In the flickering candlelight of pitchy Autumn nights, malevolent spirits crowd the gloom and weird, terrible things come to pass. Ever since the days of the druidic Samhain, storytellers have observed the tradition of spinning tall, twisted tales of dark magic, spectral stalkings and unearthly creatures to mark this festival’ s uniquely frightening aura. Collecting up a haunting haul of tales and a handful of weird seasonal poetry from across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this new volume celebrates the riotous weird of the Halloween season through the works of legendary ghost story writers such as Edith Wharton alongside rare literary treats, rediscovered by Johnny Mains and returning to print for the first time since their original publication.

Johnny Mains is an award-winning editor renowned for recovering lost stories from the archives. His focus for the past few years has been stories by female authors, many of which have been published in the Black Shuck Books anthologies A Suggestion of Ghosts and An Obscurity of Ghosts. Mains has also edited collections of the best contemporary British Horror, and co-edited the Dead Funny anthologies of short stories by contemporary comedians with Robin Ince.

CONTENTS Introduction: A Brief History of Early Halloween A Note from the Publisher Poems Hallowe’ en - John Mayne Halloween - Robert Burns Hallowe’ en: Or, A Tale of Terror - Revi ’ Twas the Night of All Hallows - Geraldine TALES Vermudyn’ s Fate: A Tale of Halloween - R. Fryer Out of the Night - Elizabeth Phipps Train The Face in the Glass - Letitia Virginia Douglas ’ Struther Kannock’ s Halloween - Edgar L. Wakeman The Phantom Ride: A Hallowe’ en Ghost Story - Lyllian Huntley The Vow on Hallowe’ en - Lyllian Huntley Harris The Banshee’ s Halloween - Herminie Templeton Kavanagh The Graveyard - Alphonse Courlander All Souls’ Night - Eleanor Fitzgerald The Sword - Rachel Swete Macnamara Cockrow Inn - Tod Robbins When Hell Laughed - Flavia Richardson All Souls’ - Edith Wharton Moonlight-Starlight- Virginia Layefsky The New House - Elizabeth Walter The Grove - Mary Williams Acknowledgements