LA GUIABLESSE. Adapted from a narrative included in Two Years in the French West Indies by Lafcadio Hearn (New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1890). The setting is the Carribean island of Martinique, where the language spoken is French Creole. In the island language, “Manzell” is a form of “Mademoiselle” (Miss); “Missie” is a form of “Monsieur” (Sir); and “La Guiablesse” is a feminine form indicating a female goblin. This gobliness is unusual in that she haunts the day and vanishes with the sunset. Usually such nightmare beings confine their activities to the hours of darkness.
THE BLOOD-DRAWING GHOST. Retold from the account in Irish Fairy Tales by Jeremiah Curtin, first published in the 1890s (reprint New York: Dorset Press, 1992). Revenants, the returned dead, are familiar figures in Irish tales. A somewhat similar tale, “Teg O’Kane and the Corpse,” in Irish Tales of Terror, edited by Peter Haining (originally published as The Wild Night Company: Irish Tales of Terror, 1971; reprint, New York: Bonanza Books, 1988), tells of a corpse-ridden young man who spends a terrifying night trying to find a suitable grave for his ghastly “passenger.” A version of “The Blood-Drawing Ghost” virtually identical to the Irish original, but set in the American Southwest, is entitled “Mary Calhoun,” after the heroine, who is forced to carry “something very, very old and dead [that] sat on her shoulders,” and who saves the handsome son of the third household as in the original. See Ghost Stories of the American Southwest by Richard Alan Young and Judy Dockrey Young (originally published by Little Rock: August House, 1991; reprinted with Ghost Stories from the American South in a combined edition entitled Ghastly Ghost Stories, New Jersey: Wings Books, 1993).
GUESTS FROM GIBBET ISLAND. Abridged and edited from the story by Washington Irving that first appeared in Wolfert’s Roost (1855), a collection of tales and sketches. The original text can be found in The Complete Tales of Washington Irving, edited with an introduction by Charles Neider (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1975). A brief account, based on Irving’s original, is entitled “The Party from Gibbet Island” in Myths and Legends of Our Own Land by Charles M. Skinner (New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1896, 1924). As he did with other tales, such as “Rip Van Winkle,” Irving transplanted a European folktale to American soil and greatly expanded the original, a tale titled “Guests from the Gallows” collected by the Brothers Grimm. See The German Legends of the Brothers Grimm—Volume I, edited and translated by Donald Ward (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, Inc., 1981).
THE HAUNTED HOUSE. Retold and expanded from a brief account in The Golden Mountain: Chinese Tales Told in California, collected by Jon Lee, edited by Paul Radin (Taipei, Taiwan: Caves Books, Ltd., n.d.), with background details from Chinese Houses and Gardens by Henry Inn and Shao Chang Lee (New York: Hastings House, Publishers, 1940; reprint, New York: Bonanza Books, 1950).
“NEVER FAR FROM YOU.” This is a reworking of a story widely known in Britain, where the events are variously set in Yorkshire, Hampshire, or Oxfordshire. Its popularity was helped by a ballad, “The Mistletoe Bough” by Thomas Haynes Bayley, which musically recounts the tragic story. The song was very popular in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. In the United States, where many versions are known, the story has been spread orally, and the bride sometimes becomes a princess. Original tellings can be found as “The Lost Bride,” in A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language—Part B, Folk Legends by Katharine M. Briggs (New York and London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970; paperback reprint, 1991), and in The Folktales of England, edited by Katharine M. Briggs and Ruth L. Tongue (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1965).
THE ROSE ELF. This is a slightly altered and shortened version of Hans Christian Andersen’s tale. Andersen apparently based his telling on Giovanni Boccacccio’s fourteenth-century collection of tales, The Decameron (Fourth Day/Fifth Story). That tale tells of Elisabetta, whose brothers kill her lover, Lorenzo, and it also inspired the poem “Isabella, or the Pot of Basil” (1820) by John Keats. In turning the gloomy material into a fairy tale, Andersen incorporated the rose elf, including fairy lore popular in his day, which envisioned elves as tiny, winged creatures, often associated with flowers. In fact, the fairy-folk of the oldest folktales were magical beings as tall as humans, who lived in green hills or mounds and had powers they often used to trick or trap humans. Andersen’s tale is available in countless collections of his work. I consulted the new translation of The Decameron by Mark Musa and Peter Bondanella (New York: The New American Library/Penguin Books USA, 1982). The Keats poem is widely anthologized.
