Ghostly Tales: Spine-Chilling Stories of the Victorian Age By Chronicle Books

Dannii Elle

First Read: July 2017, Rating: 5/5 stars
Second Read: April 2020, Rating: 5/5 stars

This is a book to be adored! The physical beauty of the cover alone was enough to make me give this book 5/5 stars, but discovering the infamous authors whose work lines its interior made my heart palpitate with joy.

Seven chilling tales grace its pages and each are of a unique variety, although they are all linked by their unsettling nature. Asides from being treated to snippets from some of the most masterful Victorian storytellers, each tale is also adorned with a beautiful full-page illustration that adds to the book’s physical appeal and wonderfully portrays the chilling nature of each story.

Of all seven tales, there is not one I didn’t enjoy. Each was delivered in the author’s own unique style of penmanship and yet they seemed to flow seamlessly from each other, until they combined into delivering a permeation of disquiet that enfolded the reader into its chilling caress.

These are stories to be absorbed slowly; to ponder at their ending and mull over the symbology in the text. They are also equally enjoyable when marathoned in one twenty-four sitting due to the unputdownable nature of their contents, just as I did!

Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad by M. R. James – 4/5 stars

Aside from hearing the clunky and in my opinion unappealing-sounding title, I had never previously read any M. R. James so I had no idea what to expect from this. What I did discover was that it begun with such a unique voice that I was immediately intrigued. Almost at the story’s very beginning did the narrative voice intrude into the tale to give a focused direction to the reader:

“It was, as you might suppose, a person of antiquarian pursuits that said this, but, since he merely appears in this prologue, there is no need to give his entitlements.”

This strong stylistic approach had me convinced in the teller of the tale if, not yet, the tale itself. Soon, however, the both combined to make unputdownable reading.

The story concerns Parkins and his prolonged stay at a seaside hotel to enjoy some uninterrupted writing and day-time golfing. During one such golfing excursions he discovers a curious whistle inside some ruins and what follows is a tale of growing suspense with an eerie close.

Little actual horror occurs in this tale, until the final pages, but this allows the slow creep of terror to slowly bind its chill hands over the reader’s heart until the concluding final squeeze. There is also little structure given to the unnamed horror that haunts the protagonist, which allows the reader’s imagination to run rife with its own conjured terrors and thus it became a far more chilling tale than it initially appeared. The eerie quality of this tale progresses slowly but closes fairly happily, which my macabre sensibilities would have preferred otherwise.

The Old Nurse’s Story by Elizabeth Gaskell – 5/5 stars

Before beginning this I was already well acquainted with and a huge fan of Gaskell’s writing so this was, perhaps, the tale I was most eager to read. It began with a direct narration to the reader, much as the last one did. The reader is placed in the position of the nurse’s young charges, as she relates the tale of their mother in her youth.

The young Rosamund, after her parent’s early demise, was sent to live in grand Furnivall Manor. Her nurse and one remaining friend, who tells this tale, was obliged to travel with her. Asides from two elderly spinsters and a handful of servants, the manor lies devoid of life. But, perhaps, not devoid of the afterlife…

The beginning was typical of a Gothic tale, where many of the protagonists are divorced from their protectors and most of the settings are in isolated yet grand locations. The many undiscovered corners to their new abode made for an eerie and exciting backdrop, full of much apprehension of what the shadows could contain.

If the last tale was stark with description this was much the opposite. The elderly inhabitants of the Manor and “the wildness of the house” were depicted for the reader in much detail, and this focused imagery proved to heighten the horrors described.

The nurse’s young charge provided an endearing aspect to the tale and these feelings of love soon conflicted with the growing horror that followed. I found this conflict to be powerful in relaying the terrors of the tale to the reader. The sense of dread was palpable and I turned the pages in double-quick time, anxious to see these beloved characters come to no harm. This was the most terrifying and, thus, my favourite read in this anthology.

The Signalman by Charles Dickens – 5/5 stars

Another renowned Victorian author graces the pages of this book but sadly one I have not had the pleasure of reading before.

This short story begins with no preamble and I was initially a little confused as to the placement of the piece. I soon grasped the simple concept of this, involving a man conversing with a signalman for the railway service over the particulars of his job. It also becomes quickly apparent that the nameless signalman’s livelihood and mental well-being is dogged by a distant spectre, warning him of a future danger. Both the figure and the possible danger haunts both characters until the story’s shocking close.

