Let’s take a moment to reflect on what Tony Medawar has done in recent years for GAD fans, with Wicked Spirits (2024) being the eighth collection of lost, forgotten, and so-rare-they-doubt-their-own-existence stories by GAD luminaries Medawar has edited under the …from the Library label. Whether we get any more after this or not, and I sincerely hope we do, it’s a wonderful body of work, and only the tip of an iceberg of effort he has been putting in for decades now.

What I especially enjoyed about the original Ghosts from the Library (2022) collection was the way Medawar mixed in genuinely ghostly tales with those whose explanation was more terrestrial, and he’s done the same thing here, meaning that a good suspense is maintained throughout while you wait to see which stylr of dismount each author is going to opt for. And so, with twenty-one stories from (mostly) Golden Age luminaries, let’s crack on and see how many genuine spirits are a-walking…

‘The Lonely Hampshire Cottage’ (1885) demonstrates once again just how fine an author Arthur Conan Doyle was, as its simple setup of a gold prospector returning from America and put up by a miserly couple positively oozes a slow-building tension. You’re kept in suspense until the final stages, with a payoff that feels both inevitable and yet proves to be surprising in the best way. Sherlock Holmes stands astride everything Doyle wrote now, but his other works really does bear further examination.

Additionally, ‘The Vicar’s Conversation’ (1908) by A.E.W. Mason takes an unusual turn into a very interesting concept, and again builds to a conclusion that, to my mind, could have gone one of about three ways. The opening is perhaps a little verbose, an issue I also have with the longer writing of his I’ve attempted, but, once more, the final reveal does well to keep you on your toes as to which way the figurative cat will jump. A strong opening pair, and a taste, no doubt, of the enjoyable uncertainty that lies ahead.

There’s a boisterous energy to ‘The Ghost of Travers Court’ (1911) by E.R. Punshon that runs the risk of tipping the whole thing over into parody but stops just short and renders it instead a unconventionally jolly time. Learning that the house they’ve rented for the next three years is reputed to be haunted, an American widow and her three daughters, far from quailing in terror, go about encountering said spook with the sort of earnest energy that wouldn’t be out of place in a Famous Five story.

The three sisters posted off in hot haste to interview Mr Isaacs, their landlord; and they nearly broke that astute gentleman’s heart when he found how they regarded the ghost, and that instead of letting them have the place cheaper on account of the story, he might have valued the alleged haunting at £50 per annum extra.

More of this sort of thing, please.

A previously-unpublished tale from the pen of Ernest Bramah, ‘Deakin and the Ghost’ tells of a new boy in a boarding school and how he establishes himself as someone of note very quickly. There’s not much to this, but its placement after the Punshon story is serendipitous, since the two make a nice, non-serious pair amidst the more bone-chilling tales found herein.

Back to rather more sombre affairs, then, with ‘A Good Place’ (1922) by H.C. Bailey, in which a young woman is hired as nurse-governess to the grandson of a wealthy Mrs. Lyndishoe. When the young boy falls prey to mysterious accidents, and in light of the odd behaviour of some of the people in the isolated pile where the family lives, might there be something sinister at work?

Bailey has an odd way of expressing himself at times, which may account for his having gone out of fashion, but here it adds rather neatly to the unease. What’s additionally pleasing is that Jane Cummins is no shrinking violet herself, and so doesn’t spend the whole story wringing her hands and jumping at shadows, instead taking her care of young Master Julian seriously. Clever, too, how Bailey doesn’t over-egg what’s going on here, explaining it in a throwaway manner that feels very natural and fits the unshowy nature of his telling well.

The scene is set early in ‘Exactly as It Happened’ (1922) by E.C. Bentley:

[N]othing on earth would induce them to stay in the place through the hours of darkness on the anniversary of the Captain’s death.

And so, as two old friends wait to see what will happen as said anniversary approaches, we get both a ripsnorting adventure tale in the spirit of Captain Cut-Throat (1955) and a things-that-go-bump-in-the-night experience of creeping dread, unplaceable dragging noises, and a gorgeous final line that sits beautifully against that has just unfurled. Mr. Bentley, you spoil us.

I advise that you know as little about ‘Ye Goode Olde Ghoste Storie’ (1927) by Anthony Boucher as possible. It involves a man staying the night in a “Horrible Haunt of [a] Suicidal Spirit”, and is possibly worth the price of the collection on its own.

S.S. van Dine joins the gang with ‘The Atonement’ (1929), an ostensible love story in which young lawyer Daniel Felton has the gall to fall in love with a woman who is deemed below him in the social positioning of the era. Felton is, however, determined to follow his heart, despite the intervention of his boss, until a there’s shocking development and then a ghost. It’s not a bad story per se, but it lacks the imagination shown elsewhere and reminds me why I enjoy genre conventions that are a little more inventive in their application of comprehensible rules. Van Dine is known for his detective fiction for a reason, but this is a looooong way from bad.

