Cuando te alejas del concepto contemporáneo de la literatura de terror actual y te dejas seducir por otro tipo de propuestas más clásicas puedes adentrarte en unos mundos deliciosos. Un tipo de narración en la que se prescinde de recursos impactantes para ir generando en el lector otro tipo de sensaciones, que en un principio parecen más inocuas, pero que poco a poco van calando por dentro.
Y es que estas historias tienen la particularidad de seguir resonando en tu cabeza una vez las has terminado. En algunos casos por la originalidad de la propuesta, la manera de presentarte el elemento sobrenatural o por la sensación de haber leído una de esas historias clásicas que siempre tienen hueco en el corazoncito de los que amamos al terror. Otras veces van incluso más allá, aportándote una narración en la que tan solo te presentan unos hechos concretos a los que tú, como lector, tendrás que encontrar su significado.
En este pequeño libro de cuentos se presentan tres obras de la afamada escritora Edith Wharton centradas en la presencia de fantasmas. Cada uno de ellos muy diferente al anterior en cuanto a temática y manera de enfocarlos, pero con la deliciosa sensación de que, cuando lo has terminado, te apetece leer otro más. En estas tres historias uno consigue disfrutar de la manera de narrar que tiene Wharton, con su particular ritmo y su manera de tomarse las cosas con calma para que el lector se vaya adentrando poco a poco en el misterio que te va a proponer.
Eso, claro, provocará el rechazo de los lectores que busquen entre sus páginas la presencia de entidades sobrenaturales y vengativas de la que tantas veces se ha abusado en el cine actual. Pero en estas historias hay que adentrarse con la idea de estar acompañados de la noche, bajo la luz de una vela y dejándose llevar por la atmósfera que consigue recrear la escritora.
Cuando decides apostar por estas historias de fantasmas, cuando te quieres adentrar en esos mundos en donde la frágil línea que separa la vida de la muerte puede que se encuentre quebrada, cuando el espanto acontece en una revelación que te lleva a plantearte el cómo es que no te había dado cuenta antes de esa sorpresa, es entonces cuando admites que una buena historia de fantasmas te puede estremecer y que, siempre, espera a que apagues la luz para regresar.

[EDIT: Note, if this pops back up in my feed as some new thing...Goodreads seems to be having issues with multiple editions of a book and somehow marked both the paperback and kindle versions of read at the same time (which is, technically, true) and I was trying to not cheat on the "challenge" so I've been trying to get it to combine my reading, and it was glitchy, so I had to sort of delete one instance of the review so the other one could stand alone...and who knows what will happen next]

I'm not sure if there is a best way to approach this book. Which is quite good, by the way. Not the best ghost stories, but good stories generally written with skill and great pacing and at least a couple manage to hit something like true spookiness. She admits, in her preface, that what triggers one person vis-à-vis a ghost story might leave another unaffected, but even in that regard one should not be mining these for pure spookums (if one tries, they will be a bit disappointed). She is slightly playing with the slowburn ghost story the same way some musicians play with jazz while also playing jazz, if that makes sense. The overall impression is stories from a transitional era: between the traditional ghost story and the more modern type (which is a misnomer, really, since a lot of ghost stories written nowadays are more traditional than, say, something Henry James or later M.R. James or definitely something Oliver Onions or Robert Aickman might write). Her voice is not unique, per se, but it is also personal to her and her writing. Few to none of the games she plays are utterly groundbreaking, even for the era, but they are more to the front of development than behind the curve.

Like I said, no one best way to appreciate this. Mostly, read it for what it is: Edith Wharton's contribution to a somewhat full body of ghostly works, and one that stands out from the vast majority in terms of quality and spirit (no pun intended, but also pun intended).

I first found this book some years ago (maybe 12ish?) and read "Pomegranate Seed" and that gave me a mixed impression of the book. Upon reread, I found elements of that story quite effective and the sort of punch at the end all the better because how faint it is (read her preface afterwards for something of a humorous anecdote relating to readers' reactions to the mechanics of the story). At the time, though, I was three knuckles deep in the more Leisure Horror flavor of horror and so subtlety was not necessarily what I was looking for in my horror reading (though Leisure did help to catapult my reading interests more firmly towards Ramsey Campbell and some others, like Douglas Clegg, that eventually set me on a path to preferring more careful spooks over loud ones). When I first read it, I had the impression of, "She's just retreading old stories, meh," and somewhat that is right. Few of her horror tropes are exceptionally different than other, previous horror trope - someone comes to a house and has a visitation or some folks sit around a fireplace and tell about their experiences or someone has a strange encounter and reads some old papers explaining it - and you would be possibly right to suggest that her command of the tropes is lesser than other authors. In that regard, if you approach it as such, you might find it lackluster and overlong for the stories it is telling, for Wharton tells no tale in eight pages when she can instead tell it in thirty (or more).

