Holy Ghosts – Classic Tales of the Ecclesiastical Uncanny
Holy Ghosts – Classic Tales of the Ecclesiastical Uncanny, edited by Fiona Snailham / From the British Library’s “Tales of the Weird” series / ISBN 9780712354134 / 285-page paperback, published 2023
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“I confess I have a particular dislike to remain in a church after dusk; it recalls to my mind the most painful story I ever heard.”
A festering evil lurks in the grotesque carvings of a cathedral’s hallowed inner sanctum; sheltering in an Alpine chapel, a young libertine confronts his eerie monastic doppelgänger; locked in a Spanish cathedral, a honeymooning couple bears witness to a fatal procession.
Churches and other sacred sites have inspired writers of the weird and uncanny for centuries as spaces in which death and the afterlife are within touching distance – where ghosts, demons and possessed effigies remain to haunt the living. Through eleven stories published between 1851 and 1935, this new anthology revives a throng of undying spirits from a host of unsung and classic authors including Elizabeth Gaskell, M. R. James, John Wyndham, and Edith Wharton.
