My husband is reading Three Men in the Dark: Tales of Terror by Jerome K. Jerome, Barry Pain & Robert Barr. I love the cover. I decided this would be a good time to try some more horror stories or ghost stories, an area I am not experienced in.
The title and the emphasis on Jerome K. Jerome's name on the cover led me to assume the books was only stories by that author. In fact, the editor, Hugh Lamb, has created a collection of tales of terror by Jerome and two of his contemporaries and friends, Barry Pain and Robert Barr.
I read four stories and I had mixed reactions. Of the four I read, I preferred Barry Pain's stories. Unfortunately I did not try any stories by Robert Barr.
"The Skeleton" by Jerome K. Jerome
The story starts with a discussion of spiritualism. One of the men tells a story about a man who purchases a skeleton and then thinks that the skeleton is coming alive. The story was more complicated than that, but that was the part that made an impression on me. 7 pages.
I enjoyed this exchange in the discussion of spiritualism:
"For my part," remarked MacShaughnassy, "I can believe in the ability of our spirit friends to give the quaint entertainments credited to them much easier than I can in their desire to do so."
"You mean," added Jephson, "that you cannot understand why a spirit, not compelled as we are by the exigencies of society, should care to spend its evenings carrying on a laboured and childish conversation with a room full of abnormally uninteresting people."
"Silhouettes" by Jerome K. Jerome
I read this twice, and in truth I did not understand it. It was very atmospheric, and there were a couple of paragraphs that were very nice, that I kept going back to. 8 pages.
"The Case of Vincent Pyrwhit" by Barry Pain
This one seemed like a ghost story to me.
Very short, only 4 pages. The story is told by Vincent Pyrwhit's oldest friend. Vincent Pyrwhit died in strange circumstances after his wife died from a long illness. Before his death, Pyrwhit invites the narrator to visit, and they get a strange telephone call. The story did not scare me but I found it very effective.
I found this story online at Wikisource.
"Linda" by Barry Pain
This one was also told in first person and was my favorite. I liked the writing and the narrative. The narrator's brother marries a woman named Linda. After Linda's death, the brother invites the narrator to visit him; he now has Linda's younger sister living with him. The situation is very tense. It was also not very scary but I liked it. 14 pages.
I'll join you this month and read a few "scary" stories.
ReplyDeleteMy choice will be a writer I've read before and has the
"ghost, haunting, chilling" credentials I'm looking for.
Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson!
Great blog
ReplyDeletePlease read my post
ReplyDeleteI sometimes think horror/ghost/etc. stories are best told in short story form, Tracy. There's so much creepiness you can fold into a story that probably wouldn't work in a novel. I'm glad you shared these.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Margot. The short form lends itself well to ghost stories.
ReplyDeleteLove the cover! Very Halloweenie!
ReplyDeleteNice seasonal selections. I do read lots of short stories on a regular basis but it's been a long time since I've read "scary" ones. These sound like fun. I agree with you...should have been a comma after the first author name...probably not an accident it's missing (and not just because of the cosmetics).
ReplyDeleteNancy, I have only read "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. And every time I read it, it makes me tense. But I would like to read more of her short stories.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Rajani.
ReplyDeleteMargot, I chose several shorter stories in this collection, and they certainly work better for me than a full novel with horror or spooky elements.
ReplyDeletePatti, Glen has a large collection of short story books that are ghost stories, or horror, or just weird. So I have plenty to choose from.
ReplyDeleteGeorge, Halloween isn't my favorite holiday, but I love Day of the Dead and all the decorations and designs that go with that. I love any books on any topic with skeletons or skulls on the cover.
ReplyDeleteSam, supernatural or scary stories, long or short, don't appeal to me that much, but I do have several authors that write that kind of thing that I want to sample. M.R. James and Robert Aickman for sure.
ReplyDeleteTimely post as it nears Halloween. I like to read scary stories.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great cover for the week leading to Halloween!
ReplyDeleteMy niece is turning 16 on Halloween - I am thinking about finding her a scary or at least atmospheric book but need to speed up my mental shopping or it will be too late.
Some Jerome K. Jerome short stories are actually excerpts from his book Novel Notes, such as "The Skeleton" (which was originally published as "Ghost Story." Hence the group of men sitting around telling stories. The stories themselves might be interesting, but as excerpts of conversations to me they do not feel like self-contained short stories, at least not in the modern sense.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, a great cover. I would purchase the book for the cover alone.
Thanks, New Release Books. I don't really go for scary stories, but I know that there is a great variety of such stories that I haven't tried.
ReplyDeleteI've read most of Jerome K. Jerome's ghost stories and Novel Notes but a while ago so have forgotten them. Years ago I read a biography of him. He was an interesting man and did in fact have a couple of paranormal experiences on the battlefields of WW1. The other two writers I'm not familiar with at all so it's interesting that you liked the ones by Barry Pain better. I must look him up.
ReplyDeleteConstance, it is a great cover. I bet it is hard to buy books for a 16-year-old, you never know what they like at the time. An atmospheric books sounds good.
ReplyDeleteFrank, I do love the cover also. I have purchased many books just for the cover in the past.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that information about the "The Skeleton." When I looked it up online a couple of days ago I found a link to a story titled "The Man of Science". It seemed to be the same story with two additional paragraphs at the beginning and one additional paragraph at the end, and I thought the story was better with those additional paragraphs.
That story is at this link:
http://victorian-studies.net/ghost-stories-jerome.html
Now I will have to look into Novel Notes by Jerome. There seem to be many editions. I purchased a kindle edition very cheaply but may want a paper copy also.
Cath, I don't know where I read about Jerome's biography recently, probably when I was scanning the introduction to this book. I can now go back and finish the introduction because Glen has finished the book and passed it on to me.
ReplyDeleteI have read nothing else by this author at all, but I have Three Men in a Boat in an ebook edition. I will read some stories by the third author in the book, Robert Barr, also. Glen has put a collection of supernatural and weird stories by Barry Pain on the wish list.