Ghost Gleams

A wood fire on a wind-swept island. A little group of listeners bent toward the flames. And, unfolding slowly through the Sunday evening hours, the kind of story that ought not to be told aloud at all. These fifteen ghostly tales range from the quietly unsettling to the frankly horrible. A scholar’s rosary of withered berries, gathered at the foot of a gallows, draws something dreadful into his quiet study. A bank of autumn fog over London teems with unseen, many-legged shapes. An ancient Scottish keep hides a chamber whose purpose no family member now living will name aloud. A tranquil cottage on a hillside proves to have a lodger that no rent can dislodge. Some tales turn on vengeance reaching across centuries. Others glint with a crooked humor at the edge of fear. All share the old conviction that the uncanny is never so far off as sensible people would prefer to believe.