Search Worlds Without End

Victorian-era Christmas ghost stories are associated primarily with Charles Dickens and other British writers, but for this new volume, editor Christopher Philippo has discovered that the tradition of telling and publishing ghostly tales at Christmas flourished in the New World as well. These tales are set in places that are familiar and yet foreign to us--Gold Rush-era San Francisco, old New Orleans, the barren and frozen plains of Iowa and the Dakotas, the early days of the Puerto Rican commonwealth.

Like their British cousins, these stories make perfect winter reading by candlelight or the fireside. This selection includes more than a dozen rare tales, most never before reprinted, along with a number of macabre Christmas-themed poems, and features a number of contributions by women and African-American authors.

Contents:

• The Green Huntsman (1841) - Joseph Holt Ingraham
• Burt Pringle and the "Bellesnickle" (1853) - Bill Bramble
• Worse Than a Ghost Story (1857) - Anonymous
• The Christmas Ghost (1857) - Lucy A. Randall
• The Frozen Husband (1869) - Frank Ibberson Jervis
• A Sworn Statement (1881) - Emma Frances Dawson
• The Snow Flower of the Sierras (1884) - Anonymous
• The Devil's Christmas (1885) - Julian Hawthorne
• Harlakenden's Christmas (1887) - Thomas Wentworth Higginson
• The Ghostly Christmas Gift (1887) - F. H. Brunell
• The Blizzard (1888) - Luke Sharp
• Warned by the Wire (1895) - Louis Glass
• Poor Jack (1892) - H. C. Dodge
• Christmas Wolves (1897) - Pierre-Barthélemy Gheusi
• The Werwolves (1898) - Henry Beaugrand
• The Haunted Oak (1900) - Paul Laurence Dunbar
• The Anarchist's Christmas (1901) - Anonymous
• Camel Bells (1903) - Hezekiah Butterworth
• The Ravings (1903) - Anonymous
• Out of the Depths (1904) - Robert W. Chambers
• Old Nick and Saint Nick (1906) - Wallace Irwin
• The Cremation of Sam McGee (1907) - Robert W. Service
• Xmas (1908) - Amorel Sterne
• A Cubist Christmas (1913) - Kate Masterson
• Desuetude: A Ghost Story (1914) - Anonymous
• The Christmas Ghost (1915) - Anna Alice Chapin
• Merry Christmas (1917) - Stephen Leacock

It's the most wonderful time of the year - time for more rare ghostly tales of Yuletide terror from Victorian England!

For this fifth Valancourt volume of Christmas ghost stories, editor Christopher Philippo has dug deeper than ever before, delving into the archives of Victorian-era newspapers and magazines from throughout the British Isles to find twenty-one rare texts for the Christmas season - seventeen stories and four poems - most of them never before reprinted.

Featured here are gems by once-popular but now-forgotten 19th-century masters of the supernatural like Amelia Edwards, Barry Pain, and Florence Marryat, alongside contributions by totally obscure authors like James Skipp Borlase, a writer of penny dreadfuls who specialized in lurid Christmas horror stories, and Harry Grattan, who made history by writing the first ghost story recorded by Edison for the phonograph. Also included are an introduction and bonus materials, such as 19th-century news articles and advertisements related to Christmas ghosts.

Contents:

• Introduction by Christopher Philippo
• John Gibson Lockhart, "Little Willie Bell" (1827)
• Thomas Haynes Bayly, "The Mistletoe Bough" (c. 1830)
• Amelia Edwards, "My Brother's Ghost Story" (1860)
• Anonymous, "Old Hell Shaft" (1865)
• John Pitman, "Ejected by a Ghost" (1869)
• Mrs. S. R. Townshend Mayer, "The Netherstone Mystery" (1878)
• Florence Marryat, "That Awful Face!" (1882)
• Howell Davies, "Two Christmas Eves" (1885)
• Mabel Collins, "A Tale of Mystery" (1885)
• "Phœnix", "The Ghosts of the Bards" (1886)
• Jessie Saxby, "Hel-Ya-Water: A Shetland Legend of Yule Time" (1886)
• Barry Pain, "The Undying Thing" (1893)
• Magister Monensis, "The Siren" (1898)
• Baroness de Bertouch, "The Tryst, An Old Yule Legend" (1898)
• Adeline Sergeant, "The Mummy Hand" (1901)
• Skipp Borlase, "The Dead Hand" (1903)
• James Skipp Borlase, "The Wicked Lady Howard" (1905)
• Huan Mee, "Ghost of the Living" (1905)
• Harry Grattan, "A Christmas Ghost Story" (1905)
• Arthur Walter Berry, "Woden, the Wild Huntsman" (1911)
• F. G. Grundemann, "Squire Humperdinck and the Devil" (1913)