Sunday, January 3, 2010

20 Great Ghost Stories, Rare and Haunting (Avon, 1941)

"Here are twenty stories dealing with creatures of the night--vampires, the walking dead--PROFANE BEINGS..

WARNING--Not for reading after midnight!"
20 Great Ghost Stories, Rare and Haunting (Avon Publications, 1941) is a collection of spooky stories culled from the public domain. Excellent cover illustrations by Frank J. Russell (there are interior black and white illustrations as well). In researching the authors of the stories (strangely, none of which are credited in the book) I stumbled upon an excellent resource, Horror Masters, which hosts a robust library of public-domain supernatural short fiction, including every one of the stories from this collection.

Here is the complete contents of the book, with links to the original text.

The Black Cat-Edgar Allan Poe
The Flayed Hand-Guy De Maupassant
The Vengeance of a Tree-Eleanor F. Lewis
The Parlor Car Ghost-Anonymous
The Ghost of Buckstown Inn-Arnold M. Anderson
The Burglar's Ghost-Anonymous
A Phantom Toe-Anonymous
Mrs. Davenport's Ghost-Frederick F. Schrader
The Phantom Woman-Anonymous
The Phantom Hag-Anonymous
From the Tomb-Guy De Maupassant
Sandy's Ghost-Anonymous
The Ghosts of Red Creek-S.T.
How He Caught the Ghost-Anonymous
Grand-Dame's Ghost Story-C.D.
(A) Fight With A Ghost-Q.E.D.
Colonel Halifax's Ghost Story-S.Baring Gould
The Old Mansion-Anonymous
The Dead Woman's Photograph-Anonymous
The Ghost of a Live Man-Anonymous

3 comments:

Shiverbones said...

I love it, & have never seen it before! It looks like a slimmed down & later version of this one - http://www.flickr.com/photos/73902814@N00/3910502413/in/set-72157609206619792/

Brother Bill said...

There's some great old covers at that link. Thanks for posting!

Shiverbones said...

Thanks, that's me! :-)