Ghost Horror

When a shipwreck washes up on a beach across from Marlow House, Frederickport residents wonder what happened to the ship's crew. Danielle discovers the ship brought a stowaway - a spirit with ties to Frederickport that go back to the 1920's when Walt, Marlow House's resident ghost, was still alive.

Audiobook narrator Peter Larson and his wife Hannah head to his hometown of Maple City to help Peter's ailing father and to put a recent tragedy behind them. Though the small, Midwestern town seems like the idyllic place to start afresh, Peter and Hannah will soon learn that evil currents flow beneath its surface. They move into an old farmhouse on the outskirts of town - a house purchased by Peter's father at auction and kept secret until now - and start to settle into their new life. But as Peter sets up his recording studio in a small basement room, disturbing things begin to occur.

The cozy little town of Pine Deep buried the horrors of its past a long time ago. Thirty years have gone by since the darkness descended and the Black Harvest began, a time when a serial killer sheared a bloody swath through the quiet Pennsylvania village. The evil that once coursed through Pine Deep has been replaced by cheerful tourists getting ready to enjoy the country’s largest Halloween celebration in what is now called “The Spookiest Town in America.”

It’s an ordinary Monday. Until everything changes forever. At 2:44 PM, a mysterious crack appears in the sky. Anyone unfortunate enough to look up is immediately struck blind. What’s worse, their mind is wiped clean, replaced with a vicious urge to kill anyone within reach. Mark is at work when it happens. Fighting not to fall asleep, the boring department meeting suddenly turns into a bloodbath when people are drawn to the windows to look up at the sky.

The ghost story is perhaps the oldest of all the supernatural literary genres and has captured the imagination of almost every writer to put pen to the page. Here, Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler has followed his keen sense of the supernatural to collect the most chilling and uncanny tales in the canon.

A romantic weekend at Marlow House Bed and Breakfast turns deadly when Earthbound Spirits founder, Peter Morris, is murdered. Plenty of people had a reason to want the man dead - especially Danielle's current guests. But it isn't Morris' ghost distracting Danielle on this deadly Valentine's Day weekend, it's her late husband, Lucas. She has her hands full with suitors coming from all directions - both living and dead - while she tries to figure out if there's a killer in Marlow House.

Perhaps Danielle's first clue should have been that Hillary's muse is male. He brings with him restless spirits and murders to solve - if Danielle dares. She has already been warned to stay away.

In 1903, fishermen find a wrecked boat containing a woman, who has been badly beaten, and a young girl. In 1993, All Hallows is now a boarding school. Following his mother’s death and his father’s hasty remarriage, Lewis Tyler is banished to Dartmoor, stripped of his fashionable clothes, shorn of his long hair and left feeling more alone than ever. There he meets Isak, another lost soul, and whilst refurbishment of the dormitories is taking place, the boys are marooned up in the attic, in an old wing of the school.

From the cramped bowels of a dimly lit radio station, Ghost Radio is beamed onto the airwaves. More than a call-in show to tell scary stories, Ghost Radio is a sanctuary for those sleepless denizens of the night, lost halfway between this world and the next. Joaquin, the host, slowly he finds himself unable to distinguish between the real world and the world populated by the nightmares on Ghost Radio.

The supernatural, the surreal, and the all-too real...tales of the dark. Such stories have always fascinated us, and modern authors carry on the disquieting traditions of the past while inventing imaginative new ways to unsettle us. Chosen from a wide variety of venues, these stories are as eclectic and varied as shadows.

Left alone at Marlow House with Sadie and Max, Walt expects Danielle and Lily to return by the end of the week. When they don't, he begins to wonder what happened to them. The ghost of Marlow House doesn't scare six-year-old Evan MacDonald. When the child sneaks into the house in the middle of the night, seeking Walt's help, the resident spirit learns something has happened to Danielle and Lily. Can a ghost confined to Marlow House and a pint-sized medium bring the people they love home?

Paul Gallo saw the report on the news: a mass murderer leading police to his victims' graves in remote Dread's Hand, Alaska. It's not even a town; more like the bad memory of a town. The same bit of wilderness where his twin brother went missing a year ago. As the bodies are exhumed, Paul travels to Alaska to get closure and put his grief to rest. But the mystery is only beginning. What Paul finds are superstitious locals who talk of the devil stealing souls, and a line of wooden crosses to keep what's in the woods from coming out.

A lone narrator meets a railway worker who is confined to a cold, gloomy station in a deep cutting near a tunnel entrance. This worker is a signalman, and it is his responsibility to give the green light for trains to pass through the area. These are slow, monotonous days. The signalman’s life is not marked by much, until the nightmares begin. Three times in a row, a ghost mysteriously appears before the signalman – and with each apparition, a tragic accident unfolds on the rail tracks. Although our narrator doubts the man at first, events soon make him a believer too.

Midnight. Some call it the witching hour. Others call it the devil’s hour. Here in the graveyard, midnight is a very special time. It is a time when ghostly spirits are at their strongest, when the veil between our world and theirs is at its thinnest. Legend has it, that while most of the world is asleep, the lack of prayers allow the spirits to communicate under the cover of darkness, among the headstones, their whispers rustling in the leaves of the old oak trees. But if you’re here in the graveyard, you can tell yourself it’s just the wind....

Recently widowed and rendered penniless by her Ponzi-scheming husband, Julia Bishop is eager to start anew. So when a stranger appears on her doorstep with a job offer, she finds herself accepting the mysterious yet unique position: caretaker to his mother, Amaris Sinclair, the famous and rather eccentric horror novelist whom Julia has always admired...and who the world believes is dead.

Alison Kerby’s guesthouse is haunted all year round. Surviving the dead of winter, though? That’s a spooky proposition. Even with a blizzard bearing down on New Jersey, Alison can count on at least two guests—Paul and Maxie, the stubborn ghosts who share her shore town inn.

Everyone knows leprechauns are just make believe. But wait, isn't that what they say about ghosts?

One hundred years ago in Port Arbello a pretty little girl began to scream. And struggle. And die. No one heard. No one saw. Just one man whose guilty heart burst in pain as he dashed himself to death in the sea. Now something peculiar is happening in Port Arbello. The children are disappearing, one by one. An evil history is repeating itself. And one strange, terrified child has ended her silence with a scream that began 100 years ago.

Fleeing a troubled past, Sarah Faust has found the perfect place to begin a new life. Tucked away on a charming side street and surrounded by lush grounds, the neglected 300-year-old townhouse in the port city of Charleston offers a refuge and a place to start over. But all is not as it seems at Five Rue Lane, and she soon finds that her new house harbors something that has been there for a very long time. Something that refuses to stay buried.

The family of Adam Nichols shows up in Frederickport when Marie ends up in a nursing home with a broken hip. Yet unlike Adam, who is trying to get his grandmother home, the new arrivals are more concerned with selling off her assets and keeping her in the questionable facility. While Danielle tries to help her dear friend, she begins wondering, maybe not having a family has its good points, after all. And it's not just Marie's family causing problems; Walt's distant cousin begins making his own demands.