Ghost Stories - Updated

Bless you to the anonymous person who emailed me with details of the book of ghost stories I was looking for. (Although why on earth didn't you give me an email to reply to you on? It's not like I can reply to the phone box, y'know...*sighs*)

But anyway, it was much appreciated.

Just for any of you who were wondering, the book was called "Ghost Stories" and edited by Robert Westall - how's that for a memory? Took me a bit of research, because there were several editions released in different years, and the US editions aren't exactly the same as the UK ones, but as far as I can tell the one that I had was published by Kingfisher in March of 1988 - that sounds about right, but it means I was younger than I thought, because I know my Mom bought it when it was first out - and contained 22 short stories by various authors.

And since we're on the subject, and I haven't posted for a couple of days, I'll give you the whole story list.

My edition contained:

~ A Knock At the Manor Gate by Franz Kafka
~ Yesterday's Witch by Gahan Wilson
~ A Legion Marching By by John Hynam
~ The Lawyer and the Ghost by Charles Dickens
~ The Ghost Who Was Afraid Of Being Bagged by Anonymous
~ School For Ghosts by P'u Sung-Ling / translated by Vida Derry
~ The Little Yellow Dog by Mary Williams
~ The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (from The Wind in the Willows) by Kenneth Grahame
~ The Lilies by Alison Prince
~ The Emissary by Ray Bradbury
~ John Pettigrew's Mirror by Ruth Manning-Sanders
~ Sredni Vashtar by Saki
~ Miss Mountain by Philippa Pearce
~ Was It a Dream? by Guy de Maupassant
~ A Pair of Hands by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
~ The Boys' Toilets by Robert Westall
~ Left in the Dark by John Gordon
~ Video Nasty by Philip Pullman
~ Lost Hearts by M.R. James
~ Thurnley Abbey by Perceval Landon
~ Not At Home by Jean Richardson
~ The Shepherd's Dog by Joyce Marsh

The American editions removed the Philip Pullman story and put in something called The Monkey's Paw...I don't remember the author, although I could look it up. I think there might have been a couple other changes.

The funny thing is that although I forgot about a lot of these stories, and that even when I finally found the list I didn't remember them all, they're all coming back to me now. Not all the details, but I have at least a vague memory of every one of them, and clear memories of a couple. There were some really neat illustrations on some of the stories too, which is why I'm hoping to get my hands on this particular edition rather than ordering one of the paperback reprints, or the US one.

So anyway, thanks to Mr or Mrs Anonymous - and feel free to tell me who you were. If it was you who sent the email, and you live locally, I'll make you cookies.