This audiobook anthology "Ghosts: Edith Wharton's Gothic Tales" contains five stories "Mr Jones", "Kerfol", "The Looking Glass"."The Eyes" and "The Lady's Maid's Bell", each with its own narrator.

In these stories, Edith Wharton reminded me of what horror is. It doesn't need a Michael in a hockey mask wielding a kitchen knife or a Freddie and his claws or even an evil clown in a storm drain. It just needs to hit the place where your fears live, to make you bristle with dread, to make you KNOW that you must not turn around.

The stories target two sources of horror. The first is a primal fear of the unnatural, where you are flooded with a sense of wrongness and foreboding that freezes you in place, afraid of something you can't name but can't ignore. The second is the slowly dawning recognition of being in the presence of human evil.

Some stories are written from a position of power, some from a position of weakness, some from a female and some from a male perspective. What they have in common is a talent for story-telling that makes them accessible and the presence of a subtext that abrades your peace as you read and leaves a sliver of disquiet in your memory.

This is a fine collection to savour to by a fire on a winter's day and then to engage with family and friends and glad that none of these stories are yours to tell.  

"Mr Jones."

Tells the story of a bright, well-travelled, independent woman, inheriting a small country house from a distant relative. The house has long lain unoccupied except by servants. She sees it first in the sunshine and falls in love with it. Without declaring who she is, she asks to see the house but the servants deny her access, saying Mr Jones wouldn't like it. When she takes over the house, it is clear that things are not as they should be. It is less clear who Mr Jones is and what his role is in the household. The rest of the story is the gradual discovery of the truth about Mr Jones.

This is a primal fear tale. By modern standards, it's a gentle tale with a low body-count and no dismemberments or sexual violence. Yet, let yourself believe in Mr Jones, in the reality of who he is and no matter how confident and well-travelled you are, the hairs on your neck would raise and you would want to leave.

"Kerfol"

This story had all the right elements for a primal horror tale: a gloomy château in Brittany, an ancient wrong and supernatural revenge but it turned out to be a little different than that.

In the beginning, I lost myself in the atmospheric description of a visit by the dilettenté American telling the tale, to the gloomy châteauI that his French aristo friend has suggested the American might wish to buy. The building itself became a character, its unnatural stillness a threat and its occupants, small pack of silent dogs, a puzzle.

I lost sympathy for the story when it became about the American summarising what he had learned about the significance of the château dogs by reading the transcript of the trail of the mistress of the house sometime in the seventeenth century. While the story was interesting, I found the mode of its telling too passive and grew restless.

Then I started to see that this was a story of human evil. The behaviour of the men in the story is horrifying not just because it is wrong but because it is seen as normal. I had already found myself dislike the American dilettenté but when I saw him justify, apologise for and ultimately dismiss the actions of the men, I knew who I was really horrified by.

"The Looking Glass"

This seemed to me to be the weakest of the tales. It deals with spiritualism and how those who mourn can be exploited by those who claim to speak to the dead.

The looking glass of the title can be interpreted in several ways and there is some good discussion about the reality of the emotional pain of those too rich to have anything other than imagined loss to worry about.

I didn't find the Irish Catholic masseuse-turned-medium convincing. The language she used didn't ring true and the Catholic context didn't seem to be an insiders view.

"The Eyes"

This is a very original tale, of the human evil variety, disguised initially as a conventional Country House Weekend ghost story.

There is a predator at the heart of the story. There is also a good deal of self-deception, repressed sexuality and an unacknowledged and deeply corrosive decadence. 

Yet the whole thing is told in such a low key way that no one could take offence. This is one of those stories where what is not said directly is the meat of the tale.

"The Lady's Maid's Bell"

This is classic gothic horror of the primal kind but permeated with the foul smell of human evil or, more specifically, the evil men do to women.

The tension is well managed. The dynamics are subtle and the main character is completely credible. There is a strong subtext here about repression and power and denied sexuality and male rage. All of it in a civilised wrapper that makes it even more chilling.