However, working through this over a month and mostly giving myself downtime between stories to think about them, and now with more of a mindset to read more subtle stories and to pluck out elements in-between the spooks, I find myself appreciating her style much more. Take the first one as an example. On the surface, it is a perfectly boilerplate story about a new servant in an old house seeing some questionable stuff - sickly wife, neglectful (and abusive) husband, an attempt at a tryst, and a ghost - and eventually there's some death and some interacting with the ghost and nothing groundbreaking. And while it is the weakest story in the collection (though "All Souls'" tries to tie it by having a...twist of an ending that sours the moody set up that preceded) you still get more out of it by thinking through why certain folks, including the ghost, acted they way they did. Other stories are even more interesting when it comes to plucking out those details.

In some, like "Afterward" or "Pomegranate Seed", all the details and motivations are given, but there are still elements the reader must co-create with Wharton (a fact she hints at in the preface) to understand the precise outcome more fully. Even in those like "Mr. Jones" or "The Looking Glass" (the latter being one of two or three stories that might be perfectly non-ghostly in a basic reading), where motivations and outcome are both given, there is enjoyment to be had in Wharton's characterization and prose and restraint.

This is a book in which there are delights to being a more active participant. Like I said, it is good. Quite so. Full of great little moments. I doubt Wharton will ever be considered one of the true greats in the genre, but she deserves more recognition. One does long for stories to be a little more compact, here or there, and maybe a tad more adventurous, but she has still taken a few trite ideas and made something interesting out of them.

I seem to love all things Wharton, but I must say she outdoes herself with these strange and eerie tales of ghostly happenings. They are all quite well done, but there are a few that are beyond excellent. What makes most of them work is the lack of surety that they could not all be explained away with a little logical and clear thinking. Of course, here in the real world, that is how ghostly encounters always are, inexplicable phenomena or explained away--and those of us who have them are never truly sure what we have seen, and doubt our own senses.

n  The Lady’s Maid’s Bell ngets one immediately into the gothic feel and atmosphere that carries over into all the other stories. Perhaps my least favorite, but still, very well done.

n  The Eyesn This made me think of Poe’s Tell Tale Heart and the way the narrator there feels the old man staring at him, for this is a tale more about what is going on internally than externally.

n  Afterward nReally loved this one, perhaps because the setting was so well pictured that I felt as if I were inside this story participating. There is a building sense of doom approaching that begins with a chance comment from a minor character and intensifies as soon as the main action of the story begins. This is a true ghost story, in that I never asked myself if the ghost was real.

n  Kerfol nThis is an very atypical ghost tale; the ghost is not human. Enough said, but another tale that is fraught with the gothic setting and mood.

n  The Triumph of Nightn What if you could see what no one else in the room saw and it spelled doom for someone else? What would you do? Wharton deals with that situation with a bit of mystery and a touch of terror.

n  Miss Mary Pask nThis one almost felt more lighthearted to me, as it was more about perceptions than realities.

n  Bewitched nMy hands down favorite of the bunch; five-plus stars. This story put me in mind of the Salem Witch Trials because, while it operates on two levels, it might well just be about ignorance and a willingness to ascribe to the occult what is done by man. Superstition can be a very dangerous thing.

n  Mr. Jones nThe most straightforward of the tales, but set in a masterfully spooky environment.

n  Pomegranate Seed nMore than one new wife has been haunted by her predecessor, but few quite like this.

n  The Looking Glass nA bit about vanity and creating ghosts. Liked the ending and the ambiguity it provided.

n  All Souls’ nThis one felt like a classic horror film--don’t open the door!

Classic tales and a true feeling of reading a M R James esque book. This was my first introduction to Wharton and her writing style and I will revisit her!

“Have you ever questioned the long shuttered front of an old Italian house, that motionless mask, smooth, mute, equivocal as the face of a priest behind which buzz the secrets of the confessional? Other houses declare the activities they shelter; they are the clear expressive cuticle of a life flowing close to the surface; but the old palace in its narrow street, the villa on its cypress-hooded hill, are as impenetrable as death. The tall windows are like blind eyes, the great door is a shut mouth. Inside there may be sunshine, the scent of myrtles, and a pulse of life through all the arteries of the huge frame; or a moral solitude, where bats lodge in the disjointed stones and the keys rust in unused doors…”
-tEdith Wharton, The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton.

