Not to steal thunder from the British Library, but Leonaur has an excellent collection of Riddell's Complete Supernatural and Weird Fictionavailable for readers who may be interested.

' but wait until you are left in a dreary, desolate old country mansion. As the narrator says, 'you pooh-pooh the existence of ghosts, and 'only wish you could find a haunted house in which to spend the night. Her ' A Strange Christmas Game' finds a brother and sister who after years of grinding poverty inherit a house called Martingdale, and in doing so, discover the cause of their kinsman's strange disappearance on Christmas Eve forty years earlier. How could anyone possibly say no to all that? Each and every story is set at Christmas time, with not a bad story to be found anywhere.įor 'Traditional Victorian spookiness' you can't go wrong with Irish writer Charlotte Riddell. 'spooky monks, a Vampire lady, a fatal duel, a gruesome Father Christmas and festive gifts from beyond the grave.'

' The Blizzard' by Luke Sharp (pen name of Robert Barr, Jr.) has more than a touch of irony that made me laugh when all was said and done, while Henry Beaugrand's ' The Werwolves' has the feel of a mini-epic involving native Americans who disappear 'by enchantment' and who may actually be 'a band of loups-garous.' Add to the mix a spurned and vengeful lover, and you have one hell of a fun story Supernatural indeed, with an added feel of delicious pulp goodness.

Brunell's 'The Ghostly Christmas Gift' also makes this list in a story of events in the gold fields of South America that turns utterly eerie as a man receives a bizarre Christmas gift each year in payment for the treachery that made him wealthy. Others receiving my vote of honorable mention are the anonymously-written ' Worse Than a Ghost Story' in which a dying 'spiritualist with the reputation of being a superior 'medium'' gives a warning to her disbelieving husband, followed by Frank Ibberson Jervis' 'The Frozen Husband,' the story of a beautiful young woman who falls for and marries a stranger known only as 'the brown man.' This one was delightfully creepy and thoroughly chilling.

Out for Blood by John Peyton Cooke