I thoroughly enjoyed all of these. I think my favourites were Miss Mary Pask and Bewitched. Thrilling and spooky! The introduction by Kelly Link is also worth a read for some more scary tales.

Edith Wharton may be an unlikely ghost story writer, but she does it rather well. As you would expect they are well written and have subtlety and nuance and don’t have the gore and bludgeoning of some modern horror. There is a sprinkling of the gothic, a few rambling and creepy houses and a variety of settings: England, the eastern US states, France and the desert in an unspecified Middle Eastern country.
Some of the tales aren’t really ghost stories, but explore everyday moral dilemmas and human conflicts in an innovative way. Most of the stories take place in daylight (or even artificial light) amidst modern technology (modern for when they were written). Several of the stories do explore the relationship between servants and their employers and the tensions between the two. Locks and keys play a significant role.
All Souls is an interesting Halloween story that makes more sense when you know it was written at the end of Wharton’s life, the last story she wrote before her death. The sense of helplessness, collapsing competence and fear of the unknown are very telling. There are some interesting explorations of the nature of marriage (Pomegranate Seed in particular) and relations between the sexes, although Bewitched has an interesting take on the sexual motivations of men and their ability to control them.
Wharton herself said that she did not believe in ghosts, but she feared them; and what is needed here is imagination rather than belief. What makes Wharton’s stories interesting is the usual supernatural dread filtered through scepticism. These ghost stories often follow a familiar format but Wharton does manage to subvert the genre in unusual ways.

These aren't particularly scary ghost stories (though some of them were eerie at just the right level for my wimpy sensibilities), but they are beautifully crafted, engaging, insightful, and readable. As with any collection of short stories, I enjoyed some of the tales more than others. But overall they were perfect to dip in and out of over the course of this spooky season. I'll certainly reread some of the stories - in particular "Afterward," "Mr. Jones," "Pomegranate Seed," "The Looking Glass," and "All Souls" - on future dark and stormy nights.

Edith Wharton has written what I term "genteel" ghost stories, with a variation in success if achieving a sense of mood and dread are the measure. There are several that I specifically enjoyed, "Afterward", "Kerfol", "The Triumph of Night", "Mr Jones". All are well written of course (it seems silly of me to judge Wharton). If I judge them as ghost stories then some don't seem as successful. "Eyes" in particular seems a let down (as discussed in the story section).

Overall though I find the stories a success in the "genteel" setting.

I was nervous to start this collection with my lovely Gilded Age buddy readers because I'm not usually a ghost story person. I have a distinct memory of reading a ghost story as a child (sadly I can't remember which one!) and being scared to pieces. That must have turned me off somewhat, though I'm rather a scaredy cat in general. However, I thought this collection was great! As my friend Susan said, it's an intellectual collection of ghost stories. They made me think about justice and mercy and how our actions affect others. We had some great discussions over Voxer about the stories because they nearly all end on cliffhangers, so we had to discuss what was really real in the stories. Plus they're just fun to read. Think of Edith Wharton's beautiful prose and her knack for bringing a place and characters to life and you've got all that here. A lot of the stories did revolve around a house in some way, and I love a spooky old house trope. My favorite stories were definitely Afterward, Kerfol, Mr. Jones, and All Souls'. I would have been happy for any of these to be novel length, though especially Mr. Jones. Kerfol definitely had the most emotional impact on me. Now onto The Turn of the Screw by Henry James with Jen, Melissa, Susan, and Rebecca! I've heard it's really scary...

This is a collection short creepy and ghostly stories from Edith Wharton. The tales are engaging enough, but it's Wharton's elegant prose that keep the pages turning. Horror from Edith Wharton comes in the form of learning in the last sentence of a story that the shadowy figure the reader probably thought was a ghost is in fact a ghost. There are no shocking twists by today's standards, but the stories are atmospheric and fun.

I wanted to mention that most of the stories take place in the United States. Many are set in New York City or upstate New York. I found this amusing since most haunted castles and mysterious ancient graveyards next to rural churches are set in the British Isles or Europe. Wharton's style is so suited to the Gothic tale that one is carried off to a misty moor and lulled into a far-off landscape only to hear the name of a well-known suburb — I am from the area.

