Through Pharyngula, I found a link to The Little Professor, a blogger of Victorian stuff, who linked through a lovely website to some of her favorite ghost stories. (Following me so far?) This seemed like a good idea, so I thought I’d contribute my own mini-list of favorite classic horror. Enjoy!

• The Upper Berth, F. Marion Crawford. Simply one of the best ghost stories ever written. A narrator describes his experiences in a seemingly haunted ship’s cabin. The ending sentences are some of my favorite in horror fiction.
• How Love Came to Professor Guildea, Robert Hichens. A very unique and twisted tale of love. I described this one in a previous post, complete with a misspelling of the author’s name.
• The Mezzotint, M.R. James. A man buys a piece of artwork, a mezzotint, that has a story to tell.
• Confession, Algernon Blackwood. A war veteran, lost in the fog of London, has a nightmare which he may or may not be awake in.
• Lukundoo, Edward Lucas White. A narrator tells of finding a man stricken by a particularly pernicious curse deep in the wilds of Africa.
• The Voice in the Night, William Hope Hodgson. A shipwrecked couple find themselves gradually consumed by an insidious force.
• The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan, Clark Ashton Smith. A dark fantasy story about a greedy moneylender and the consequences of that greed.

One last story worth reading: a true story, which I recalled while traveling in Charleston. The tale of the first known serial killing family in the United States: the Benders. The ghost tour guides in Charleston seemed to have incorporated some aspects of the Bender story into their local tales.