THE WIND RIDER. Adapted from “The Wind Rider” in Folklore and Legend: Russian and Polish by “C.J.” (published in 1891). The original story has been reprinted in Lovers, Mates, and Strange Bedfellows: Old-World Folktales by James R. Foster (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960). Witches, it was believed, had great power over winds and could call them up by combing out their hair. Mermaids often had the same power. Foster notes that the story is similar to an Italian tale in which Judas is punished by having his soul endlessly blown around the world, so that each day it must pass over the tree on which his body is hanging, being torn apart by dogs and birds of prey.
THE SKULL THAT SPOKE. I have composited this version of a well-known tale from Nigerian sources, but it is also known throughout Africa, in the West Indies, in South America, and in the American South. For a full study of this tale as well as variants from Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Togo, Zaire, Malawi, Brazil, Haiti, and the United States, see the chapter “The Talking Skull Refuses to Talk” in African Folktales in the New World by William Bascom (Bloomington and Indianpolis, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1992). I also consulted such variants as “Talking Bone” in Universal Myths: Heroes, Gods, Tricksters, and Others by Alexander Eliot (originally published as Myths, London: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Ltd., 1976; paperback reprint, New York: Penguin Books USA, 1990), and “Musakalala, the Talking Skull” from Congo Fireside Tales by Phyllis Savory (New York: Hastings House Publishers, Inc., 1962).
THE MONSTER OF BAYLOCK. Adapted from an account by E. M. Stephens, first published in the Daily News and Westminster Gazette (n.d.), and reprinted in full in Folk Tales of All Nations, edited by F. H. Lee (New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1930; reprint, New York: Tudor Publishing Company; 1946; revised edition published as Classic Folk Tales from Around the World, with a new introduction, but omitting all source notes, London: Bracken Books, 1994).
THE NEW MOTHER. This story is based on “The Pear-Drum,” published by J. Y. Bell in Folk-Lore: A Quarterly Review of Myth, Tradition, Insitution and Customs, Vol. 46 (London: Folk-Lore Society, 1955), and reprinted in A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language—Part A, Folk Narratives by Katharine M. Briggs (New York and London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970; paperback reprint, 1991). In the original, the temptress is a gypsy girl. Briggs comments, “This is a family story, and was probably a cautionary tale invented by the first teller in the family. The mother with glass eyes and wooden tail is an unusual invention, but there is an authentic thrill about her.” For this telling, I also consulted a much longer version in Anyhow Stories, Moral and Otherwise by Lucy Lane Clifford (London: 1882), reprinted in The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales, edited by Alison Lurie (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Discussing the story in The Penguin Book of English Folktales (New York: Penguin Books USA, Inc., 1992), editor Neil Philip comments, “The historian of children’s literature, F. J. Harvey Darton, was haunted by the figure of the new mother, recording in his Children’s Books in England that, ‘Getting on for fifty years after I met her first, I still cannot rid my mind of that fearful creation.’ ”
ROKURO-KUBI. Japanese folktales and legends feature some of the ghastliest ghosts and most monstrous monsters in world folklore. I have returned to these traditional sources again and again for delectable shivers. The Rokuro-Kubi, goblins of the dark, are first cousins to the Filipino berbalangs, also featured in this collection. F
or this retelling, I consulted the versions in Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things by Lafcadio Hearn (first published in 1904; reprinted, Rutland, Vermont, and Tokyo, Japan: The Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc., 1971) and “The Goblins’ Guest” in The Enchanted World: Tales of Terror by the Editors of Time-Life Books.
DICEY AND ORPUS. This is a considerably expanded version of a folktale originally collected in The Book of Romance, edited by Andrew Lang (New York: Longmans, Green and Company, 1902; story reprinted in A Harvest of World Folk Tales, edited by Milton Rugoff, New York: The Viking Press, 1940; paperback reprint, 1968). This is an African American retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus, who played a wondrous lyre, a gift of the god Apollo, so entrancingly that all nature danced to the music. He married Eurydice, who died after being bitten by a snake. Orpheus followed her to the underworld, where his music charmed Hades, the ruler of the dead. Releasing Eurydice, Hades warned Orpheus that if he looked back at his wife before she was safely in sunlight, she would be lost forever. Stepping into the sunshine, Orpheus looked back, and Eurydice, still in shadow, was lost forever. The Greek original is told in full in A Harvest of World Folk Tales. The Land of the Golden Slipper was heaven: African American lore held that those who went to heaven wore golden slippers. Here heaven is underground in keeping with the Orpheus story.