As in the narrator’s own words, I was initially “resisting the touch of a slow frozen fingers tracing out my spine.” This didn’t seem to hold as many early connotations of eeriness as the previous pieces but, perhaps due to this, had the most shocking and powerful of endings. I stared, open-mouthed, long after the story’s culmination at how cleverly Dickens had played his reader!

The Body-Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson – 4/5 stars

This is the only story in the collection that I had previously read before, although I remembered little about it. This involved the remembrances from a drunken Fettes, about his antics whilst at medical school. A bright student, he quickly rose to the top of his class and was engaged as the lab’s assistant. This involved procuring the good behaviour of the other students, overlooking the cleanliness and upkeep of the lab, and obtaining the bodies for daytime dissection from sinister midnight visitors. This last job was the most distasteful, but even more so upon his discovery of how exactly the bodies were provided for his fellow future doctors.

This was, for me, the least ghostly of all the tales, but that is not to say that it was not grisly. I found this thrilling rather than haunting, as Fettes past was dually recounted to the reader and the protagonist’s companions. I felt no creeping feelings of dread, however, but this may have been due to my reading this story before.

The ending I had guessed at but that didn’t take away from its skilful brilliance. The open-ended nature of the reasoning behind the conclusion allows the reader to feel dread after reading the story rather than during it. Left to our own interpretations, it is for the reader’s own imagination to decide whether the occurrence are merely coincidental, fate, or the supernatural at play.

The Captain of the Pole-Star by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – 4/5 stars

This story was formulated in journal style entries by another man of medicine, but this time one on board the ship, the Pole-Star. John M’Alister Ray lies on board a vessel stranded far out at sea within hills of ice. The crew are all struck by some unknowable fear, of which their captain seems the most distraught. John relays his disbelief to the reader and has concerns over the others’ soundness of mind. His fears for the captain’s sanity, especially, progress until the story’s final, awful close.

This was, again, another enjoyable narrative due to the prowess of the renowned storyteller who penned it. I expected nothing less, after having read numerous Sherlock Holmes stories, but it was still interesting to read Conan Doyle’s writing outside of the crime speciality and see how adept he was at other genres.

This story also provided a nice change of pace, in this anthology, as it was more of a slower-paced tale. It was still a wonderful story but was more of a mystery than a horror tale. The open-ended nature of the ending meant that the reader could defer their own conclusions to this fact.

The Phantom Coach by Amelia B. Edwards – 5/5 stars

Is there a more chilling premise than that of the midnight wanderer, making his lonely journey home through the blankets of snow that mask the surroundings into obscurity?

It was a given that I was going to fall in love with this story as its beginning bore such a stark resemblance to my favourite book, ‘Wuthering Heights’. This quickly altered into a dissection of belief vs. proof and was a fitting story to add towards the close of this anthology. All that had gone before, along with its modern-day readership, seemed discussed in a few well-penned phrases:

“The world, he said, “grows more and more sceptical of all that lies beyond its own narrow radius; and our men of science foster the fatal tendency. The condemn as fable all that resists experiment. They reject as false all that cannot be brought to the test of the laboratory or the dissecting-room. Against what superstition have they waged so long and obstinate a war, as against the belief in apparition? And yet what superstition has maintained its hold upon the minds of men so long and so firmly?”

The Screaming Skull by F. Mario Crawford – 5/5 stars

This begun with no preamble and chilling imagery that continued to haunt both the protagonist and myself. The skull from the story’s title did indeed scream for the entire duration of the piece and I found the premise of this almost too chilling to finish reading at 3am whilst home alone!

Repetition is used throughout the piece, which put the reader in place of the protagonist who feels the chill creep of impending doom looming ever closer, as the story goes on. Pages were turned, seconds ticked by, and the shadows around me took on sinister forms as the horrors of the page turned to terrors of my own mind’s making.

Trish

This atmospheric collection features the following 7 Victorian spooky stories:
1) Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad - M.R. James
2) The Old Nurse's Story - Elizabeth Gaskell
3) The Signalman - Charles Dickens
4) The Body-Snatcher - Robert Louis Stevenson
5) The Captain of the Pole-Star - Arthur Conan Doyle
6) The Phantom Coach - Amelia B. Edwards
7) The Screaming Skull - Francis Marion Crawford

Some I knew about (though I had never read them in full so I didn't know the details), others were entirely new to me. All of them were nicely atmospheric for the foggy season, crisp nights spent wrapped in a blanket, and reading by candle night.

Moreover, each story features a nice illustration at the beginning. Here are a few examples:

A very nice way to spend a few hours or even several days if you wanna make it last - the nice way this edition was made certainly invites you to do that.

