The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories: Volume Oneby Tara Moore (Editor)
Rating: ★★½
isbn: 9781943910564
Publication Date: January 1, 2016
Pages: 291
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction, Historical
Publisher: Valancourt Books
The first-ever collection of Victorian Christmas ghost stories, culled from rare 19th-century periodicals
During the Victorian era, it became traditional for publishers of newspapers and magazines to print ghost stories during the Christmas season for chilling winter reading by the fireside or candlelight. Now for the first time thirteen of these tales are collected here, including a wide range of stories from a diverse group of authors, some well-known, others anonymous or forgotten. Readers whose only previous experience with Victorian Christmas ghost stories has been Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” will be surprised and delighted at the astonishing variety of ghostly tales in this volume.
I love me some Conan Doyle, but not this one. I’m not a fan of Arctic settings, nor of stories that take place at sea, so this was a double whammy against me liking it. Add to that, it isn’t really a spooky ghost story, so much as a second hand account of ghost sightings and their results.
In my opinion, Conan Doyle’s The Haunted Grange of Grosthorpe is a far superior ghost story.