There are so many different types of horror that it’s not possible to list them all. There are slashers stalking horny teenagers, aliens bursting from bodies, and endless hordes of zombies. There are also monsters, such as Dr. Frankenstein’s surprisingly talkative creation; vampires, sometimes sexy, sometimes not; a variety of werewolves, some in the woods, others in Paris, and one that plays high school basketball; and more than a few possessed individuals. With so many possibilities, there is a potential fright to fit every mood.

For me, my favorite is the old fashioned ghost. I like the idea of a once-living entity still haunting its old grounds, trying to resolve unfinished business left over from life. It really speaks to the shortness of the time we have, and the unsolvable mystery about what – if anything – lies beyond the final boundary.

With The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton, I got exactly what I wanted. These are ghostly tales of the classical variety, gore-free but brimming with undercurrents, written in the elegant prose of one of America’s greatest writers.

***

The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton needs little introduction, as the title gives the game away. It is a collection of fifteen supernatural short stories collected by Wordsworth Editions, a publishing house dedicated to low-price books. I’m not really sure who picked these particular stories, or why, but like any collection, there is some variance in quality. Nothing here is bad – Edith Wharton was simply too talented – but some landed better than others.

Perhaps the chief selling point – other than those nice Wordsworth prices – is the spectacle of Wharton turning her Pulitzer Prize-winning skills to a genre that has historically had about it a hint of disrepute.

***

Having read this straight through, I’ll acknowledge that there is a bit of sameness to all of the short stories gathered here. Every time I started a new one, I would unconsciously start guessing which of the characters was actually a spectral presence. Tonally, too, these were subdued and subtle, carefully ambiguous in a way that required me to pay close attention. Oftentimes I’d get to the end and belatedly realize I’d missed something important.

With that said, Wharton manages variety in other way. Some of these stories are told in the first person, some in the third. Meanwhile, there are a couple nested narratives, and one purporting to be a reconstruction of old French court records. Many of the settings include old houses, but these houses are located all over: England, Italy, France, and the United States. There is also one yarn that takes place in the Wharton multiverse, mentioning the fictional town of Starkfield, where poor Ethan Frome is doomed to tend to his wife Zeena for literary eternity. If nothing else can be said of Wharton, she knew how to describe a place and create an atmosphere. Her writing lets you step right into a scene.

***

I’m not going to go through each of the fifteen stories. Doing so would tax me, bore you, and inevitably ruin the surprises. Instead, I’ll give a few general impressions and highlights.

Like I said up top, none of the horror in these pages is explicit. While The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton and The Shining exist on the same spectrum, they are on polar opposite ends. Beyond that, none seem intended to scare the pants off of you. This makes sense, because Wharton was writing in the early twentieth century, when people were meant to keep their pants on at all times.

At her best, though, Wharton can be chilling, even low-key ruthless.

The best story here is probably Afterward, about an American couple who purchase an English country house inhabited by – you guessed it – a ghost. The twist, however, is that you won’t know you’ve met this ghost until long afterward, and that realization comes with consequences.

Other winners include The Duchess at Prayer, which is a distant cousin of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado; Kerfol, about a medieval lord who really, really doesn’t like dogs; and The Journey, a dark-humored train ride that feels like an embryonic version of Weekend at Bernie’s.

On the other hand, The Fulness of Life, through which Wharton seemed to be channeling her own troubled marriage, falls on the preachy-treacly side of the divide. Nevertheless, it is still memorable for its opening scene of a dying woman’s final thoughts.

***

Unlike a lot of more-modern horror, Edith Wharton works at a very low volume. Her stories are quiet and still, concerned with creaking floorboards, flitting shadows, and housekeepers who are just a tad off. Films like Halloween, The Exorcist, and Poltergeist, and books like It and The Ruins, jump out at you from the closet shouting “boo!” The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton never lifts its voice. It is more like a soft, cold breath on the back of your neck, which you feel as you sit next to the guttering fire in your centuries-old gothic manor. Sure, it’s probably just a draft. But maybe – just maybe – it’s something else.

Beautiful writing but the stories are not particularly scary. Maybe they were back when it was written. But Wharton's powers of description make it a very worthwhile read.