CHIPS. Adapted from “Chips and the Devil” in chapter XV, “Nurse’s Stories,” The Uncommercial Traveller (London: 1860) by Charles Dickens, who heard the tale in childhood from a nursemaid, Mary Weller. Katharine M. Briggs includes the story in her monumental A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language: Part A—Folk Narratives (New York and London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970; paperback reprint, 1991). She points out that the story includes many familiar folktale elements, including the Devil with saucer eyes, the Devil taking the form of a mouse, a rat that speaks, and a ship that sinks because the Devil is aboard. The tale, along with a discussion of Mary Weller’s influence on Dickens’s writing, can be found in The Penguin Book of English Folktales, edited by Neil Philip (New York: Penguin Books USA, Inc., 1992).
THE SKELETON’S REVENGE. Composited from two variants, “Legend of the Puente del Clerigo (Clergyman’s Bridge)” in Legends of the City of Mexico by Thomas A. Janvier (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1910), and “The Avenging Skeleton” in Of the Night Wind’s Telling: Legends from the Valley of Mexico by E. Adams Davis (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1946, reprinted 1976). The skeleton returning from the beyond for vengeance is a worldwide story pattern. Examples include Japan’s “The Dancing Skeleton” in Short & Shivery and “Guests from Gibbet Island” in the present volume—a story known in both the United States and Germany.
LULLABY. The original was included in the famous collection Lord Halifax’s Ghost Book (London: Geoffrey Bles, Ltd., 1936). Lord Halifax insisted the story was true, and that he had heard it from the nephew of the man who actually had the experience. For this retelling, I also consulted the adaptation “Lullaby for the Dead” by Michael and Mollie Hardwick in 50 Great Horror Stories, edited by John Canning (New York: Bell Publishing Co., 1971; reprint, London: Longmeadow Press, 1985), and a shortened version, “The Ghostly Passenger,” in The Encyclopedia of Ghosts by Daniel Cohen (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, Ir c., 1984).
DEATH AND THE TWO FRIENDS. Retold from “Death and the Two Bachelors” in Doctor to the Dead: Grotesque Legends and Folk Tales of Old Charleston by John Bennett (New York and Toronto: Rinehart & Company, Inc., 1943, 1946). For nearly fifty years before the publication of Doctor to the Dead, Bennett had been collecting the folklore of one of South Carolina’s most picturesque and historically important cities.
FOREST GHOSTS. Adapted from a long historical account, “The Antlered Master of Château Bois Chasse,” in Gallery of Ghosts by James Reynolds (New York: The Creative Press, 1949; paperback reprint, New York: Paperback Library, 1970). Reynolds traces the story to events that happened during the reign of King Henri IV (1553–1610), at a place called Château Rochetonnerre. The Green Woman is one of the forest elves called dames vertes (green ladies), who were spirits of forest and field. Though the smells of earth and mold and death clung to them, they were actually greening forces, breathing life into seeds. They were described as tall, beautiful, dressed in green, and often invisible, so that only a ripple in the grass marked where they passed. A fuller discussion of these wood spirits can be found in A Field Guide to the Little People by Nancy Arrowsmith with George Moorse (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977; paperback reprint, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978). In England, stories were told of a Green Lady, a wood spirit who protected a grove of trees, killing woodcutters. See “One Tree Hill” and other tales in A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language—Part A, Folk Narratives by Katharine M. Briggs (New York and London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970; paperback reprint, 1991).
