The 14th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories

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Another year has passed since I wrote the last introduction to a Fontana Book of ghost stories and tried to make up my mind what to include and – often regretfully – what to reject. Many authors confuse horror with pleasurable fear and I find that some editors are in a like quandary. How many times has The Monkey’s Paw been served up as a ghost story? It is a wonderful tale – but without sight or sound of a ghost from the first page to the last.

Having said all that I must admit that in The Man on the Ground by Robert E. Howard I have only just kept within my own guidelines, but such is the arrogance of editors, I make no apology for so doing. Firstly, I have long sought a worthwhile ghostly western and secondly, I have an unstinting admiration for that tragic young author who committed suicide in 1936. He had a well-disciplined imagination and the description of the gunfight is a masterpiece of restrained writing. Anyway – there is a ghost.

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