The same might also be said of ‘Dispossession’ (1929) by C.H.B. Kitchin, which is an even more loosely-structured story of a man who wakes up and…remembers telling a story at a party…and there’s a missing architect…and a woman who might hold the key to the whole thing if she exists. It’s well-written (“At first the words, if they were words, were too indistinct for him to catch, and sounded like a mere pulsation in common time. But soon the beat quickened, and became more staccato and articulate.”) but I’m not sure what’s supposed to have happened or why, and I sort of feel like that’s my fault for over two decades of reading books in which actions are explained and the final shape of things comprehensible. This is clearly very good at what it’s doing, and might well be a masterpiece, and I’m doubtless outing myself as an ignoramus for failing to appreciate it fully.

Hairy Aaron, there are a lot of people in ‘Blind Guess’ (1933) by Valentine Williams. Timmie is flirting with Sara who’s married to Roger, and Timmie’s wife Antonia is sitting on the arm of Jack’s chair watching Virginia and Isobel, and Mark Bendall and Bill and Kenneth and Geoffrey are there and there’s Ned and a French maid and Sims the Major’s batman from the war and a ghost with a hairy face…honestly, I gave up trying to keep them all straight, which is perhaps the best advice given that this one turns out a little flat.

The sole interest is provided by the blind Major, but since he’s essentially so capable that he might as well be sighted, and since the only purpose of his blindness is to provide the basis of the guess of the title in a way that undermines that capability, even he’s too difficult to get too attached to. It’s almost a French farce, so rapidly do events pile upon themselves, but it’s to be taken Very Seriously Indeed, and needs to be more rigorous than this to get away with that sort of approach.

Onwards to ‘Modern Antique’ (1936) by Milward Kennedy, which does a similar thing to ‘Dispossession’ — with which it shares a rather key image — but more compactly and in a way that’s more pleasing to my simple brain. A writer seeking inspiration for a story so he can make some money to buy a chest he likes, a glass ball, and some deceptively simple phrasing…this is an enjoyably compact tale that asks questions and then fails to answer them in the best possible way.

See also Medawar’s characteristically brilliant author bio after the story, which interestingly links Kennedy — however accidentally — to some rather key terminology in the genre’s history. Fascinating stuff.

Over halfway through the book and we still hadn’t encountered a sinister priest. Well, Helen Simpson finally provides one in ‘An Experiment of the Dead’ (1938) in the personage of the Rev. Dionysius Luan. The inciting incident here is “Lady Paula Lidyard [going] off the rails, causing almost as much confusion and loss of life as might an express train similarly fated,” with a love triangle, a murder, and the arrest of the killer all pitching this squarely into the crime sphere before Mr. Luan shows up with his mysterious red book and…well, you’re best finding out the rest for yourself.

An interesting story in that it fails to fulfil the promise of its opening until you link the final line to the beginning, and then all sorts of possibilities begin to stir horribly…

Fans of Patricia Highsmith are likely to be lured in by the promise of the previously-uncollected ‘We Are Sorry, Too’ (1942), and will find much in its creeping sense of unease to satisfy. I still can’t figure out how I feel about Highsmith, whose use of language is wonderful — witness the early parallel drawn here between bone china and the sight of veins viewed through translucent skin — but whose plots leave me a little confounded. The eeriness of this is good, but I’m not really sure what it’s about. Though many people would tell you that that’s the point, I suppose.

A radio play from John Dickson Carr next in the shape of ‘Vex Not His Ghost’ (1944), an episode of Appointment with Fear. Some nice ideas litter this story of a murderer facing the electric chair, not least the question of whether the man who throws the switch is any more culpable than the jury or judge who have put the condemned in this position. Some ideas are well-seeded, too, and I’ll not spoil which ones because half the fun if seeing if your suspicions are correct.

Carr was, of course, an old hand at this sort of thing, and so his use of narrative is pitch-perfect — “Will you come, now, to watch a man die?” — and the characters all come through cleanly by only their dialogue…the inclusions of these radio plays in the Bodies from the Library collections has really made me yearn for the radio mystery, and this continues that streak.

‘Writer’s Witch’ (1951) by Joan Fleming set itself up well: an isolated cottage, an author with a deadline, and a housekeeper determined to tell ghastly tales (“Mary Ann Beehag? She was famous! The last of her kind in the county, so they say, to be ’ung.”). A shame, then, that just as the expertly-weighted eldritch horrors begin to make themselves felt…it simply stops.