All in all, I enjoyed not only the stories, but broadening my knowledge of Wharton's work. I had read The Age of Innocence years ago and recall that it was set in Manhattan in the Gilded Age with lots of mellow drama. I'd like to re-read it as well as The House of Mirth. I like the period and would not mind a few more hours of Wharton's lovely prose.

3.5 stars. A pretty great collection of atmospheric ghost stories! Can see why Edith Wharton is held in such high esteem.

I loved these stories.
Not too scary more of was that a ghost or a real person!
Beautifully written.

A high 3 stars, alas not quite breaking into the 4-star bracket.

Upon starting this collection of short stories, it dawned on me that I had read some of Ms Wharton's work before, it also dawned on me that although the title of this collection is ‘The Ghost Stories of’ they are in fact not really what you would call ghost stories at all. In fact, you only see an actual ghost in 6 of the 15 stories. They are more tales of supernatural atmosphere, of tension, of gothic scenarios, and the whisper of a ghost far more than a full-blown apparition.

That is not a criticism; far from it. Although the spooks are few on the ground these are (mostly) truly wonderful stories. The writing is superb. So fantastic in fact that I had to stop a few times to re-read some perfectly delicious sentences. Each story has a kind of watery, nightmare like quality that is truly unnerving and builds up wonderfully to the vague climax. These open endings I also enjoyed as you were never quite sure if it was something supernatural or if the narrator had just lost their mind.

These stories were all dripping in gothic tropes. We had lots of women locked in castles by tyrannical husbands, of course ghosts, narrators just recovered from illness so the slightest little spook would push them over the edge and back into convalescence and lots of swooning. God these characters loved a good swoon. All of the locations were also superbly gothic, from actual medieval castles and old French chateaus to the good old fashioned haunted stately home.

With such beautiful storytelling and creepy, uncanny plots, some of these tales where actually a little bit scary. The sort of scary that only comes to you after you’ve sat and thought about them for a while and then you get a chill down your spine. Ms Wharton is indeed a master of her craft; these are subtly done and ooze underlying menace all the better for that.

Here is the patented Lynsey Walker official marking for each story.

•tThe Lady’s Maids Bell

Who Are the “Real” Ghosts?

Up to now I have never read anything by Edith Wharton but after these 15 fascinating ghost stories Mrs. Wharton is definitely on my reading list. I would be hard put to choose my favourite from among those tales of the supernatural but if I had to make a choice, I would probably vote for “Bewitched”, where a married farmer is haunted by the ghost of a young woman with whom he seems to be carrying on an affair. Or is it not a ghost at all but the young girl’s sister? Having made my choice, I am already wondering why I did not pick “All Souls’”, or “Afterward”, or “The Eyes” or “Pomegranate Seed” because they all rank among the finest ghost fiction I have read, and I have read a lot of ghost stories in my life.

Edith Wharton’s stories remind me of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw but also of the haunting tales of M.R. James in that they conjure up indirect horror. In your traditional ghost story, the spectres often have explicable motives, e.g. redressing old wrongs, and this often tones down the effect of horror, which is based on the knowledge that our familiar patterns of reasoning won’t get us very far. Simultaneously, Wharton’s stories are not just meant to chill the marrow of our spines but they also seem to address social wrongs: Most of the stories are focused on relationship problems, on exacting and jealous husbands, on dominant and controlling wives, on class distinctions between servants and their masters – “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell” and “All Souls’” – and on people who have lost their ability to aptly interact with their surroundings as they are stalemated by their adherence to social conventions. Ironically, some of the flesh-and-blood characters in Wharton’s stories are more ghostly, or at least as ghostly, as the Wanderers from Beyond she invites into our vespertine reading hours.

Anyone who is interested in subtle, breath-taking ghost stories should read Edith Wharton’s.

Loved this collection of 11 short stories. Some were definitely more creepy than others. I’m a big chicken when it comes to ghost stories. These didn’t give me any nightmares.