Spooky Halloween Feature
Halloween has its roots in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (Sah-ween), the day when the souls of those who had died that year progressed to the underworld. It was said to be a night when ghosts, demons and witches roamed the earth and people tried to placate them with offerings of nuts and berries. In the modern festival the offerings are more likely to be Peanut M & M's and Jelly Beans but it remains a day when we acknowledge our fears and celebrate forces we do not understand. These ten stories all tell of the sort of sinister goings on we've come to expect from October 31st. So, curl up somewhere safe, turn the lights low and try to remember: they're only stories ...
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Kerfol
. . . Edith Wharton
. . . 19 pages
A prospective buyer goes to look round a French chateau (complete with chapel and tombs) but finds the place deserted - apart from a strange pack of dogs.
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The Return
. . . Fernando Sorrentino
. . . 5 pages
A man is the only witness to an accidental killing and the bizarre series of events that follow.
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The Case of Lady Sannox
. . . Arthur Conan Doyle
. . . 9 pages
A case which leaves a Lady of notoriously loose morals in a nunnery and her lover - a brilliant physician - in a vegetative state.
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Mrs. Zant and the Ghost
. . . Wilkie Collins
. . . 30 pages
A man and his daughter come accross an apparently mad, ill woman in a London park.
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The Canterville Ghost
. . . Oscar Wilde
. . . 21 pages
When an American minister buys Canterville Chase, a long term resident's life (or death) is thrown into turmoil.
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The Body Snatcher
. . . Robert Louis Stevenson
. . . 16 pages
A student doctor becomes suspicious of the methods being used to supply dead bodies for his professor's dissection table.
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The Moonlit Road
. . . Ambrose Bierce
. . . 9 pages
A man's mother is brutally murdered but, except for the finger marks around her neck, no trace of the killer can be found.
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Hobnail
. . . Crystal Arbogast
. . . 4 pages
Scary bedtime story about a mother and daughter's night-time journey home.
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The Lost Ghost
. . . Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
. . . 17 pages
Late one night a little girl appears at a woman's door: "I can't find my mother".
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The Trial For Murder
. . . Charles Dickens
. . . 11 pages
A banker is disturbed by visions of a murdered man and his killer. Then he is called for jury duty.
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