Best known, to me at least, as a radio producer of some note, Val Gielgud‘s story of wartime professional evacuation ‘The Security Officer’ (1955) benefits from a friendly telling that — as Medawar makes clear, deliberately — adds an air of verisimilitude to proceedings. The little historical details that bristle around the edges really fill this out, and while, given its inclusion in this collection, there can be no doubt where it’s heading, it’s hard not to enjoy, and to imagine the effect it might have if you didn’t know it was opting to be a ghost story.

There will, of course, be no ghosts in a story called ‘The Fraudulent Spirit’ (1960), especially when you learn that it’s a Senator Brooks U. Banner tale from the pen of Joseph Commings. The issue at stake here is stopping medium Mme. Olympe conning a grieving widower out of his fortune, and things rattle along well, aided by Commings’ usual colourful descriptions:

Mme Olympe couldn’t have weighed an ounce less than 230 pounds. Her above-average height helped her to carry the weight, with something approaching penguin-like dignity.

The impossible levitation trick here is a little hard to follow at times, and suffers in an explanation requiring more than a few moving parts that there’s no way Banner could know about, but I’m enjoying Commings more in my old age, even if I don’t think I’m ever going to really love him. Now we just need that second collection of Banner short stories from Crippen & Landru that Medawar keeps teasing us with…

The final Golden Age contributor is Leo Bruce with ‘The Line Went Dead’ (1960), which we’re left in no doubt from the off is going to be a ghost story (“I must warn you that for what I am about to relate I have no explanation to offer.”). Concerning a ghostly telephone call, of which there have been remarkably few in this collection, this is a well-focussed little story that does well in concentrating on the people on the fringes of the main ghostly happening. Like the earlier Van Dine story, it’s not going to blow you away but, like the earlier Van Dine story, it’s difficult to object to on any grounds…which sounds like a criticism, but it’s enjoyable and spooky and does it’s job well, so what’s not to like?

‘The House of the Lions’ (1966) sees Desmond Bagley channelling Dennis Wheatley, as a missionary and his family return from Africa, set up in Totnes, and find themselves pestered by drumming, a blue-eyed cat, and many rumours about the previous tenant of their house (“I have never seen anyone die so bloodily.”). If you can get past the almost inbred fear of the Dark Continent — was that the Yellow Peril of the 1960s…? — it’s an unearthly and faintly horrifying tale, full of weird imagery and an appreciation of the uncanny that stirs unease very adroitly.

Short and to the point, ‘The Haunting Melody’ (1970) by Christopher Priest is neither long on atmosphere nor exactly lacking in it, and is short enough that you could easily read it three or four times in a row. I’d recommend doing so, because experiencing it a second time immediately after the first brought out something intangible that made it even more enjoyable, though it could do with a twist or startling development to make it more memorable.

Appropriately, it’s ‘The Last Wolf’ (1987) by Reginald Hill which finishes things, a menacing, heart-in-the-mouth story of a nameless man descending a mountain with dusk closing in when he encounters…well, something. Rather like the Boucher, it’s best encountered knowing as little about it as possible, and it, too, might almost be worth the price of admission on its own.

A top five? Well, since you asked…

1. ‘Ye Goode Olde Ghoste Storie’ (1927) by Anthony Boucher
2. ‘The Last Wolf’ (1987) by Reginald Hill
3. ‘The Ghost of Travers Court’ (1911) by E.R. Punshon
4. ‘Vex Not His Ghost’ (1944) by John Dickson Carr
5. ‘An Experiment of the Dead’ (1938) by Helen Simpson

Looking back over these capsule reviews, it’s impressive just how high the overall quality of this collection is — saving the best ’til (hopefully not) last, perhaps? The mind boggles that stories of this quality can have lingered forgotten and unloved for so long, and it’s once more to be commended that Medawar and Harper Collins have gone to this effort to make them readily available once more.

The Bodies from the Library series has provided much joy in the excellent tales it has uncovered, and that high quality continues here. As the nights draw in, as shadows flicker mysteriously past your window, as floorboards creak and pipes tick in a way that you hope is the central heating warming up, there can be little better than this collection to keep you company, and to keep you hoping that nothing sinister is about to happen.

And, c’mon, there must surely be a ninth book of excellent, forgotten short ficiton out there…let’s have it, please!

~

The Ghosts from the Library collections, edited by Tony Medawar

1. Ghosts from the Library (2022)
2. Wicked Spirits (2024)

The Bodies from the Library collections, edited by Tony Medawar

1. Bodies from the Library (2018)
2. Bodies from the Library 2 (2019)
3. Bodies from the Library 3 (2020)
4. Bodies from the Library 4 (2021)
5. Bodies from the Library 5 (2022)
6. Bodies from the Library 6 (2023)