In A Dim Room...Lord DunsanyThe Boy Who Drew Cats...Lafcadio Hearn
The Canterville Ghost...Oscar Wilde
The Water Ghost...John Kendrick Bangs
The Lonesome Place...August Derleth
The Haunted Dolls' House...M. R. James
The Whistling Room...William Hope Hodgeson
Feathertop...Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Devil And Daniel Webster...Stephen Vincent Benet
The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow...Washington Irving
The Monster Maker...William C. Morrow
The Haunted And The Haunters...Lord Lytton
Markheim...Robert Louis Stevenson
A Terribly Strange Bed...Wilkie Collins
An Account Of Some Strange Disturbances In Aungier Street...J. Sheridan Le Fanu
The Phantom Coach...Amelia B. Edwards
Captain Murderer...Charles Dickens
In The Vault...H. P. Lovecraft
The Monkey's Paw...W. W. Jacobs
The Fall Of The House Of Usher...Edgar Allan Poe
Twenty tales tailored by my own (rather old-fashioned) taste. This is the anthology I would like to see put together and published; they are not particularly about "terror" or "horror" but are what I would term "haunting." Both in the usual sense, and in the sense of lingering in the memory and emotions, long after the tale is told. Of course, you could glut the list with many by Lovecraft, Poe, and James, but I thought I should limit it to one apiece.
I just read "Markheim" recently from some anthology I have laying around. I would've called it strange rather than haunting. "The Lonesome Place" and "The Haunted Dolls' House" are supremely haunting, though. I suppose "Canterville" is also haunting, but in a different way.
ReplyDelete"Enoch" by Robert Bloch, and "The Troll" by T.H. White are a couple of standouts that also spring to mind.
ReplyDelete"Markheim" is peculiar, with it's hints of angels and consciences; I think its atmosphere of murder, isolation, and melancholy qualify it for inclusion, plus I wanted something by Stevenson, but not "The Bodysnatchers."
ReplyDeleteI had forgotten "Enoch" and "The Troll;" make that "Twenty-Two Tales" (or is that title taken?)!