Welcome to Litsy!

My little haul today from #smallbuisnesssaturday and I can't wait to start reading my new Christmas ghost story! I love collecting these books and reading them this time of year.

I am fascinated by the tales of tragic expeditions to the Arctic. In fact, The Terror by Dan Simmons is one of my favorite books. This particular short story is about a British whaler stuck in the Arctic ice. The crew are being haunted, but by what? I enjoyed it much! If you like ghost stories and Arthur Conan Doyle, it's worth a try in October.

And the final short story in this collection is:
"The Ring of Thoth": Classic Victorian horror: a clear inspiration for Universal Studio's The Mummy starring Boris Karloff. A creepy night at the museum, a mysterious janitor, a beautiful dead woman and an ancient Egyptian curse. Jinkies, Scoob!! ? 4.5/5?

My overall rating for the anthology is 4/5?
A solid set of tales with, I felt, just one slight misstep. Doyle on excellent form ?

"The Parson of Jackman's Gulch": This one has the feel of a Western, although it's set in Australia's goldrush, rather than California's. There's a certain inevitability about the dénouement: it's not a surprise, but it is very well done: humour leavened with tragedy and a rough frontier anti-justice. 4/5?

"John Barrington Cowles": Doyle is back on cracking form with this one! It starts off as a Victorian melodrama with a beautiful femme fatale. The narrator at the outset gives the story an atmosphere of over-shadowing doom - we know it's not going to end well! The second half moves into a supernatural mode, of which I will say nothing but that I feel Doyle's restraint is more effective than a graphic account would have been. 4/5 ?
#Edinburgh

"Cyprian Overbeck Wells: A Literary Mosaic": An unusual story, being that of an aspiring but unsuccessful writer, Smith, who has a dream in which he is attended by the shades of the literary greats. Between them, they decide to help Smith and so they weave together a tale to inspire him. What we are then offered is a series of Doyle's pastiches of the writings of such luminaries as Smollet, Defoe, Sir Walter Scott, Edward Bulwer Lytton, et al ?

"John Huxford's Hiatus": Depending on outlook, you could find this story the epitome of mawkish Victorian sentimentalism or a heart-warming tale of faithfulness, constancy and love. Being a bit of a softy, I strongly inclined to the latter. Doyle builds up the mystery of Huxford's disappearance in masterly fashion, only to ratchet up the emotional level even further during the final climax. It was as much as I could do to stifle a manly tear 5/5?

"That Little Square Box": A comedy-thriller in which the "hero" is so socially awkward that not even the threat of a major terrorist attack can overcome his imagined shame and embarrassment should he have misunderstood the situation. Doyle seems to be poking fun at the middle-class anxieties caused by the rise of international anarchism, political assassinations and propaganda bombings that were troubling the bourgeoisie of the 1880s. A solid 3/5.

"The Man from Archangel": Gothic, mysterious and tragic, I loved this story. Doyle's descriptions of the windswept beauty of the Caithness coast form a perfect backdrop for the stormy passions that engulf his characters. 5/5 ?

"The Great Keinplatz Experiment": Doyle's Spiritualist leanings are revealed in this story about an eminent professor of anatomy and psychology who seeks to scientifically prove that there is a soul which is capable of existence outside of the body. That he is successful comes as no surprise, though the results are not what he expects. ????

"J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement": This is Doyle's fictional account of the mysterious abandonment of the brigantine Mary Celeste. He changed the ship's name to Marie Celeste for his story, which in some quarters was taken as factual and so elements of Doyle's tale, including the vessel's altered name, passed into the public consciousness.
Given that we know how the story ends, the tension is in how Doyle takes us there... ????

"The Captain of the Pole-Star": I like a setting in the frozen polar regions - and shades of "Frankenstein" haunt these environs. The story is told in the form of a journal by a young ship's doctor, concerned for the sanity of the titular captain. The foreshadowing of doom in Captain Craigie's falsely optimistic statement that "We'll all be in the arms of our own true loves before long, lad, won't we?" is very well done. ????

A collection of Doyle's ghostly, supernatural and mysterious short stories. The title story is marvellously spooky, and Doyle's fictionalised account of the abandoning of the brigantine Mary Celeste is often mistaken for fact, while his renaming as the Marie Celeste often confused as the actual name of that ship. It also includes The Ring of Thoth, an Ancient Egyptian mummy tale which influenced classic Universal Studios film, The Mummy.

A solid story. Not too creepy, which was good for me. Mainly liked the nautical terminology ⛵️😉