, asking the question: which person in the car is more dead?
8. Don’t Look Now by Daphne du Maurier
Following the traumatic death of their daughter, a heartbroken couple take a vacation to Venice which proves to be anything but restful. The husband is haunted by the recurring apparition of a little girl in a red, pixie-hooded coat – the spitting image of his daughter – and becomes obsessed with finding and rescuing the seemingly-lost girl, and troubled by premonitions of an impending death. Meanwhile, his wife consults a medium who echoes his instincts that disaster is approaching – a disaster realized when he finally corners the girl in the red coat…
9. Eenie, Meenie, Ipsateenie by Pat Cadigan
A relatable story about a childhood mistake, this tale begins with a group of bored, somewhat vicious kids playing an aggressive game of hide and seek. The fun, however, is marred by bullying, and the protagonist tries to evade his pursuer by running into an abandoned house. The dangerous setting proves fatal when he is found by the bully, and although he escapes the encounter, he walks away with a dark secret and an unyielding pursuer who follows him into adulthood, unwilling to end their game. This story of guilt and an unrelenting, vengeful ghost has serious M. R. James, W. W. Jacobs, and J. S. Le Fanu vibes – all wrapped up in classic Stephen King, effed-up childhood trauma style…
10. Everybody Goes by Michael Marshall Smith
A brief story that merits two readings, it involves a childhood friendship between two kids who are drinking up the bliss of a summer break filled with adventure and wonder. It pitches back and forth between nostalgic and sinister, as we intuit that something is not quite right about this friendship. Indeed, one of the children is due to head home, destined to grow up and forget this over time, while the other is to be left behind, forgotten, and befriended in another generation. As Peter Pan says, “all this has happened before, and all of it will happen again…”
11. The Faceless Thing by Edward D. Hoch
One of my very favorite stories on this list, it tells of an old man who returns to his childhood farmhouse in search of the mud monster whom he silently watched abduct his little sister while they were exploring a culvert in a field. Guided by an even older neighbor lady who remembers him, he ponders his disappointing life – marred by divorce, self-loathing, and loneliness – as he descends into the culvert at dusk, eager to challenge the creature who started the whole cycle. What he finds, however, surprises him, and his reaction will surprise you. It’s “It” by way of “A Prairie Home Companion” – one of the wistful episodes.
12. Fish Night by Joe R. Lansdale
Two salesmen suffer when their car breaks down in the desert, but the older man entertains his college boy partner with stories of the last time his car broke down there – how he experienced “Fish Night,” when the spectral sea creatures (ghosts of the prehistoric ocean that once covered the southwest) appeared to him at night. The younger man scoffs at this, but when he sees a fish glide into their car that night, he changes his mind. All seems rather magical until the old man – weary of society, sales, and aging – decides to strip and go for a swim with Blackwoodian results…
13. The Glove by Fritz Leiber
This seedy, Hitchcockian spook tale blends elements of “Rear Window” (a budding romance between two flirtatious busy-bodies as crime stalks their neighborhood) and “Frenzy” (a serial offender is on the lose – and he’s lost a telltale article of clothing) among others. Set in swinging San Francisco, it follows what happens one night when the cynical hero retains custody of a glove dropped by a rapist. While most of the story is part romance, part comedy, part thriller, the ending sees the glove betray the criminal who dropped it – possibly due to the surprising identity of its original owner.
14. The Guide by Ramsey Campbell
Written quite explicitly in the tradition of M. R. James, this slow-burning supernatural thriller concerns a man who – while on a walking holiday in the English countryside – encounters a mysterious, seemingly helpful local guide who leads him deeper into a desolate, uncanny landscape while exploring a ruined church – one the traveler saw mentioned in James’ real-life, academic guidebook, Norfolk and Suffolk. As their journey progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that they are ever-so gradually encroaching upon the liminal boundaries of a sinister, otherworldly dimension – one which threatens to consume the vacationer's sanity and reality itself, as the guide's true, disturbing nature is gradual revealed…
15. Haunted by Joyce Carol Oates
A truly haunting tale worthy of the name, this story explores the complex, competitive relationship between two girls – one grounded and tomboyish one romantic and flirtatious – who bond over their love of exploring abandoned houses in search of ghosts. The primary tension rests on the tomboy’s jealousy of her pretty friend who begins a toxic relationship with a local delinquent. One day the tomboy has an unsettling encounter with a cruel, elderly, female spirit in the bedroom of a derelict, and her later, passive role in her friend’s tragic fate suggests that she shares more in common with the puritanical specter than she’d care to admit…
16. The Hospice by Robert Aickman
A traveling salesman becomes lost and runs out of gas near the entrance of a local hospice. It advertises “good food, some accommodation,” and since it is nightfall, he decides to turn in there. The moment he enters the hospice, however, he finds himself in a surreal purgatory of uneasiness and Kafkaesque farce. The patrons are treated more like prisoners – force-fed mountains of subpar food, chained to the table, and corralled into their rooms like cells. Tired of what is becoming an increasingly serious situation, he determines to escape before something vaguely awful happens. An enigmatic, frustraing, disturbing, classic.
