​BOOK REVIEW: PHANTOMS EDITED BY MARIE O’REGAN

There really is nothing like a great collection of ghost stories as the nights get darker. If you’re like me, a fan of MR James and Dickens, then this anthology should appeal. It’s filled with new stories that manage to capture the essence of chilling tales from the past and ghosts from all walks of life.
 
A lot of credit for anthologies, quite rightly, goes to the authors for their creative works. However, editors always do a lot of work behind the scenes – not just in soliciting stories from the best writers, but also editing them so that they go from gleaming to sparkling, and setting the stories in just the right order to keep the readers interested. There has to be a balance between ghostliness and gore, so that the reader doesn’t get overwhelmed or bored. O’Regan manages to get this balance spot on.
 
While there were a couple of stories in this anthology that didn’t really grab me, I couldn’t deny that even these tales were well-written and engaging. I got to the end feeling as if every piece had a value of its own.
 
We start with one of my favourite stories of the anthology: When We Fall, We Forget by Angela Slatter, which plays on old religious ideas very nicely. The author manages to get a wealth of backstory in without seeming like it’s cramming the pages with essential information and managing to maintain the atmosphere. In this, I feel that the house was as much of a character as the named humans.

After reading Tom is in the Attic, I had to text Robert Shearman and berate him for causing me to put down the anthology and walk away for a time. His story isn’t exactly scary, but – as we’ve come to expect from Shearman tales – it was deeply disturbing. Childhood innocence is perverted; the main character starts off appearing insane, but you get the end feeling that she couldn’t be any other way if she hoped to survive the weirdness around her. This is not a story you would want to be trapped inside.
 
I’ve not read any Joe Hill, but on the basis of his story, 20th Century Ghost, I certainly will in the future. I mean it as no disrespect when I say that his style and delivery is very much like Stephen King’s: small town America, focussing on small people, and drawing us completely into their lives. In this case, the action revolves around a haunted cinema, and although each of the characters appears only briefly, Hill deftly weaves them into our minds so that we feel we know them intimately by the end.
 
A Man Walking His Dog by Tim Lebbon is a wonderful idea – a story focussing on the eponymous dog owner who finds the corpse on his morning walk. I could sense there was a twist coming but when it arrived, I was genuinely surprised, and a little touched by the sadness of it.
 
Cameo by Laura Purcell evokes a truly Gothic atmosphere while keeping itself firmly rooted in the present. It might be cliched, but there’s something immensely satisfying in a ghost story that starts in a rambling “Hall” of some description. The characters experience a very personal haunting, one that you feel has been stalking them for quite some time. Who knew jewellery could be so creepy?
 
Catriona Ward’s offering, Lula-Belle, focusses on two sisters living together and harks back to the brutal chills that we found in her novel Rawblood. I still can’t decide whether Lula-Belle was corrupted by outside influences or whether corruption was in her nature. The ending is that strange mixture of bitterness and solace that often characterises Ward’s writing, where the characters know the horror is not over but it’s over for now, and that’s enough for them.
 
For her story, Front Row Rider, Muriel Gray chooses to give us a character-based piece. It’s not particularly scary, and some would say it is a trifle predictable, but I was drawn in by the way this haunting had become such a part of normal existence to the main protagonist. She had just absorbed the terror into her daily routine, and that brought an extra chill-factor to the story. I had anticipated the general theme of the ending before it arrived, but there was an added element to the conclusion that I enjoyed.
 
I’d read A Haunting by John Connolly before, but that didn’t stop it bringing tears to my eyes when I read it in this anthology. As ever, Connolly renders his characters in such a detailed, sympathetic manner that you can’t help feeling their plight in your very heart.
 
I have to say that My Life in Politics by MR Carey didn’t work overall for me. I found the characters a little bit too distant to draw me in. However, the exchange with the statue was just such an amazing curveball in the story that really worked, and that alone made it fun to read – as did the immensely satisfying ending.
 
Frank, Hide by Josh Malerman is a tale with a twist that you’ve seen before, and yet Malerman wrote with such panache that I was happy to read along and find out how this was going to resolve itself. The ending was bizarrely abstract, but that just added to the chills when you got to the final scene.
 
Although I didn’t find The Chain Walk by Helen Grant in the least bit scary, that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t an enjoyable story. Some very vivid descriptions really brought this tale and its characters alive for me.
 
AK Benedict really is a master of the short story, and The Adjoining Room stayed with me long after I’d put down the book. We don’t see the monster, but we don’t need to – Benedict renders in surreal and bloody detail exactly what it does to its victims. And that ending really tugged on my heartstrings.
 
The Ghost in the Glade by Kelley Armstrong was concisely told with a nice twist. Armstrong made good use of childhood imaginings to really bring out old fears from the depths of your psyche. I liked how the ghost wasn’t typical – not vengeful, not pitiable, just petty and irritating. The ending was particularly satisfying.
 
The Restoration by George Mann was another story that didn’t really grab me or leave me with chills. However, there is an in-depth knowledge of art restoration that really gives his story some veracity and the characters were believable and pitiable.
 
A real slow-burn tale is One New Follower by Mark A. Latham. Some stories relying on technology to add to the mystery of a ghost story don’t always work, but Latham mixes cultism, ghosts, and modern photography with great skill, and his bleak ending gave me goosebumps.
 
Towards the end of this anthology we have the fabulous and astoundingly creative story by Paul Tremblay called A Haunted House is a Wheel Upon Which Some Are Broken. If you buy the anthology for just one story, then it’s this one. It has to be the first time I’ve seen the “choose your story” format used for a short story. And not only does it work, providing the reader something fresh that they’ve not seen before, but the format itself also acts as commentary on the plight of the characters and the cyclical nature of both life and hauntings. Bravo, Tremblay, bravo.
 
In Halloo by Gemma Files, I liked how the author wove speech from an unknown source into the narrative, adding to the tension without creating too much confusion. I had an inkling of where the story was going, and while I wasn’t particularly scared or creeped out, watching how one woman’s attempt to regain sanity is her ultimate downfall into madness made for uncomfortable reading.
 
The anthology ends with a tale by Alison Littlewood. As ever, Littlewood manages to weave a tale using the space between the words as well as the narrative itself. The Marvellous Talking Machine follows her trend of mixing historical fact with horrifying fiction, and the chilling ending to her tale makes a fitting conclusion to this book.
 
Phantoms is a collection of exceptionally well-written stories reflecting a broad range of storytelling styles. I can’t imagine any book more suitable for reading before a roaring fire on a dark autumn night.

---