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Best ghost stories
Published: 10/31/2008 10:35 AM
Last Modified: 10/31/2008 10:35 AM

We reviewed Susan Hill's "The Man in the Picture" this past Sunday -- and we take no offense if you have no idea what we're talking about -- and found it an excellent example of a ghost story, as effective at making a reader feel a sense of dread and terror as Hill's previous "The Woman in Black."

Today, the Guardian devotes its regular "Top 10" column to
superior stories of spookiness:
Read the story: Ghost Stories

Most of them are well-known: "The Monkey's Paw," "The Body Snatcher," of course "The Turn of the Screw" (probably the only thing by Henry James most readers have ever attempted).

Some are less familiar, but no less chilling, like Saki's exquisitel, black comedy "The Open Window," and M.R. James' "O Whistle and I'll Come tor You, My Lad," which may be one of the great titles of all time -- a bucolic sentence that vibrates with unspoken menace.

And there are some I'm going to have to track down, like Elisabeth Taylor's "Poor Girl." I've read and enjoyed some of this author's novels, and can imagine the sort of changes she might ring from the formula of the ghost story.

One writer who doesn't get mentioned much these days -- mainly because his work is difficult to find and runs counter to what most people think of as horror stories or ghostly tales -- is Robert Aickman. But Aickman, an English writer who produced several volumes of what he preferred to call "strange stories" before his death in 1981, was able to conjure up in his stories a unique sensation -- of truly being haunted, instead simply reading about being haunted. His stories blend the mundane and the menacing, the simple and the surreal, in ways that make you question the reality of what you're reading, just as Aickman's protagonists struggle (and usually fail) to understand the unexplainable things happening around them.

Aickman's stories are unlike anything you've read. And I know they aren't to everyone's taste -- but for those who savor a glimpse into the abyss, who know there are things in heaven and earth that cannot be explaining, the stories of Robert Aickman can be addictive.


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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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