Ghosts and Grisly Things

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Our Review
Powerful imagery and complex characters are Ramsey Campbell trademarks. And nowhere are these talents more evident than in his collection of short tales, Ghosts and Grisly Things. As a three-time winner of the World Fantasy Award and eight-time winner of the British Fantasy Award, Campbell has established himself as one of the most respected writers of horror fiction, a true master of the genre. The stories in this chilling collection represent horrors that range from the haunted denizens of a dying town to the twisted thoughts of a tortured mind, each one making it clear why Campbell is considered a master at the top of his trade.

The basic concepts behind several of Campbell's stories came from his own life experiences. His introductory explanation of these events and the history he provides regarding the creation of each story adds spice to their flavor. It was Campbell's own thoughts about trying a major psychedelic drug that led to the vivid leapfrog imagery of "Through the Walls." And it was his mother's worsening agoraphobia that created the framework for the tortured character in "Looking Out." The experience of counting backward while waiting for an anesthetic to work gave Campbell the idea for "This Time," and an experience on a coach ride in Turkey triggered the creation of the creepy tale "Where They Lived." Similarly, "Going Under," a tale of obsessive behavior, came about as the result of the real-life closing of one of the Mersey Tunnels so that the public could walk through it in celebration of its anniversary.

Some of Campbell's tales are more blatantly horrific, such as the bloody tale of contagious murder, "See How They Run." Other stories are far subtler with their terror, such as "The Same in Any Language" and "Welcomeland," two stories where the real horrors are only hinted at but are no less frightening, and "The Alternative," which blends and blurs the lines between the happenings in real life and those that occur in nightmares.

Campbell's vivid imagery and his vast range of voice and tone are well exemplified in these stories, which cover the gamut in terms of the type, level, and intensity of their horror. This is spine-tingling, mind-bending fiction from a powerhouse writer who can make the most ordinary of things seem darkly malevolent.

Beth Amos is author of several novels, including Cold White Fury and Second Sight.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Although he has devoted most of the past decade to novel-length works of dark fantasy and suspense (Silent Children, Forecasts, June 26, etc.), Campbell's short stories continue to shape and expand the vocabulary of horror fiction. This collection of 20 talesDhis first full-length compilation since the World Fantasy Award-winning Alone with the Horrors (1993)Druns the gamut from psychological to physical horror, and conjures nightmares from the most unlikely raw material. In "Going Under," an inconsiderate cell-phone user on a charity walk is engulfed by the sea of participants that his self-important antics annoy. One of the most original vampire stories in recent years, "The Dead Must Die," presents a religious fanatic convinced that family members who don't subscribe to his fundamentalist beliefs are undead creatures deserving of the gory salvation he dispenses. In tale after tale, Campbell shows himself to be a prose craftsman who can use words to render a dangerously distressed viewpoint or evoke indescribable horrors by carefully detailing what they are not. It is not surprising, then, that in the darkly comic "McGonagall in the Head," words themselves are a source of horror for a newspaper obit writer driven insane by the sappy doggerel he must quote from the bereaved. The most powerful stories are those where characters confront specters that summarize the mediocrity of their lives: a creepy elevator attendant who forms an attachment to the manager of a failing movie theater in "Between the Floors" and a ghostly driver who threatens an aging, childless couple in "The Sneering." The thick, claustrophobic atmosphere of these selections intensifies their terrors and pulls the reader ineluctably into their shadowed corners. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Fangoria

Whether he's dabbling in cosmic or domestic horror, Campbell is one of our finest novelists, period.

Kirkus Reviews

Twenty "fragments from a flaking brain," as Liverpudlian horror novelist Campbell calls these ghoulies and ghastlies, which join his earlier story collections (Strange Things and Stranger Places, 1993, etc.). Some of these pieces are set in Liverpool, and some here see print for the first time. In Campbell's introduction, telling us where each was published, he describes himself as an oldguard horror writer who admires bright young new talents like Poppy Z. Brite and Kim Newman, although he too hopes still to stir some fresh ingredients into the cauldron. Perhaps some eyebulbs and a few chopped off fingers and toes? "See How They Run" does not derive from the Beatles' lyric but tells rather of Fishwick, a fiendish psychopath, who bites himself to death in jail (that bit of info does not give away the story). In "Ra*e," a woman's daughter is murdered in a sandpit on her birthday and the mother takes vengeance on the murderer. Or she thinks she has. Campbell calls "The Change" his darkest story, and dark it is, about a young married horror author suffering writer's block about the change—or shapeshifting—in a werewolf he's writing about. Then he notices that at night the bluish vapor of streetlamps is having a deep affect on him.