A CAROLINA BANSHEE. Originally collected by J. C. Stutts for the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) for the State of North Carolina in the 1930s. The WPA text is reprinted in Ghost Stories from the American South by W. K. McNeil (reissued with Ghost Stories of the American Southwest by Richard Alan Young and Judy Dockrey Young in a combined volume, Ghastly Ghost Stories, New Jersey: Wings Books, 1993). The story is unusual because the banshee (a Gaelic word meaning “supernatural woman”) is traditionally an Irish spirit who foretells, but does not usually avenge, deaths. Stories alternately describe her as a lovely wraith or a hag with sunken nose, scraggly white hair, huge, hollow eye sockets, and a tattered white sheet flapping about her. Her dismal wailing or singing always warns of someone’s death. The “rain crow” is really a cuckoo, regarded as a herald of coming rain.
THE DEADLY VIOLIN. A retelling of a twelfth-century story from Germany. The original can be found translated in Lilith’s Cave: Jewish Tales of the Supernatural, selected and retold by Howard Schwartz (New York: Harper & Row, 1998; paperback reprint, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). I also consulted parallel tales of “haunted violins,” which, along with fiddles, are well known in the folklore of Europe and America.
Music is often linked to mystical powers, and the violin is sometimes reported to have demonic characteristics. Related stories describe the Devil as a master fiddler, who will sometimes tempt fiddlers to sell their souls in order to master the instrument. In European folklore the fiddle is magic, variously causing fairies to dance, bringing the dead to life, summoning spirits or animals, or even revealing a murder.
A NIGHT OF TERRORS. A considerably reworked telling of the urban folktale “The Licked Hand”—widespread in America, Canada, Great Britain, and Australia. A full discussion, with several examples, can be found in The Choking Doberman: And Other “New” Urban Legends by Jan Harold Brunvand (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1984). Variants include “The Licked Hand” in Hoosier Folk Legends by Ronald L. Baker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982) and “The Pet Dog” in The Book of Nasty Legends by Paul Smith (London, Boston, Melbourne and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983). Examples have also been found in European and Russian folklore.
THE SENDING. An expanded version of a traditional tale from Iceland, incorporating details from several accounts in Legends of Icelandic Magicians, edited and translated by Jacqueline Simpson (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, Ltd., 1975; simultaneous publication in the U.S.A., Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield). The original can be found under the title “Murder by Spectral Proxy” in The Enchanted World: Ghosts by the Editors of Time-Life Books (Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books, Inc., 1984), and in Icelandic Folktales and Legends (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979). The coming of Christianity caused the old Icelandic sorcerers to retreat to remote areas, where they continued to practice their magical arts. People would sometimes send for a white wizard to help with supernatural matters. In Scandinavian countries, trolls were powerful but stupid ogres who lurked in forests, mountains, and other wild areas. They w
ould turn to stone or burst if the sun shone on their faces. Devils, demons, and imps often took the form of flies, and could be bottled up by a magician. This idea is the basis for such tales as “Aladdin and the Lamp” and Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Bottle Imp.”
THE HAND OF FATE. Adapted from an account first published in England in the mid-seventeenth century. The full text is reprinted in Sea Phantoms: True Tales of Haunted Ships and Ghostly Crews by Warren Armstrong (London: Odhams Press, Limited, 1963). The land-based pirates called “wreckers” haunted the dangerous, desolate stretches of coast, plundering ships they lured onto the rocks and reefs. In the United States, in lonely coastal areas of New England, wreckers were called “mooncussers” or “moon cursers,” because the light of a full moon would prevent ships from falling into their traps.
OLD RAW HEAD. Composited from various accounts of this favorite European and American bogey, including “Raw Head and Bloody Bones” in Ghost Stories of the American Southwest, compiled and edited by Richard Alan Young and Judy Dockrey Young (originally published by Little Rock: August House, 1991; reprinted with Ghost Stories from the American South in a combined edition titled Ghastly Ghost Stories, New Jersey: Wings Books, 1993); “Raw Head and Bloody Bones” in Whistle in the Graveyard: Folktales to Chill Your Bones by Maria Leach (New York: The Viking Press, Inc., 1974); and “High Walker and Bloody Bones” in Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston (Philadelphia and London: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1935); reprinted in A Treasury of American Folklore, edited by B. A. Botkin (New York: Crown Publishers, 1944). Written references to this horrifying creature go back as far as 1564; but scholars suggest the figure may have existed before in oral folklore. In England, Scotland, Canada, and the United States, adults would scare naughty children into obeying by telling them, “Raw Head and Bloody Bones will get you!” A version from Alabama makes it a “jump” story for campfire telling.
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