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The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories | 
 enlarge | Creator: Peter Haining
Publisher: Running Press
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $8.32
You Save: $5.63 (40%)
New (18) Used (13) from $2.19
Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 92514
Media: Paperback
Edition: Revised
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 512
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.1 x 1.9
ISBN: 0786716037
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.0873308
EAN: 9780786716036
ASIN: 0786716037
Publication Date: September 7, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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Product Description
Expanded with great new stories, this is the biggest and best anthology of ghostly hauntings ever. Over 40 tales of visitation by the undead—from vengeful and violent spirits, set on causing harm to innocent people tucked up in their homes, to rarer and more kindly ghosts, returning from the grave to reach out across the other side. Yet others entertain desires of a more sinister bent, including the erotic. This new edition includes a selection of favorite haunted house tales chosen by famous screen stars such as Boris Karloff, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. In addition, a top ranking list of contributors includes Stephen King, Bram Stoker, Ruth Rendell, and James Herbert—all brought together by an anthologist who himself lives in a haunted house.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
For a Good Thrilling Read...Check out this volume October 6, 2008
I found this volume to be very good reading. Pretty much all of these stories were thrilling, and some were extremely scary, necessitating a brief break before I could continue reading. It took several months to finish reading this book, but this is the kind of book you read in sessions anyway. Definitely makes me glad that I live in a brand new house. One of my favorites was "The Whistling Room" by William Hope Hodgson. Highly recommended.
 Not so scary... March 23, 2008
This book has alot of stories, some are good, some are not so good. These stories go as far back as the 1800's. They are well written but they aren't going to appeal to the folks who are looking for a good scare.
 Never judge a book by its cover.... October 1, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
There's the old addage, "never judge a book by its cover" (this cover is pretty cool) and I should have listened to it. Mammoth? Yes, clocking in at over 500 pages. Scary? Err, not really. Barring the one story of a Russian father and son repating the past to the horror of a neighboring tenant, this book was downright boring and allot of times hard to follow. Comprised of many short stories I thought this would be a good one to keep near the bed for when I wanted a quick read, what I didn't realize was how outdated the stories were and how confusing some of the dialect would be. My advice, skip this one.
 Something For Everyone October 11, 2005
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories is a vast collection of stories touching on hauntings in about every situation one could imagine. The book is divided into topical sections: Haunted Places, Avenging Spirits, Shadowy Corners (restless spirits), Phantom Lovers, Little Terrors (Ghosts of Children), Psychic Phenomena, and Houses of Horror (favorite stories of movie stars like Vincent Price).
For me, the overwhelming majority of the stories were new with The Judge's House (by Bram Stoker) and Lost Heart's (M. R. James) being the most familiar. There are stories that are frightening and others that struck me as quite tame by comparison. The beauty of this volume is that all voices from the literary world are heard and I am sure that some stories that I found less rewarding would appeal to other readers. For me the most frightening was the first story The Haunted and the Haunters by Bulwer-Lytton. It is the kind of story that has one jumping at minor sounds in the house. Equally scary was Authentic Narrative of a Haunted House, a story by Le Fanu that I was not familiar with. The Grey House by Basil Cooper was nicely written and atmospheric but not particularly frightening; it would make an interesting film. The House of Dust is a nicely written story injecting a bit of sex into haunted house tales.
A story that I was very interested in reading was In Letters of Fire by Gaston Leroux (who also wrote The Phantom of the Opera. I would not strictly categorize this story as involving a haunted house but one that has an evil room. The book has a nice selection of stories with an informative introduction to each providing us with the location and peculiarities of the haunted house and some brief biographical data about the author. There also is a helpful appendix that describes haunted house novels that I found intriguing.
Delight for a Dark Evening July 14, 2004
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
This huge anthology is a wonderful treat for any lover of the spookiest of all horror genres - the haunted house. The selections are highly eclectic, although weighted toward the coziness of the British 19th century tradition (although there's NOTHING cozy about "Lost Hearts," the M.R. James tale included here!). You'll find a terrific balance between familiar names like William Hope Hodgson and Robert Bloch (best known for Psycho) and the more obscure - this anthology was my introduction to Basil Copper and H. Russell Wakefield, whose "Ghost Hunt" is a highly enjoyable bit of pulp. Also included are a number of stories by "literary" writers not known for the horror genre, including Penelope Lively, Fay Weldon, and Virginia Woolf.Some of the stories are mostly of historical interest - modern tastes aren't likely to be thrilled by misers getting tediously Victorian comeuppances in the afterlife, and the "funny" stories are painful to sit through. But this eclectic collection offers gem after gem as well, and if you want a survey of the breadth and depth of the haunted neighborhood, here is your field guide.
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