Book Review: "Holy Ghosts" ed. by Fiona Snailham

Full title: Holy Ghosts: Classic Tales of the Ecclesiastical Uncanny ed. by Fiona Snailham

Now, when it comes to British Library Classics of anything, I am already there and willing to read. For example, my love of the British Library Crime Classics is known far and wide because I am practically obsessed with devouring them whenever I can. Then we have, of course, the British Library Tales of the Weird. I have read many of these already and I have to admit that some of them are far better than others. This one is one of the better ones and I think that might be because it deals with stories that I have either read before or those upon themes I already find quite interesting. Personally, I cannot wait for Circles of Stone: Weird Tales of Pagan Sites and Ancient Rites - in other words folk horror is coming to December and we should all be very excited.

From Edith Wharton to M.R James to Mrs Henry Wood and Elizabeth Gaskell, we see familiar and unfamiliar names pop up as the authors of the short stories contained in this wonderful atmospheric anthology. As someone who has spent a lot of time in churches from Catholic school to going to church myself, I am not only aware of the layouts but can vouch for the fact that sometimes, they seem really creepy.

I will not go through every single story in this book but rather the one that I found the most interesting as they all, as you can tell, run on the same theme of ecclesiastical horror. Be that as it may, I have to say a close second to the story I am about to state the advantages of was Mrs Henry Wood's "The Parson's Oath" which is one I had never heard of before reading this one and I do not seem to have in an anthology anywhere else in my collection.

I believe that the advantage of reading The Sexton's Adventure by Sheridan Le Fanu is just this: a lot of people already know about it or have already read it. Sheridan Le Fanu is not just famous for his scary stories, but he is famous for his recollection of atmosphere and this story is about as atmospheric as it gets. Yes, it might be a bit on the short side, but I feel like that was the whole point - it was supposed to seem like an episode of church life that haunts the memory - something short and traumatising. It is about a sexton who sees a person wandering the churchyard and ultimately, he tries to find out more about what brings this person here and what brings them here now - the shock and discovery is well worth the read. I will not say exactly what happens out of fear of spoiling it for you, but it is written with that incredible style that Sheridan Le Fanu had for keeping you on edge until a revelation is found out or an identity is revealed.

Another advantage apart from the atmosphere is the cycnical characters. The sexton is well-known for his dedication to his job and his stern nature. He is seemingly a nonbeliever in ghosts and things that go bump in the night and, if you had to tend to graveyards, I would imagine that this would be true. The fact that we see the character change so much over the course of such a short story adds some credibility to it for the reader and makes the shock and horror of the narrative so much more terrifying. It is an eerie story with a lot of atmospheric pressure, it creeps around like a ghost in a graveyard and ultimately, the ending it pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle in the mind of the reader.

In conclusion, these stories are a brilliant example of the great scares we can find in church-based horror stories. There's an emptiness and echo to it with a side of night terrors. I find the stories of the Victorian Era and the early Modernist era to be the better written ones because, I can imagine after so many years of war and brutality, these writers would have had some experiences they wanted to share and this is the only way they knew how.