What a wonderful collection of short stories - "tales of mystery and the supernatural" - written a century or so ago. A new author to me, one picked up through a recommendation made during an online presentation about the Arctic, the stories are compelling and suspenseful and very much open to personal interpretation. And, they linger.

Perhaps because she is one of the most esteemed writers of the 20th century, Edith Wharton may not be immediately associated with the genre of horror. Today, she is probably best remembered for her novels "The House of Mirth" (1905) and "The Age of Innocence" (1920), which latter book copped her the Pulitzer Prize, as well as for her classic novella from 1911, "Ethan Frome," a staple reading assignment for all English majors. In novel after novel, Wharton examined the members of the upper crust in turn-of-the-century NYC, a society and a town that she knew well by experience. But as she would reveal in her autobiography "A Backward Glance," the author was a big fan of the ghost story as well, a shivery pot in which she would ultimately dip her quill on any number of occasions. After all, her close personal friend, Henry James, had been hugely successful with his chilling novella of 1898, "The Turn of the Screw," so why not herself? Happily, Scribner's 1973 collection "The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton" brings together 11 of the author's efforts in the field of horror to winning effect. Prefaced by an introduction by the author herself, and featuring beautiful illustrations for each story by one Laszlo Kubinyi, the book may prove a real eye-opener for readers who'd thought they knew this author well.

The 11 stories in the collection were released over a 35-year period, from 1902 to 1937, and take place in a wide range of locales; indeed, very few of the stories transpire in the NYC most commonly associated with Wharton's writing. All, as might be expected from an author of Ms. Wharton's stature, are meticulously crafted and beautifully written. And while none of the stories is especially gruesome (especially when compared to the shock and gore tactics frequently employed by many horror practitioners today), all of the tales here are highly atmospheric, and many of the pieces do indeed manage to chill. In some of the stories, the reader is required to read between the lines so as to understand what has transpired; others are more explicitly spelled out. But every tale still manages to impress, in one way or another; this is a very pleasing collection, over all.

As to the stories themselves, the collection kicks off with the earliest piece, chronologically: 1902's "The Lady’s Maid's Bell." The tale is narrated to us by young Alice Hartley, a typhoid convalescent who begins a new job as a maid in a "big and gloomy" house on the Hudson, in upstate New York. But Alice's life is soon beset by the ghost of the former maid, Emma Saxon, who rings her bell in the middle of the night and seems to be endeavoring to communicate some message. In the story's most chilling scene, Emma leads Alice through a dreary field in the snow, on some mysterious mission. By the tale's end, the reader may feel that he or she has not been given enough information to solve this puzzle, although a residual chill surely remains.

In "The Eyes," which transpires mainly in England and Rome, an aged man of the world, author Andrew Culwin, tells his cronies of the one ghostly experience that he had witnessed; namely, a pair of eyes that would stare at him, at intervals, in the dark, over a period of some years. During this time, Culwin had treated his fiancée callously and taken up with a young and inexperienced writer whom he was nurturing. (The gay subtext in the story is quite pronounced.) But what is the cause of those damnable, staring orbs? Once again, the reader is required to look between the lines, especially regarding the tale's final two pages. No wonder one of Culwin’s auditors mentions being "disquieted by a sense of incompleteness"....

In "Afterward," an American couple, Mary and Ned Boyne, moves to Dorsetshire and takes over a Tudor home that is supposedly haunted by a most unusual ghost: one whose presence is never known till long after its appearance. And once settled into their rustic abode, named Lyng, Ned begins to act nervously, a mysterious and dead-voiced stranger comes calling, and Ned ultimately vanishes, leading to a rather shocking revelation concerning his business dealings, as well as a fulfillment of the ghostly legend. In all, a very satisfying story, expertly paced and handled.

"Kerfol" presents us with a most unique group of ghosts...of the canine variety! Here, a man visits an abandoned castle in Brittany and comes across the spectral mutts, who stand and stare at him dolefully. A little investigation reveals their tragic background, in a tale that stretches all the way back to the early 1600s, involving the cruel Baron de Cornault and his miserably neglected wife. This is a wonderful story, meticulously detailed and pleasingly ghoulish. Wharton makes but a single misstep here--when she refers to the Baron's "widowhood," rather than "widowerhood"--but this one boo-boo only seems to set off the perfection of the rest.

