The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories

Phantom coaches, evil familiars, shadowy houses, spectral children and mysterious doppelgängers haunt this terrifying new selection of ghost stories. Bringing together the best works from the masters of the supernatural, these are stories that defined the genre. They range from the famous, such as M. R. James's tale of an ancient curse, 'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come To You, My Lad', and W. W. Jacobs's story of gruesome wish-fulfilment, 'The Monkey's Paw', to lesser-known master-pieces: Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Thrawn Janet', telling of a parish priest tormented for life by his encounter with the undead; 'No. 1 Branch Line', Charles Dickens's unsettling account of a railway signal-man and an ominous portent; and Edward Bulwer Lytton's 'The Haunted and the Haunters', where a cursed house harbours a diabolical secret.