Echoes

"I don’t believe in ghosts, but I love ghost stories and I suspect I’m not the only reader to make this confession," writes Ellen Datlow in her anthology, Echoes, thirty stories about ghosts, spirits, phantasms, and what have you. With that many stories it's a mixed bag, with a few great stories, several okay ones, and a few I didn't like or didn't get.

A couple of stories were effectively creepy but I couldn't quite figure out what happened at the end. These include Gemma Files' "The Puppet Motel," which takes a different tack--it's a haunting in a brand new building. The same could be said for "The Ghost Sequences," by A.C. Wise, which concerns four women artists who plan an exhibition about ghosts, but get too close to the subject.

We are used to thinking that ghosts can't hurt us, but some of them in this book sure do. "Whimper Beg," by Les Thomas, features a ghost who has taken the form of a German shepherd with very solid teeth. And my favorite story of the collection, which is also the last and longest, is John Langan's "Natalya, Queen Of The Hungry Dogs" (a great title). This story is about a dying man who has a sister who died as a child, but he's not eager to see her  again, as she's created her own kingdom in the after life, turning other dead children into ravenous dogs.

Other favorites are "The Jeweled Wren," by Jeffrey Ford, about a couple curious about a mysterious house. I don't think it's a spoiler alert to say that they should have never gone in the house. "Mee-Ow," by Garth Nix, is a blood chilling tale about a strange room in a house shared by college students. "The Unwrapping," by Terry Dowling, is about a group of people who gather to unwrap a mummy. I only wish this story went on longer, as it ends with a cliffhanger. "Must Be This Tall To Ride," by Seanan McGuire, concerns a haunted rollercoaster. "Precipice," by Dale Bailey, is about a man on vacation who has a strange urge to get very close to the railing on the high floor of his hotel. And Steohen Graham Jones' "The Tree Of Self-Knowledge" is a dandy story about a man who sees a girl who died in a car wreck years earlier--at the supermarket.

Datlow also includes a few vintage stories, including one by Ford Madox Ford. My favorite of these is "The Upper Berth," by F. Marion Crawford, which is about a ship with porthole that won't stay closed.

Why do we love ghost stories? Datlow posits, "The ghost story is probably one of the oldest tales told around campfires. Why might this be? It could be because the most persistent concern for many people is whether there is life after death—and, if there is, what that life might be like." She adds, quite correctly, :They’re about something we humans can neither control nor avoid: death."