Katie Lumsden

An enjoyable and interesting read, with some great Victorian ghost stories. I especially enjoyed 'The Caption of the Pole Star'.

Jen

Despite enjoying writing from the Victorian era, only one of the stories in this book was one I have read before, the Robert Louis Stevenson one. I really liked his works as a youth, so read just about everything of his I could get my hands on. However, that was so long ago, despite The Body-Snatcher being a re-read, it was as if I was reading it for the first time. I wasn't that into horror/terror, which might be why the other stories were new to me.

Averaging out my ratings for each of these stories is about 3.14, so I had to go with 3 stars, to be honest, though this is a very good collection, typical of that time period. I just love the writing style, the tone, the verbiage, the characterization and setting of that time frame. People just don't write like that anymore. It's good to grow, but never forget the past!

Good, solid collection that I recommend to those who have an interest in the era and in horror. Though more suspenseful horror, as it's not the blood/guts/gore we are used to today. More psychological I would say. More atmospheric. Not a bad grouping, but there are only seven stories in this collection and two lower starred stories brought the rest of it down to 3 stars for me.

My thanks to NetGalley and Chronicle Books for an eARC copy of this book to read and review.

Alice

Very good selection of stories.

Viola

3.5⭐. Baisi nelikās, bet novērtēju autoru fantāziju un valodu.

Contrary Reader

Full of beautiful pictures and solid classics of the genre. My favourite being the new to me, F Marion Crawford ‘The Screaming Skull’ which was lively and amusing as it scared. A good place to start or a nice collectors piece

Zoë

For a collection of stories written so long ago - long ago from my point of view, at least - the writing style and tones of most of them seemed modern. The ways in which the authors created suspense reminded me of any good scary story I’d read today, except these stories were more subdued than the contemporary works I might find. The horror was subtle, and they could only barely be described as definite ghost stories. If the endings of each were taken away, some would sound like coincidences that really could happen under unnerving circumstances. They were nice reads, although that doesn’t surprise me considering the authors that were included.

Chris

I received a copy of this short story collection from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Ghostly Tales is a collection of classic, and often analogized, stories. While it is true that occasionally one runs across a classic that, for whatever reason, escaped your attention, most fans of classic horror have read or at least heard of these stories. That doesn’t make them any less great, just familiar.

Oh Whistle, and I’ll Come for You, My Lad
M.R. James is one of the pillars of the modern tale of the supernatural. Most of our plot mechanics and story lines come from him. As influential, albeit perhaps not as literary, as Poe, the included story is one of his best and for my money one of the top 5 ghost stories ever. And it is actually still scary after all these years.

The Old Nurse’s Story
Creepy story about a malevolent spirit of a murdered child. Very good form of a tale that is still being retold today in modern stories and movies.

The Signalman
Dickens, like most Victorians, loved his stories of phantoms, ghosts, and communications from the other side of death. Classic and atmospheric if not particularly scary. I don’t know if he created the concept of the story of the dead warning the living, but this is certainly one of the true classics of its type.

The Body Snatcher
Stevenson’s story is dripping in atmosphere of fog and damp and one can’t help but think of the glorious Hammer Films that sprang from this story and others like them. More fun and gruesome than scary.

The Captain of the Pole-Star
I guess I will just say it---Doyle’s best work was the Sherlock Holmes canon. Everything else is interesting, especially for the time, but the concepts were done better by other writers. This story is no exception. A play on The Ryme of the Ancient Mariner this story was well written by not particularly riveting.
The Phantom Coach
I had not read this one but was very glad that I did. Absolutely fantastic with a chilling ending. This story was so well done and so chilling I could place myself in that coach with our narrator. One of my favorite classic horror stories.

The Screaming Skull
One of several famous stories about severed body parts that attack the living, this one has the added fun of a mad narrator. I found it a bit overdone, but still entertaining.

I do have one complaint about this book and it was a reason that I was quite disappointed in the book. The illustrations are wonderful. However, there is just one per story. If you are selling this as an illustrated book I would expect at least 2 or 3 illustrations per story.

4 stars. Needs more illustrations.

Flavia

The cover of Ghostly Tales looks absolutely fantastic, and definitely screams Victorian horror to me! For those of you who don’t know, I like both horror and the Victorian era, so this book was basically made for me. The beauty of this book’s design also continues into the interior of the anthology, with the end paper being designed to look like a Victorian wallpaper with parts of human skeletons snuck in. When I dove deeper into Ghostly Tales, I found that each short story begins with its own unique full colour illustration related to what it contains.