In "The Triumph of Night," a young man is marooned at a train station during the height of a New Hampshire blizzard and accepts an invitation from an even younger man to spend the night at his uncle's home, that uncle being the renowned writer John Lavington. But after being comfortably ensconced and meeting his famous host, our protagonist begins to see a doppelganger of Lavington, seemingly trying to communicate some message. A bleak, atmospheric and wintry tale, conflating a will and (again) shady business dealings, this story concludes with the forces of benevolence thwarted, and the evils that men do triumphant....

"Miss Mary Pask" finds Wharton at her most playful, offering up a chilling tale and then pulling the rug out from under the reader's expectations. This story also takes place in Brittany, and finds our narrator about to visit the sister of a close friend, the Mary Pask of the title, who was "like hundreds of other dowdy old maids, cheerful derelicts content with their innumerable little substitutes for living." But just after knocking on her door, our narrator recalls that Mary had died the previous year...a circumstance that does not change the fact that the deceased woman shortly descends the stairs and ushers him in, in this very cleverly put-together tale.

In "Bewitched," which takes place in the Anywheresville of Hemlock County, a snowbound rural area reminiscent of the one in "Ethan Frome," a small community is alarmed when one of its prominent citizens is seen trysting with Ora Brand...a young woman who had died over a year before! Wharton perfectly captures the speech patterns and thought processes of the characters in this isolated backwater, and her wintry locale is once again expertly rendered. And then matters grow quite grim indeed, when Ora's father, Sylvester, grabs his revolver and sets forth to hunt his ghostly daughter down....

Our next tale, "Mr. Jones," tells of the Lady Jane Lynke, who inherits a mansion in the English countryside, in Kent. She learns from the oddball servants there that the house is overseen and managed by one Mr. Jones, who is very old and frail and thus never ventures from his room. Before long, Lady Jane discerns the ghostly figure of an old man in the mansion's "blue room," after which the tragic story of another neglected wife, back in the 1820s, comes to light. As in "The Lady's Maid's Bell," here, even death is no barrier for the dedicated servant who wants to give eternal assistance to his or her master or mistress....

Next up is the story that turned out to be this reader's personal favorite of the collection, "Pomegranate Seed." Here, NYC newlywed Charlotte Ashby grows increasingly alarmed by a series of letters, which always arrive in the same grayish envelopes and addressed to her husband Kenneth. Kenneth had been showing signs of mounting strain after receiving these missives, a fact that becomes understandable when Charlotte finally recognizes the handwriting on the envelopes: that of Kenneth's first wife, Elsie, who had died some time before! Featuring beautifully written and realistic dialogue, great tension and a heartbreaker of an ending, this really is one very impressive piece of work.

"The Looking Glass" features no actual hauntings or ghosts per se; still, there is a made-up one to be had here. In this story, an old grandmother, living in a NJ suburb, tells her granddaughter of the time when she used to be a professional masseuse, and of a wealthy and vain woman who she used to treat. To make this dowager happy, our narrator had pretended to be able to communicate with the spirit world, and thus contact a romantic interest of the matron's youth; a young man who had gone down on the Titanic. Despite the lack of chills and overt frights, this remains a touching story, well told, in which Wharton seemingly admonishes those who are overly preoccupied with their fading beauty, while at the same time showing them some sympathy. As the grandmother says,
"For you and me, and thousands like us, beginning to grow old is like going from a bright warm room to one a little less warm and bright; but to a beauty like Mrs. Clingsland it's like being pushed out of an illuminated ballroom, all flowers and chandeliers, into the winter night and the snow...."

In the collection's final offering, "All Souls'," an elderly widow, Sara Clayburn, encounters a strange woman while taking her afternoon walk by the Connecticut River. Immediately after, she twists her ankle on a frozen puddle and is confined to her bed. But her ordeal grows even greater when she awakens in the middle of the night to find all her servants gone missing, and a preternatural silence covering the entire world. Sara's experiences during the next 36 hours are quite nerve racking, and could well have served as the basis for a perfectly respectable episode of TV's "The Twilight Zone." They bring this collection to a very satisfactory conclusion, indeed.

So there you have it...11 finely crafted and wonderfully atmospheric tales of ghosts, hauntings, the deceased, and ancient tragedies from the pen of a true American master. I read this marvelous bunch of stories over the course of a week during mid-October and found them to be a perfect accompaniment to the season. "The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton" is more than highly recommended....

(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/ … a most ideal destination for all fans of the type of ghost story as written by Edith Wharton....)

It took me a while to read this, because I was so terrified I couldn't sleep after reading the first few stories--not every story is truly spooky, but all evoke a spooky atmosphere. Perfect short story collection for the fall!