17. The House at Evening by Frances Garfield
Two beautiful, witchy prostitutes prepare for a night of work in their sleepy, New England college town. They spy two curious freshmen and invite them over for “refreshment.” The house they bring them to is something out of “Practical Magic”: a sprawling Victorian mansion decorated in antiques with Gothic boho vibes. The pair off and go to their respective rooms to make love, and the prostitutes hope they can have just enough time alone before the shuffling, ragged, hungry things in the hallway come in to get their share of leftovers…
18. The Lonesome Place by August Derleth
One of my all-time favorite stories, this strange tale presages “Boxes” and “Eenie, Meanie, Ipsateenie” with its tragic story of latchkey children forced to navigate the predatory world of their nocturnal neighborhood. Two boys dread being sent on errands in their quiet Midwestern town because it means walking past “the Lonesome Place” – a vacant, overgrown lot near a grain elevator – where they instinctively fear the monstrous thing that lurks there. Their anxieties are angrily dismissed by the adults, and they do survive the crossing each time, but one night, after they’ve grown up, tragic news of a child’s gruesome death haunts their consciences…
19. The One Who Waits by Ray Bradburry
Blending the ghostly with science fiction (see also: “Two Houses” by Kelly Link), Ray Bradburry depicts a disturbingly patient, predatory spirit who haunts the interior of an abandoned well on the surface of Mars, staring up at the cold stars above, and longing to fulfill its savage purpose – a bloody thirst which he is finally able to slack when unwary astronauts make landfall nearby. As one reviewer notes, it contains all the hallmarks of a Bradburry short story: “achingly beautiful prose, gruesome and mysterious deaths, and a profound sadness running through it like a dark undercurrent…”
20. The Others by Joyce Carol Oates
A normal, middle-class, middle-aged man living in a modern metropolis has his life interrupted when he begins seeing dead people in crowds: the unmistakable faces of long-dead relatives, teachers, neighbors, and friends. They are definitely real and he can talk to them, but they seem no different from any living people – other than he knows them to be dead. Laughed at by his wife, he descends into depression. One day he sees an entire crowd of them going down into a subway and decides to follow them…
22. The Other Side by Ramsey Campbell
A misanthropic schoolteacher – who loathes the abusive, lower-class students he has been tasked with – begins to have disturbing visions of a spectral clown dancing across the river outside his window. He first sees the clown, through binoculars, prancing in mid-air over the flames engulfing the tenements where many of his students live. Later, he is seen jigging in the ashy ruble, and later taunting and assaulting the delinquent teens from afar, confirming that he is a criminal of flesh and blood. The teacher is disgusted and outraged, but in his rush to finally confront the psychotic mime he makes a horrifying discovery…
22. The Pennine Tower Restaurant by Simon Unsworth
Written with chilling, scholarly objectivity, this false document purports – very believably – to be a history of the strange happenings at a real-life British motorway restaurant. Using the building’s strange, midcentury architecture – jutting like a dilapidated flying saucer over the otherwise hum-drum countryside – as inspiration, Unsworth goes into painstaking detail (using eyewitness quotations, footnotes, and scientific speculation) to describe both the restaurant’s historical rise and fall and a series of (fictitious) Lovecraftian deaths, disappearances, and tragedies which the authorities tried to hush up.