This book also comes with an attached black silk bookmark, and I just love how it’s designed, inside and out. As for the stories themselves, I had read works by Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, and Arthur Conan Doyle before, and loved their writing in this book. I was also happy to be introduced to some Victorian writers who I either had not read before now, or had not even heard of! All in all, this book is just beautiful (especially if you’re into the Victorian + horror like me), and is just an amazing reading choice for this time of the year!

❀•° ᥎꫶ׁׅꪱׁׅꪱׁׅ °•❀

I genuinely loved this little collection of ghost stories. The illustrations were quite enjoyable, and the stories were delightfully creepy in my favourite way: psychological and thrilling, not gory and sensationalist. My personal favourites were:

-The Old Nurse's Story by Elizabeth Gaskell
-The Phantom Coach by Amelia B. Edwards
-The Screaming Skull by F. Marion Crawford

Charlotte

I especially enjoyed the last story.

Amr

- 2 stars for not delivering on the spine chilling promise

Pages & Cup

Really, really enjoyed this collection of Victorian ghost stories. I’m a chicken when it comes to spooky tales, so I was relieved that these weren’t was scary as I thought they would be. My favorites were The Body-Snatcher (even though I suspected what was coming), The Captain of the Pole-Star, and The Screaming Skull. But I loved the others as well. The illustrations in this edition are fantastic. They’re more moody than they are truly scary, much like the stories.

Wayne McCoy

'Ghostly Tales: Spine-Chilling Stories of the Victorian Age' by Chronicle books is a collection of stories to read on dark nights.

The seven stories here are from known and lesser known writers. They all have to do with people who find themselves having supernatural encounters. A man finds an old whistle that doesn't seem to be making any noise, but something can hear it. An ice-locked ship has a captain that sees the ghost of his wife. A skull found in a box insists on staying in a certain spot or it starts screaming.

I really had a good time reading these creepy stories. These are ghost stories that hold up well in prose and quality.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Chronicle Books and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review ebook.

RumBelle

This collection of Victorian era ghostly tales was written by some very notable names including Dickens, Stevenson and Conan Doyle. The writing style was very indicative of the Victorian novel, from how the characters spoke, to how descriptions were written.

My problem was, overall, the stories were not very spooky, at least to me. There were occasional atmospheric moments, but, in my view, very little about this book really showed it was a book of ghost stories. For the most part the spooky element did not even arrive until the very end of the story.

It was authentically Victorian in terms of writing style, but disappointing in terms of ghostly atmosphere.

Nasia

Όπως κάθε χρόνο, μιας και είμαι κορίτσι του σκότους (γελάω), διαβάζω πάντα τον μήνα Οκτώβρη και ειδικά κοντά στα γενέθλιά μου σκοτεινές ιστορίες, όλων των ειδών, είτε gore, είτε spooky είτε απλά weird, τις απολαμβάνω δεόντως. 🎃
Φέτος, μιας και είχα καιρό να διαβάσω κάτι από κλασική λογοτεχνία, διάλεξα αυτή την υπέροχη συλλογή ghostly tales που αποτελείται από ιστορίες της Βικτωριανής εποχής, από τοπ κλασικούς συγγραφείς, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Amelia B. Edwards, F. Marion Crawford. Ξεχωρίζω την ιστορία του Ντίκενς που τον έχω στην καρδιά μου πάντα όπως και του Stevenson.

Teresa

Ghostly Tales: Spine-Chilling Stories of the Victorian Age by Chronicle Books The stories in this book are reprints of original Victorian era stories. They are pretty much written with the old english and can be a little hard to follow at times. I caught myself rereading a few lines to make sense of it to my brain. Don't get me wrong the stories are great, spooky, and eerie, you just have to pay a bit more attention while reading. The stories are short, there are 7 stories in the book. The stories are written by people like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens and more. I personally think they left the best for last I liked The screaming Skull by F. Marion Crawford the most out of the 7 stories. They were all great though.

I received this book from the Author or Publisher via Netgalley.com to read and review.

AlenGarou

3.5

Nonostante il mio inglese faccia piuttosto schifo, non riesco a resistere a edizioni del genere. Non solo la copertina e la grafica di questa raccolta sono fenomenali, ma anche le storie raccolte in essa rappresentano bene il genere. Purtroppo ho goduto a metà della lettura, dato che spesso e volentieri cercavo il significato dei termini meno comuni online, ma le atmosfere tetre e grottesche sono riuscite a colpirmi comunque.
Se ve la cavate bene in lingua ve lo consiglio.