One has difficulty imagining Edith Wharton being big into ghost stories, until one realizes what Wharton thought constituted a ghost story is so very schoolmarmy. It's the haunted house equivalent of hanging up some sheets and putting up doleful lights. Under the right suggestion, some may be scared, but most will be hard-pressed to get any suggestion of ghostliness out from the impenetrable coyness of Wharton's prose here. (One pines for the luridness of Poe.)

In the better stories of this grouping, Wharton leans on the more familiar ground of the psychological rather than the supernatural. "Pomegranate Seed," the story of a third wife whose husband is being haunted by letters beyond the grave from her deceased predecessor, is another is a long line of Wharton's explorations of marriage anxieties. (One remembers the shock of the doppelganger in the remarriages of "The Other Two", as well as Ellen Olenska as the unspoken third in between Newland and May in The Age of Innocence.)

My favorite is "After Holbein", which begins as a familiar satire of an old New York socialite before becoming something stranger. People being psychologically left behind as their gilded society fades away is a common Whartonian motif, but "Holbein" is the first I've encountered that approaches it with the element of physical aging. Underneath its phantasmagorical exterior, there's something surprisingly tender in Wharton's portrait of the last people dancing when the party is over. Rating: 2 stars

There's quite a few tales about people waiting for an absent person to return and wondering if they'll never return, as repetitive as that might be, these are probably the best stories in the collection. There's a humorous non-horror story that Wharton seems to regret writing (keep in mind the contents of this book varies in different versions, I have the 2009 Wordsworth version) but it has an ecstatic description of a church and I liked the way she compares women to houses with lots of rooms. Wharton mocks some of her characters a bit much, I've never liked it when characters seem to be like punching bags that represent people the writer doesn't like. "Kerfol" is probably my favourite of the lot.

This is a pretty good collection but I don't really love any of the stories. I have a fondness for some of them so I'll give this a gentle recommendation.

A truly great collection. Notes on stories in reverse order:

"All Souls'" Interesting that this is a late story--written, apparently, only 6 months before the author's death.It's a bit more pat and considerably less interesting and thoughtful than the others. Still, not at all bad, just not up to the standard set by the other stories.

"The Looking Glass" Since this was the only story in the collection for which there was no audio recording on Youtube I assumed it would be sub-par, but not so! Readers were perhaps shy about attempting the Irish-American accent of the narrator. Even though I only read it on the page I feel like Wharton really captured the rythm and cadence of the accent without ever resorting to cliche or apostrophes. For that alone A+, but this was also a thoughtful meditation, I thought, on the horror of aging for those who learn to live on their own beauty. Thank God I'm not beautiful and have little to lament as I grow older.

"Pomegranate Seed" Another excellently conceived and executed story. Sort of saw the ending coming, however. Still, the ambiguity was interesting. Also Connecting the title with the story--therein lies its most interesting feature. Will the husband eventually return for half the year?

"Mr. Jones" Another exquisitely crafted tale, although, I thought, a bit weaker in terms of impact. Seemed in the controlled and thoughtful--though never very moving--Arthur Conan Doyle vein. Although she leaves herself an "out," the characters' acceptance of the supernatural was quite interesting. A case of a female author treading the line between female (explained) and male (unexplained, supernatural) Gothic. Also plays on the sexuality implicit in most vampire fiction, here again with the rural aplomb.

"Bewitched" A really nice ghost/vampire story from Edith Wharton. Gutsier than I expected it to be, stark and rural. I'm so used to Wharton's writing being both urban and urbane, this kinda shocked me with its starkness and rural setting and characters.

"Miss Mary Pask" Another masterpiece! Through about 80% of the story I was thinking, "Great atmosphere, but a fairly pedestrian tale." Then she hit me with the hook. Sooooo goooood.

"The Triumph of Night" Maybe the most emotionally powerful ghost story of them all. Amazing!

"Kerfol" A simple story rather elaborately told that a) like "Afterward" works on the retroactive ghost motif and b) proves that dogs are evil or, at any rate, that they will have their revenge. Dogs disgust me but Edith loved them so the moral works either way.

"Afterward" Maybe not the scariest, or the best ghost story ever--but certainly one of the cleverest."

"The Eyes" Amazing story--even more ambiguous and subtle than the previous. I sense the horror of queerness somehow, of the rejection of procreation anyway, the ghost of profligacy?

"The Lady's Maid's Bell." Great story, right on the cusp of modernist subtly and ambiguity, with a near-Hemingway terseness of language. Sort of think I got it, but it is VERY subtle.