Anthology of Fear: 20 Haunting Stories for Winter Nights

There are times when you don’t want to read an entire 300-page intrigue, but yearn for something short; still packing that suspense and delivering a punch. I found this exact thing in a beautiful hardback little gem sitting precariously atop a pile of pre-loved novels in a Naremburn second-hand bookshop. 

The book: Anthology of Fear: 20 Haunting Stories for Winter Nights. It’s a gorgeous selection of chilling gothic horror stories from an undeniably captivating list of authors. The list looks a little something like this: Mary Braddon who, you’ll remember, wrote the delightfully intriguing Lady Audley’s Secret, Nathaniel Hawthorne who’s name cannot be brought up without attaching The Scarlet Letter, Washington Irving who brought us The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, W.W. Jacobs, M.R. James, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Frederick Marryat, Edith Nesbit, Bram Stoker (no need to remind you what he’s famous for), and Edith Wharton. With such a strong list of credentials, the appeal of this anthology is, as I said, undeniable! 

Whilst the supernatural or paranormal, so ghosts and vamps and unholy agents are the recurrent theme of many of these tales, there is a good sense of variety on offer. From Jacobs’ terrifying tale of the magic monkey paw that grants three wishes in a most Faustian way, to Stoker’s horrid story of a gruesome revenge executed on man by a cat, Anthology of Fear does exactly what its title advertises; stringing up multiple tight threads of suspense and anxiety and then bringing them to perfect breaking point by either providing payoff or leaving the ending open for you to make up your own mind as to what happens. 

The balance between the various realms of Gothic, from the religious evil of devil-worshippers and corruption of purity in Hawthorne’s story through to the idea of villainous houses and traumatic landscapes, reminiscent of Du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn in Irving’s tale, and then the many paranormal horrors of ghosts and hauntings that colour the works of Braddon, Stoker, Wharton, James, and Nesbit make this book a continually enthralling read. 

Many of the Gothic tropes are explored; the fear of the foreign Other, corruption and decay of human decency and purity, the past haunting the present, destruction of innocence, even a little bit of homo-erotica, giving each of the stories this extra layer of depth, meaning, and complexity, so that they manage to accomplish a lot given that they are not very long. Whilst reading these stories, you are strung through an array of emotions and it’s very telling of the level of talent that these authors have that these stories can steer you through such emotional turbulence in so short a space of time. 

This book is filled with everything from pirates, to vampires, to werewolves, ghosts, manifestations of Death, extreme devices of human torture, witchcraft, and unholy unions, all accompanied by striking imagery and an ever-present feeling that the worst is yet to come. I absolutely loved it!