23. Poor Little Saturday by Madeline L’Engle
A lonely Georgian boy, suffering from malaria, finds relief from the summer heat in the shade of an abandoned plantation where the mistress is said to have hanged herself during the Civil War. He is surprised to meet a cheeky little girl on the property, who offers to introduce him to her friend, a sorceress who lives there unbeknownst to the locals. The sorceress cures him of his malaria, and lets him play with the girl, her ward, and their pet camel, Saturday. Mystery surrounds them: the sorceress seems to have a connection to the house’s past but also seems timeless, and the girl’s identity is also somehow tied to the mistress who committed suicide. But the answers to these riddles are forever lost when the townspeople find out about his playmates…
24. Ringing the Changes by Robert Aickman
An older man and his young bride arrive at an isolated, seaside resort for their May-December honeymoon. As with any Aickman story, however, the locals are truly bizarre and unsettling. They have a strange tradition of loudly ringing bells with increasing regularity – eccentric enough, until the only other guest at the hotel, who has lived there for years, warns them to leave at once, because the bells are being rung for a very specific purpose: to literally wake up the dead in the burial ground for an . Unfortunately, they do not heed his advice in time, and the macabre party (incited with jubilant cries that "The living and the dead dance together!") that ensues will forever darken their doomed marriage, only reinforcing its obvious themes of beauty and age, sex and death…
25. Samantha and the Ghost by Philippa Pierce
A sweetly sad ghost story (one of my favorite kinds), there are no jumps in this tale of an obese, reclusive ghost haunting a blighted apple tree that has grown to the height of his long-since demolished bedroom. Samantha’s grandpa wants to cut it down since it bears no fruit, and since she alone can see the ghost causing the blight, she tries to reason with him to save the tree. Stubborn, insecure, and selfish, he resists her appeals until she takes off the kid gloves. Throughout it is a funny, light story, but the bittersweet ending has always lingered with me.
26. The Same Dog by Robert Aickman
A typically enigmatic puzzler, this tragic Aickman story begins when a young couple stumble upon a strange, abandoned, ruin of a house, where they are stared at meaningfully by a solemn dog and a mysterious man, both of whom are lurking on the premises. Shortly after this, both of them are struck down with a serious illness, and when the man recovers, he learns that his girlfriend died – but the exact manner of her death is kept secret from him by his friends. Years later he returns to the ruin and is disturbed by what he finds. Don’t expect it to make sense – it’s all about the surreal feelings of doom…
27. Spectral Evidence by Gemma Files
Like “The Pennine Tower Restaurant,” this story (another intelligent puzzler which requires three readings to comprehend) is a false document written in a detached, academic fashion (complete with footnotes, field notes, and descriptions of implied, attached pictures – “see: Figure 2”). It purports to be an incident report from a disastrous science experiment intended to explore the existence of ghosts. The researchers attempt to keep their investigation objective and clinical, but when one of them dies, the others are forced to protect themselves from a very personal attacker…
28. Two Houses by Kelly Link
I’ve never quite made this story out; maybe you can. It follows in the inscrutable tradition of Gaiman’s “Closing Time,” where a group share their ghost stories – each disquieting in their own way – with the final story casting doubt on the reality of the entire event. The twist is that the storytellers are astronauts on their way to colonize space, guided by the omnipotent AI system. Gloom hangs over them as their sister ship recently disappeared, and they tell ghost stories to quell their anxieties, but the AI system seems to know more about the fate of the two ships than the astronauts are able to stomach…
29. The Waiting Room by Robert Aickman
After missing his train, a man is forced to take another which is slower and not normally for passengers. Unfortunately, he falls asleep on it and misses his connection. At the end of the line he must disembark. With no lodgings nearby, a strange porter lets him stay inside the station’s empty waiting room until the next train departure in the morning. His uncomfortable respite leads him to dreams of other passengers from different eras sharing the room with him. He later learns disturbing truths about the station…
30. Where Angels Come In by Adam L. G. Nevill
One of the creepiest ghost stories I have read, it follows two boys who make the unwise decision to break into the local haunted house – a sprawling, dilapidated nursing home – where they make their way through the dusty, labyrinthine corridors with bated breath, before their adventure turns into a savage nightmare, and their sole objective in life becomes getting back home before the clattering residents can sink their teeth into them. This white-knuckle escape thriller takes a heart-pounding cue from M. R. James’ “Wailing Well,” complete with odious, zombified, child-eating revenants.
31. Where Did She Wander? By Manly Wade Wellman
This is part of Wellman’s beloved “Silver John” series – about 25 Southern Gothic tales set in the 1950s, which follow the supernatural adventures of a heroic folksinger and exorcist (part Johnny Cash part Van Helsing) armed with a silver-stringed guitar and generations’ worth of practical folklore. A traveling musician named John the Balladeer arrives in a small town where local legends speak of a woman who was hanged, and he becomes increasingly drawn to the mystery surrounding her, investigating old tales and rumors to uncover the truth about her life and tragic fate, ultimately trying to piece together where she might have wandered after her death.
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