The Shrieking Skull and Other Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories - Hardcover

Borlase, James Skipp

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1954321856 ISBN 13: 9781954321854

Publisher: Valancourt Books, 2022

Synopsis

Thirteen rare tales by the most prolific Victorian Christmas ghost story author, collected and republished for the first time!

Move over, Charles Dickens! The author of "A Christmas Carol" may be the most famous Victorian author of Christmas ghost stories, but the king of the genre was James Skipp Borlase (1839-1909), who published dozens of them in obscure British and Australian periodicals during a nearly fifty-year span. Now for the first time, thirteen of Borlase's best tales have been unearthed from newspaper archives and compiled in a single volume for modern readers.

In "A Weird Wooing" (1898) an impecunious suitor braves a house haunted by the ghosts of plague victims in search of a legendary treasure. "The Steel-Bound Valise" (1875) tells of a horrid murder and a spectral vision that reveals the truth behind the awful deed. In "A Bride from the Dead" (1899), a man races against time on horseback to save his beloved from a forced marriage-but arrives too late to prevent an even more horrible and macabre fate. This volume showcases Borlase's wide range, featuring macabre and bone-chilling stories alongside more lighthearted pieces, all of them just as entertaining to read on a winter's night as they were more than a century ago.

About this title

From the Back Cover

"I believe that human nature still has its old admiration for the horrible, and enjoys a good ghost story over the fire (and before the gas is lighted) as keenly as in the so much bequoted days of superstition. In fact, there can never be an unpopularity for the supernatural."
- James Skipp Borlase

Edition details

• Publisher: Valancourt Books
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1954321856
• ISBN 13: 9781954321854
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192
• Editor: Philippo Christopher