Robin

These are great short stories to relish through the Halloween season! From the Victorian age, they are meant to be thrilling rather than scary. Many authors are recognized names whose work is always top notch. Sometimes a book of short stories is just perfect to fit into busy schedules. Highly recommended.

Sylvie

They don't write stories like this anymore. I love the old-style phrasing and storytelling. It has magic and hidden meaning in the language and customs that I'm missing in the newer writings. The new style of writing is simplified a lot and the speech is lacking color. The book contains independent stories by different known authors, all beautifully written and they do give you the chills but not in the nasty way that I read in other books where there is a lot of violence (I like the way it is implied in this book), blood, hate, and zombies. It was a pleasure to read it, even just for the witty phrases and the old-time style of speech. With a little bit of imagination, you will get the thrill you seek with horror books.

Maria

2,5⭐ - promising but no

I knew the stories wouldn't be chilling or scary, classics never are imo. But still it managed to disappoint me 🙈
I liked couple of them, that's it.
The book gets points from the beautiful illustrations once again, and from the idea.
My own enjoyment was the problem.

Rebecca

Although I had read three of these before (Dickens, Gaskell, and Conan Doyle), this is still a very good collection of ghost stories, with the added bonus that I feel like a more polished MST3K fan for having read "The Screaming Skull."

Diana Hîncu Reads

I wanted it to be longer!

Mia

Several short old fashioned ghost stories, each with a ghostly twist at the end.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading each story, with the final two by female authors as my favorites.

Lucas Ilievskie

3.5

Nikki

The cover and the illustrations are gorgeous, this is really a beautiful book. The stories are well-written and spooky, perfect for this time of year.

Sombraline

This book is absolutely gorgeous, and a perfect spooky read for October. I really appreciated the collection of short stories it contained.

Rabspur

I like reading short ghost stories this was a compilation, probably the pick of the bunch was the Dickens classic the signalman, the rest I was a little disappointed with hence only the two stars.

Sol

First of all, I want to say that this book appearance is really beautiful. I love the shape and the cover fits really well with the stories inside

Oh, whistle and I’ll come to you, my lad by M.R. James
3/5
I love the title in this story and I loved the end as well. It was a nice ghost story but I feel like it was really slow, especially the beginning. I think that I would have enjoyed it more if the parts were the ghostly things happen were longer because when they happened, they gave me the chills.

The old nurse’s story by Elizabeth Gaskell
4/5
I like that the narrator on this story is an old woman who talks about her past and how she lived the events she’s describing. The ghosts in this story are really scary and thanks to the descriptions one can imagine easily the atmosphere of the house. The ending is really surprising, I wasn’t expecting it.

The signalman by Charles Dickens
4/5
It was a little bit hard to enter in this story for me because I didn’t understand really well the setting. Later on, I could imagine it better. As the story takes its course, I felt more and more invested in the strange events the man on the cabin was explaining.

The body-snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson
5/5
This story was unsettling the moment were MacFarlane appears. The whole atmosphere became dark and dangerous and while I was reading it, I felt uneasy. Part of it was because of MacFarlane’s attitude, the other part was because of the story. Also, this ending gave me the chills for real. The ending is why I gave this story a 5/5.

The captain of the Pole-Star by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
3/5
It was interesting to read this story, I loved the relationship between the Doctor and the Captain. Also, the Captain was an interesting character and I would love to know more about his life.

The Phantom Coach by Amelia B. Edwards
4/5
I enjoyed this story as well but my expectations of what was going to happen were really different of what happened instead and that left me quite puzzled. It was a good story, thought.

The screaming skull by F.Mario Crawford
5/5
This one is my favorite one. I love the way it was written, like the narrator was talking with me directly, like I was the other one in the room with him. At the beginning this was a little bit confusing but then it really engages you with the story.
This story was amazing, starting with the guilty feelings of the narrator, the way he interrupts what he’s saying just because he wants you to hear the wind, the waves… the screams; also the way he “doesn’t believe” in paranormal stuff but he doesn’t deny it either.

Title	:	Ghostly Tales: Spine-Chilling Stories of the Victorian Age
Author	:	Chronicle Books
Rating	:
ISBN	:	1452159270
ISBN-10	:	9781452159270
Language	:	English
Format Type	:	Hardcover
Number of Pages	:	176
Publication	:	First published July 1, 2017

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