Classic Ghost Stories for Hallowe'en ...

If the Strictly Halloween Special and Eastenders Halloween Week are the wrong kind of scary for you, here’s an alternative: some classic ghost stories to set your spine tingling and make your hair stand on end.  No lurid John Landis makeovers or psychotic stallholders - just simple stories to make you shiver …

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M R James

Back in the 1970s, before Netflix, before iPlayer, before even video recorders (ask your parents) the BBC traumatised a generation with its annual Christmas ghost stories. Writers such as Mark Gatiss have paid loving homage to the era when viewers huddled round their tiny TVs to be jolted into terror by tales whose horrors were all the more haunting because they were only glimpsed once, for a fleeting moment, before taking root in the nation's collective unconscious, and triggering permanent feelings of unease at the sound of a hurdy-gurdy, or a distant figure on a beach, or the mouth of a railway tunnel, or an unmade bed ...

Many of these stories were adapted from the works of Montague Rhodes James, archivist, medieval historian and (eventually) Provost of Eton. James wrote his stories as Christmas entertainments for his fellow dons at King's College, Cambridge. Their central characters are often scholars or antiquaries - seemingly gentle eccentrics, whose superficial unworldliness masks darker, more dangerous passions, and whose curiosity and fascination with arcane mysteries wakens forces better left undisturbed. James understood that sometimes it's the most ordinary things that can be the most unsettling, when imbued with an air of the uncanny.  Particularly worth reading: 'O, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad', 'Lost Hearts', 'The Mezzotint' and 'A School Story'

'The Monkey's Paw' by W W Jacobs
Although Jacobs's ghost story about a relic with magical powers has been much imitated - memorably by Joss Whedon in a later episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer - and often parodied, the original story is still powerful enough to stir the hairs on the back of your neck. Be careful what you wish for ...

'Man-Size in Marble' by E Nesbit
E Nesbit may be better known for her children’s stories, The Phoenix and the Carpet or The Treasure-Seekers, but she was also an accomplished writer of uncanny short stories. A young couple buy a cottage near a church. In the church are monuments to dead crusaders. Once a year, it's said, the marble knights get off their tombs and walk ... Scary, but also hauntingly sad. 

'Enoch' by Robert Bloch
Bloch's novel Psycho was the basis of Hitchcock's notorious 1960s horror movie, which has definite parallels with the story of Enoch - exactly the sort of pet a boy doesn't need ...

'Close Behind Him' by John Wyndham
Wyndham's short story takes its title from that classic evocation of early Gothic horror, Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Two burglars make an ill-advised raid on a wealthy eccentric's stash of antiques, and definitely, definitely bite off more than they can chew ...

'The Lonesome Place' by August Derleth
August Derleth's macabre short stories are often overshadowed by those of his contemporary, H P Lovecraft, but are well worth a look. 'The Lonesome Place' focusses on the powers and dangers of a child's imagination, rather like a macabre footnote to To Kill a Mockingbird.  

'The Canterville Ghost' by Oscar Wilde
The ghosts who haunt the stately homes of England are no match for American practicality and common sense in Wilde’s witty satire.  If you like Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett, this might just be the classic ghost story for you.

Happy reading and happy Hallowe'en!