my all time favorite book!!!!!!!!!!!

As a chronic insomniac, much of my reading takes place through the night. In some ways, perhaps that is why I completely fell in love with this collection of stories - many of them told in the first person - it began to feel like I was the 'friend' who had happened to call round one evening, on seeing a lamp still lit at my writer friend's window, and we were settling down by the fireside to discuss the strange and the supernatural he so wonderfully describes in his writing. It soon became an ir...

This sprawling collection contains some of the best tales of terror after the work of M. R. James. While I appreciate how thorough this anthology is, there is a lot here that's not worth reading: the simple rule is, if there's a mention of a seance skip it. But there are so many tales to which the simply phrase "ghost story" simply can't encompass, and Benson is best when he's at his weirdest. Fortunately, that's pretty often!

E.F. Benson, one of the most accomplished practitioners of the classic English ghost story, usually begins his tale in a tranquil upper class British setting--perhaps a country house party or a fishing lodge or a newly acquired apartment--in which the horror gradually unfolds. His stories are invariably well-written, but there are two drawbacks to his work. First of all, he often sets his stories in a milieu where people openly proclaim their belief in ghosts and their own psychic abilities, eng...

This book might well qualify as the perfect bedtime read: the stories are all around 10 to 15 pages, so ideal for a twenty-minute read, then lights out, lie down and suddenly jerk awake as the house creaks and some presence enters the room... So, maybe not ideal bedtime reading, if you're prone to nightmares. I, though, am not, so I really did take this as my nightly read for a couple of months, working my way through these morbidly satisfying stories. EF Benson is a rare beast: a writer whose w...

This collection is brilliant, and apart from MR James there is no teller of ghost stories who can make my hair stand on end and give me deliciously disturbed dreams like Benson. It's a book to read together, shortly before Christmas, by candlelight, snuggled up on a couch, with giggles and shivers and looking over the shoulder occasionally into the shadows, then running upstairs in the dark and laughing at such things. In my dreams...

Cornwall Seems to Be a Pretty Dangerous PlaceI had never heard of E.F. Benson before, and to be honest, the cover of this book made me open it with a feeling of skepticism – only to find out that this is one of the eeriest, most bloodcurdling collections of horror stories that I have ever read.Of course, a collection of horror stories by the same author will always feature some repetitive elements – like the motif of popping down to Cornwall for relaxation only in order to meet with some malevol...

Wordsworth Editions! How much I love you! Let me count the ways... Or rather, I won't because it would take me forever to achieve the proper numerals. This dirt cheap volume has a mammoth number of 720 pages and there is not a single bad sentence on it. E.F. Benson's ghostly tales are varied as they are enjoyable. Ghosts, Psychic Vampirism, Healers, Witches, Reincarnated souls, human sacrifices brought on by ghosts, dangerous and secret cults, Vampires, Elementals, Charlatan Psychics, haunted au...

Such wonderful variety, from the almost campy creeps of 'Spinach' and 'Mrs Ampworth' to the grimmer 'The Room in the Tower' and 'Negotium Perambulans'. Benson is widely acknowledged as one of the masters of the ghost story, but I feel he has become somewhat underrated in current 'weird fiction' circles.

Benson is uneven - some of this themes seem to crop up again and again - but at his best he is a superb writer of ghost stories, and this book is a bargain! If you cannot afford the five volume set from Ash-Tree including quite a few stories that never made their way into the canonical collections, do not hesitate to buy this one.Jim

The blurb on the back of my copy of this book states that this edition is "one book that no fan of Benson or of good storytelling can afford to miss." Since this is a book of ghost stories, I'll add that this volume is a definite no-miss if you are a fan of the well-told, classic ghostly tale. At 672 pages, this book became my leisurely go-to, late-night, under-the-covers read to be enjoyed once the house was quiet rather than a one-sitting kind of thing, and thinking back on it, I see a great d...

I think I remember The Twilight Zone episode Wikipedia is talking about, that one inspired by “The Bus Conductor”, although I don’t recall whether it impressed me as much as this short story did. As this entire volume did. I must confess I’m not a compulsive reader of Gothic literature, but now and again I feel like looking into the dark side of imagination☺. And here I am, somehow guiltily enjoying this collection of “spook” stories, some of them really, really good.What I liked best and marked...

I had read E.F. Benson's "The Horror Horn" to start with (a collection of 13 of his best ghost stories), after seeing that it was considered one of the Top 100 Horror Books of all time in Newman & Jones' excellent overview volume. Each of those 13 stories was so good that I just had to have more, and so picked up this collection of every single one of Benson's spooky tales, 54 in all. This collection certainly did not disappoint; I loved every single one of these ghost stories, and was riveted f...

The variety and range of these ghost stories is wonderful. E.F. Benson might be my second favorite ghost story writer. Right after M.R. James!

Not all of Benson's ghost stories hit the mark, but the ones that do -- well, they'll literally haunt you. My favorite stories in this anthology, though, are wistful and gentle tales, such as "How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery" and "Pirates." I read my favorites from from time to time, and they only seem to improve with each reading. Benson is best known for his comic masterpieces such as the Lucia series, but he's equally adept at the classic ghost tale. His ability to evoke atmosphere is...

A Volume to be savouredThe fatness of this volume, clocking in at over 700 pages, bears testimony to E.F. Benson’s prolific output of ghost stories and supernatural tales. Their range, in terms of both subject matter and tone, is wider than that of most who have written in the genre, which should not be surprising given that he was a highly-successful author of the satirical Mapp and Lucia novels, amongst others.Perhaps the best known of the short stories included in this anthology is The Bus-Co...

I've not quite read every story in this just yet, but close enough. I'll be finishing it today. But I think I've read enough to say that it's amazing, and I loved it!I was, of course, familiar with some of Benson's work from anthologies and the like, and I recently read his collection Spook stories and enjoyed it, but I didn't realize how much I loved Benson until I got this whole collection and started going through the stories, picking at them willy-nilly in whatever order struck me. I didn't

Oh my god, guys, I finished it. This thing. This collection of...I have no idea how many stories. 600ish pages doesn't sound like a lot, but in this case, it has been experience. I'd like to thank my cat, for crawling on top of me while I was trying to concentrate. I'd like to thank my insomnia, for giving a few sleepless nights to get a few more in. I'd like to thank Joe Hill, Phil Rickman, Reggie Oliver, and all the other authors that I read when taking a break. Love to my mom, etc etc etcNow