Wimbourne Books presents the fourteenth in a series of rare or out-of-print ghost stories from Victorian authors. With an introduction by author Alastair Gunn, Volume 14 contains stories published in the first half of the Victorian age (1837 to 1869). Readers new to this genre will discover its pleasures; the Victorian quaintness, the sometimes shocking difference in social norms, the almost comical politeness and structured etiquette, the archaic and precise language, but mostly the Victorians’ skill at stoking our fears and trepidations, our insecurities and doubts. Even if you are already an aficionado of the ghostly tale there is much within these pages to interest you. Wait until the dark of the snowy night, lock the doors, shutter the windows, light the fire, sit with your back to the wall and bury yourself in the Victorian macabre. Try not to let the creaking floorboards, the distant howl of a dog, the chill breeze that caresses the candle, the shadows in the far recesses of your room, disturb your concentration.

Includes the stories; The Blind Ghost-Seer (1839) – Abraham Elder; The Souls of the Drowned (1841) – William Henry Farn; The Haunted House in Yorkshire (1845) – Dudley Costello; The Watcher (1847) – Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu; Le Femme Noir (1848) – Anna Maria Hall; The Ghost of the Late Mr. James Barber (1850) – William Henry Wills; The Punishment of Gina Montani (1851) – Ellen Wood; The Lumber-Room (1851) – Mary Ann Bird; M. Anastasius (1855) – Dinah Maria Mulock; A Night in a Cathedral (1856) – William Fulford; The Haunted Ship (1857) – Anne Sarah Bushby; A Ghost Story (1858) – Ada Trevanion; The Lady in the Mirror (1858) – George MacDonald; The Girl with the Golden Hair (1860) – Eliza Craven Green; The Ghost of Gashleigh Court (1863) – George Augustus Sala; The Story of the House in Garden Reach (1864) – Frances Browne; The Underground Ghost (1864) – John Berwick Harwood; The Spectral Rout (1865) – Frances Power Cobbe; No. 1 Branch Line: The Signalman (1866) – Charles Dickens; The Scene-Painter’s Wife (1869) – Mary Elizabeth Braddon.