More Ghosts, Ghosts, Ghosts

By: Helen Hoke

Book by Hoke, Helen This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0531043525
• ISBN13: 9780531043523
• Release Date: January 1981
• Publisher: Franklin Watts
• Length: 130 Pages
• Weight: 0.86 lbs.
• Age Range: 12 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 7 and higher

Customer Reviews

Old Fashioned Chillers

When I was in Miss Nellie Brasier's fourth grade class, we were squeezed into the school library for lack of space. Every spare moment that I could seize was spent reading books off the shelves that lined the walls. One of the books that I read several times over was one called _Ghosts, Ghosts, Ghosts_, edited by Helen Hoke. It contained a story called "The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall". I told it many times over to my friends. I have since failed to find a copy of this anthology. But here is a later anthology by Ms. Hoke, _More Ghosts, Ghosts, Ghosts_ (1981) that seem to be selected with one eye for taste and one eye for what young readers will enjoy. There are twelve stories in all: Manly Wade Wellman's "Where Angels Fear" (_Unknown_, 1939), Elizabeth Walter's "The Traveling Companion" (_Come and Get Me_, 1973), H.P. Lovecraft's "In the Vault" (_The Tryout_, 1925; _Weird Tales_, 1932), H. Russell Wakefield's "The Red Lodge" (_They Return at Evening_, 1928), N. Dennett's "Unburied Bane" (_The Third Pan Book of Horror Stories_, 1962), Richard Middleton's "The Ghost Ship" (from the book of the same title, 1912), Andre Maurois's "The House" (_The Collected Stories of Andre Maurois_, 1967), John Ware's "Spinolonga" (_The Thirteenth Pan Book of Horror Stories_, 1972), E. Nesbit's "Man-Size in Marble" (_Grim Tales_, 1893), E.F. Benson's "The Face" (_Spook Stories_, 1928), Hugh Walpole's "The Snow" (_Shudders_, 1929), and Rosemary Timperly's "Christmas Meeting" (Lady Cynthia Asquith's _The Second Ghost Book_, 1956). "Spinolonga" has a decidedly modern setting, but most of the other stories have an old-fashioned flavor to them. They are set in haunted houses, libraries, railroad trains, cemeteries, and the like. Most of these stories are oft-reprinted tales. But by the 1980s, most of them were not being reprinted quite as much as they were in the days of yesteryear. At the time that I read this anthology, I was already well familiar with the Wellman, the Lovecraft, the Wakefeild, the Maurois, and the Nesbit. The Wakefield and the Nesbit are both excellent stories that hold up well on rereading. The Lovecraft and Wellman are solid but routine pieces. The Maurois is smooth but slight, the weakest story in the anthology. The story that stands out in this collection is the Middleton. All of the other tales aim for chills and horror with varying degrees of success. "The Ghost Ship" is a piece of successful humor. Suppose that you lived in an English hamlet where ghosts are as much of a fixture as the innkeeper or the village idiot. What, then, would constitute a really unusual haunting? There remain the Walter, the Dennett, the Ware, the Benson, the Walpole, and the Timperly. The stories are all well-written, but they tend to repeat themselves. For one thing, most of them deal with people who come to some prr-itt-ee stickee ends. Perhaps it would be best to read the book in small doses. But then again, most young readers probably won't do that. So. All i