Virtual Halloween

Tapped from the oral traditions of American folklore, these ghost stories and tales of weird happenings, witches, and graveyards have startling, funny, or surprising endings.

Get ready for Halloween with this child-friendly collection of spooky stories from all over the world. Feel your pulse race and your skin tingle as you turn the pages of this spine chilling anthology of spooky stories from around the world. Read all about the fearsome witch Baba Yaga, the serpent woman from Spain, the rescue of Tam Lin from the bewitching Queen of the Fairies, how Father Death gets caught in the Enchanted Apple Tree, and the waterdwelling Bunyip from Australia. Make sure you have your candle ready as it's sure to be a long night... This gorgeous gift book is the perfect anthology for Halloween, or any time you want to be spooked!

From Edgar Allen Poe to Kelly Link, M.R. James to Neil Gaiman, H. H. Munro to Audrey Niffenegger herself, Ghostly reveals the evolution of the ghost story genre with tales going back to the eighteenth century and into the modern era, ranging across styles from Gothic Horror to Victorian, with a particular bent toward stories about haunting--haunted children, animals, houses. Every story is introduced by Audrey Niffenegger, an acclaimed master of the craft, with some words on its background and why she chose to include it. Niffenegger's own story is, "A Secret Life With Cats." Perfect for the classic and contemporary ghost story aficionado, this is a delightful volume, beautifully illustrated. Ghostly showcases the best of the best in the field, including Edith Wharton, P.G. Wodehouse, A.S. Byatt, Ray Bradbury, and so many more.

A spirited Black Lizard anthology with over a thousand pages of haunted--and haunting--ghost tales. The ghost story is perhaps the oldest of all the supernatural literary genres and has captured the imagination of almost every writer to put pen to the page. Here, Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler has followed his keen sense of the supernatural to collect the most chilling and uncanny tales in the canon. These spectral stories span more than a hundred years, from modern-day horrors by Joyce Carol Oates, Chet Williamson and Andrew Klavan, to pulp yarns from August Derleth, Greye La Spina, and M. L. Humphreys. Whether you prefer possessive poltergeists, awful apparitions, or friendly phantoms, these stories are guaranteed to thrill you, tingle the spine, or tickle the funny bone, and keep you turning the pages with fearful delight.

A story of faith and fraud in post-Civil War America, told through the lens of a photographer who claimed he could capture images of the dead. In the early days of photography, in the death-strewn wake of the Civil War, one man seized America's imagination. A "spirit photographer," William Mumler took portrait photographs that featured the ghostly presence of a lost loved one alongside the living subject. Mumler was a sensation: The affluent and influential came calling, including Mary Todd Lincoln, who arrived at his studio in disguise amidst rumors of séances in the White House. Peter Manseau brilliantly captures a nation wracked with grief and hungry for proof of the existence of ghosts and for contact with their dead husbands and sons. It took a circus-like trial of Mumler on fraud charges, starring P. T. Barnum for the prosecution, to expose a fault line of doubt and manipulation. And even then, the judge sided with the defense--nobody ever solved the mystery of his spirit photography. This forgotten puzzle offers a vivid snapshot of America at a crossroads in its history, a nation in thrall to new technology while clinging desperately to belief.

Following the success of The Young Oxford Book of Ghost Stories, here is a second volume. The stories are drawn from the early twentieth century tradition of ghost stories, together with contemporary stories that develop and extend this tradition. An additional feature to this collection is that it contains original stories that have been specially commissioned for these books.

More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a timeless collection of chillingly scary tales and legends. Folklorist Alvin Schwartz offers up some of the most alarming tales of horror, dark revenge, and supernatural events of all time. This hardcover edition is illustrated in spine-tingling detail by renowned A Series of Unfortunate Events artist Brett Helquist. Read if you dare! And don't miss Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and Scary Stories 3!

More traditional and modern-day stories of ghosts, haunts, superstitions, monsters, and horrible scary things.