Better than M.R. James

What did you like most about E.F. Benson's Ghost Stories?

Obviously with ghost stories of this type and from this period in time comparison to James is inevitable. Whilst James' stories are undoubtedly excellent they always struck me as strangely soul less, almost clinical in their execution. Benson' stories however overflow with personality, wit and charm whilst being genuinely eerie. Beautifully worded and superbly performed the only fault with this is that it is way, way too short.

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22 people found this helpful

Fish gotta swim/Birds gotta fly...

...I gotta listen to Mark Gatiss reading stories till I die. Now if only Mr Gatiss or someone of his calibre would rescue for us those out of copyright stories we currently can't bear to listen to because they are in the Red Door Audio stable. All those wonderful tales by Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Conan Doyle, W F Harvey, Charlotte Riddell et al...

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3 people found this helpful

creepy

A creepy listen. Excellent stories read very well by Mark Gatis. An interesting and informative introduction too.

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The brilliant narrator

I liked that the narrator was so convincing and adaptable for each character and story. A pause between chapters would have been good. great stories!

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Superbly narrated

These are old fashioned ghost stories, so spooky rather than flat out terrifying. The narration by Mark Gatiss elevates them to another level. Beautifully done.

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2 people found this helpful

Excellent short stories, similar to M R James.

Great collection, well performed.
Several I had read before in different collections over the years.
Very much of their time, but charming and gripping.

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Worth it for the narration alone!

Mark Gatiss could make the Yellow Pages enthralling! Sheer brilliance. The content is great too, of course, but after x amount of Audibles' narrators sounding robotic (or in some cases actually being computer generated) this is an absolute pleasure. You won't be disappointed.

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Proper Gothic horror, wonderfully narrated

Most of the tales are a perfect level of disturbing creepiness, and Mark Gatiss clearly gets a kick out of narrating them. There’s a definite note of naughty schoolboy glee in his voice! A great listen for a chill Autumn night with the lights turned down low.

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Which are scarier – ghosts or slugs?

This collection brings together nine of his stories, chosen and wonderfully narrated by Mark Gatiss, and provides a good sample of the various styles he could employ with equal skill, from the standard ghostly haunting, to the folk horror of Pan and the natural world, to the weird, mostly, in this collection, in the form of truly horrid slug-like creatures who are and yet aren’t quite of this world. I gave eight of the stories four or five stars, and the ninth got a reasonable if unspectacular three. So it’s fair to say I thought this was an excellent collection overall. I suspect that Gatiss’ narration may have boosted each story by perhaps half a star – he brings out all the creepiness and growing horror and his timing for the occasional jump scare is immaculate. I loved listening to his voice, or that should really be voices, and so hope that he might record more classic horror stories in the future.

Here’s a taste of a few of my favourites, although it was hard to choose this time…

The Man Who Went Too Far – A young man is living a life of hedonism in the woods, seduced by the music he sometimes hears of pipes playing in the distance. But gradually the pipes grow nearer and the young man will get his wish to meet the player – Pan! The motto of this one should be – be careful what you wish for! A wonderful story, full of lush descriptions of the natural world, and with a dark ending.

The Room in the Tower – The narrator has a recurring dream about a house and the family who live there, which always ends with the mother of the family saying “Jack will show you your room: I have given you the room in the tower.”, at which point he has a sense of terror which wakes him. Then one day he goes to visit the family of a friend and recognises their house as the one from the dream! A more traditional ghost story of the Gothic variety, and Benson builds the tension beautifully to a truly horrid climax!

Spinach – A brother and sister, both mediums, have rented a cottage. They are contacted by the ghost of the previous tenant, Thomas Spinach, who was killed in a storm. Spinach tells them he left something lying around but can’t remember where. They decide to help the ghost by searching for the object, though they don’t know what it is. It turns out to be… no! I’ll leave you to find that out for yourself! This one is played mostly for laughs, with some nicely shivery moments added in. Good fun!

Negotium Parambulans – Our narrator lived for some years as a boy in Polearn, a fishing village in Cornwall. (What is it about Cornwall? Half the horror stories in the world are set there!) There is a house there, built from the remains of a church, and the original inhabitant sacrilegiously used the altar for feasting and gaming. He came to a sticky end. But was it madness brought on by drunkenness? Or was there something more sinister behind his death? Now our narrator has returned to the village as an adult and his elderly aunt tells him a similar tale about the next occupant. And now an old schoolmate of the narrator, John Evans, lives there… Lovely crossover between Gothic and weird in this somewhat dark story, and some great horror imagery, especially for those of us who are not too keen on slimy things.

And No Bird Sings – Our narrator is going on a visit to a friend and his wife, Hugh and Daisy Granger, in a house they have recently acquired. He decides to walk from the train station, and takes a short cut through a small wood that lies in their grounds. But once in the wood he is seized with a feeling of unease – there are unexpected shadows where there shouldn’t be, sometimes he notices a horrible smell as of decaying living things, and then he notices the oddest thing of all – there are no birds in the wood. It turns out both Hugh and especially Daisy have also felt this sense of something wrong in the wood, and their dogs won’t enter it at all. So Hugh and the narrator decide it is time to find out what is in there… This one is most definitely weird, and Benson develops a really great atmosphere of creepiness and unease. The climax is deliciously horrible! Great stuff!

So loads of variety, excellent writing, lots of shiveriness but nothing too gruesome – I loved this collection, and felt the narration made it even better. One I’ll listen to again!

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methadone for the MR James addict

lovingly read by the brilliant Mark Gatiss, this collection is the closest in quality to the unbeatable MR James of nearly all the available ghost stories in my opinion. a second or extended volume would be very welcome.

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29 people found this helpful