The 18th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories

[Calenture]

Fontana, 1982.

Introduction - R. Chetwynd-Hayes

Roger F. Dunkley - Eye To Eye
Steve Rasnic Tem - Housewarming
Rick Kennett - Kindred Spirits
W. F. Harvey - The Ankardyne Pew
Daphne Froome - Outside Agency
Pamela Hansford Johnson - The Empty Schoolroom
Phillip C. Heath - Off The Deep End
Heather Vineham - The Summer House
Ramsey Campbell - The Ferries
Robert Solomon - The New Old House
Walter De La Mare - Bad Company
Patricia Moynehan - The Old Rectory Well
Tony Richards - Streets Of The City
Marjorie Bowen - Kecksies
Charles Brameld - Above And Beyond
R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The Chair




The Chair by R Chetwynd-Hayes: The narrator of this one is one of the most temperamental and unpleasant characters I’ve read about. Superior, aloof, frankly snobbish and given to wild fits of temper. He sees the antique chair in a second-hand furniture shop and takes it home, where – rather like the people who buy a door in an Amicus film that I forget the title of – he uses it to help give the room some of yesterday’s grandeur.

His bedroom is “a haven carved out of the rock of time. Tudor bed, early Georgian wardrobe, Queen Anne cabinet... and now the chair.” With such surroundings he believes that he’ll be able to dream of times past and ladies in long flowing dresses.

The problem is, the chair already has an occupant, a woman with a long, beautiful face, who beckons him. He does the natural thing and throws a clock at her. The shop proprietor tells him where the chair came from, a place now pulled down: “Now a thousand little brick boxes cover its graveyard.”

But he is able to find Miss Pirbright, a lady who might be able to help him, at The Twilight Home For Distressed Ladies. And sure enough, she has a tale to tell of Miss Emily, who was jilted, then walked home alone from the church to sit in the chair.

This is one of Chetwynd-Hayes’ better ones. It has none of the regrettable humour. Collectors might like to speculate whether the door and the chair of the two stories came from the same haunted house. It even has the typical RCH snob with his comments on those “little brick boxes” (probably we all feel similarly about urban development; there is certainly always a sense that his characters feel unhappy away from country houses). The plot is not the rip-off that at first I thought – it reminded me of Edogawa Rampa’s The Human Chair – but looking at that one again, there are a lot of differences.

[Gloomy Sundae]

calenture said:

It even has the typical RCH snob with his comments on those “little brick boxes” (probably we all feel similarly about urban development; there is certainly always a sense that his characters feel unhappy away from country houses). The plot is not the rip-off that at first I thought – it reminded me of Edogawa Rampa’s The Human Chair – but looking at that one again, there are a lot of differences.

The "typical RCH snob" probably has much of the author about him; he was forever harking back to the Victorian age and the whole Upstairs, Downstairs set up through rose tinted spectacles (he obviously took it as a foregone conclusion that he'd be the master of the house and not some poor creature slaving away in the scullery).

Some of the rest:

Patricia Moynehan - The Old Rectory Well: Almost on moving in, Nerissa is disturbed by several ghostly presences around the old rectory, while Darrel is prone to sudden rages. The haunting goes back to 1650 when a Captain in Cromwell's army ordered that the well be sealed, fully aware that an Earl was concealed within: the family of loyalist sympathisers who'd assisted him were then taken to the churchyard and murdered.

Tony Richards - Streets Of The City: Marshall Harris ran when his girlfriend, Kris, was raped and torn to pieces by a street gang. Twenty years later, he is in love again and plans to marry. A series of violent murders occur, the victims all friends or acquaintances of his, and whenever the murderer is apprehended, each claims a girls voice in his head ordered him to do it.

Pamela Hansford Johnson - The Empty Schoolroom: Maud remains behind with M. Fournier and Marie during the school holidays and encounters the sobbing ghost of an ugly girl in a dunces cap. She had been mistreated and humiliated by the embittered headmistress and now it is time to extract revenge ...

Phillip C. Heath - Off The Deep End: Jeffrey, fishing at Bittercrest Lake, reels in the remains of a drowned man, one of two escaped lunatics who were killed in a boat chase when their launch exploded.

Daphne Froome - Outside Agency: Grandpa Grant's game improves ten-fold when he acquires the golf clubs that once belonged to a World War II pilot.

Steve Rasnic Tem - Housewarming: Judith's tyrant of a father haunts her new house ... or is she just imagining it? Maybe all those noises in the night are the price you pay for moving into an area with a high crime rate?

Roger F. Dunkley - Eye To Eye: Myers visits all the previous owners of his 1960 Daimler in an effort to fathom why he should always feel as though there's someone with him when he's driving. He unwittingly uncovers a murder and is pursued by the psychotic killer.

Walter De La Mare - Bad Company: The narrator is lured to a decrepit London residence by the spectre of an elderly gent who shared his carriage on the train. When, on impulse, he enters the house, our man discovers what he suspected he would - a decomposing corpse slumped in a corner. But the ghost's main reason for luring there is to reveal his despicable behaviour toward his sisters as exposed in his last will and testament ...