Halloween recs: Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories
This book has been on my To Read list for a long time and was part of this year’s goal to get through as many books on the list as possible, starting with the ones that I couldn’t remember what they were about. When I borrowed this book from the library, I thought it would be ghost stories written by Dahl. Instead, the Introduction reveals that in the 1950s Dahl pitched the idea for a television series of ghost stories to be shown in the U.S. and read hundreds of stories in order to choose ones suitable for adapting to film. The series fell through, sadly, but fortunately he decided to put together this anthology of fourteen ghost stories he liked the most. The book as a whole is enjoyable but I particularly recommend the following stories:
Harry by Rosemary Timperley: A couple’s adopted daughter gains an imaginary friend. I love the slowly growing feeling of dread throughout this tale.
Elias and the Draug by Jonas Lie: The only story is this book not written by a non-English language author, Lie is an author from Norway who spins a tale of what happens to a fisherman and his family after he throws his harpoon at the wrong seal.
Ringing the Changes by Robert Aickman: Creepy, creepy, creepy. Recommended for anybody who wants a story of people visiting a town they’ve never been to before and encountering a horrifying local tradition.
The Telephone by Mary Treadgold: Sad as much as it is scary, this story looks at the dead and the living being unwilling to let go of each other.
The Ghost of a Hand by J. Sheridan Le Fanu: You would think that there’s no way a story simply about a hand being the only part of a ghost anybody sees could be disturbing. You would be wrong.
Afterward by Edith Wharton: Given how much I hated reading “Ethan Frome” in high school (You guys, I hated it so much. I will never get over how much I wanted to throw this book against a wall), the fact that I enjoyed this story about a woman whose husband mysteriously disappears came as a complete shock.
On the Brighton Road by Richard Middleton: Short and atmospheric. How do you know if you area dead or alive?
Harry by Rosemary Timperley: A couple’s adopted daughter gains an imaginary friend. I love the slowly growing feeling of dread throughout this tale.
Elias and the Draug by Jonas Lie: The only story is this book not written by a non-English language author, Lie is an author from Norway who spins a tale of what happens to a fisherman and his family after he throws his harpoon at the wrong seal.
Ringing the Changes by Robert Aickman: Creepy, creepy, creepy. Recommended for anybody who wants a story of people visiting a town they’ve never been to before and encountering a horrifying local tradition.
The Telephone by Mary Treadgold: Sad as much as it is scary, this story looks at the dead and the living being unwilling to let go of each other.
The Ghost of a Hand by J. Sheridan Le Fanu: You would think that there’s no way a story simply about a hand being the only part of a ghost anybody sees could be disturbing. You would be wrong.
Afterward by Edith Wharton: Given how much I hated reading “Ethan Frome” in high school (You guys, I hated it so much. I will never get over how much I wanted to throw this book against a wall), the fact that I enjoyed this story about a woman whose husband mysteriously disappears came as a complete shock.
On the Brighton Road by Richard Middleton: Short and atmospheric. How do you know if you area dead or alive?