The Big Book of Ghost Stories by Otto Penzler
The Book of Thin Places
In my Alabama family, whenever we gather at holidays or weddings … or even for sadder occasions like funerals … a certain moment always arrives. We clear the supper things, put the dishes away. (In truth, we clear and put the whole day away.) We settle together on a porch or in a parlor one final time to talk, consider, assess. We conduct an autopsy on the last 24 hours.
Always, after some time goes by, a hush falls on the room. Then someone starts a story, nearly always with words like these:
“You know, one time Uncle Moody saw a ghost in his church …”
Oh, it’s delicious. The fireplace crackles and the wind gusts in the night outside, and a room filled with listeners transports from the here and now … to the maybe and what if.
We listen in heart-pounding apprehension to the story of why three bullet holes still scar the pulpit of a country church in Elmore County. We hear again how a tall man with a stovepipe hat walked through the back door—a locked back door—and quietly sat down beside my mother when she was age 12.
We shiver over the oft-told tale of a country doctor in Barbour County, a man respected by his community and well-known to my family. Traveling by horseback from a rural house call one dark and stormy night, Dr. Wallace passed under a low limb … where something strong and small dropped from the branches into the saddle behind him, grabbed his waist … and began to scream.
When my family tells spooky stories, even the ghosts come out to listen. Floorboards creak. A door closes, all by itself. Far away in the house, something jumps and lands, a small thump. Unseen things crack their knuckles in the corners.
We love a good ghost story. We will savor hearing the same ones over and over, embellished and improved each telling. Somehow, knowing what happens in the end can make a ghost story MORE suspenseful. Hair stands on end. A listener beneath a blanket shivers and pulls closer to someone else. Everyone jumps when the dog barks madly … at nothing, empty air.
The Celts told us of thin places, special spots in the world where the separation between real life and supernatural life hardly exists. People and spirits can easily pass through from one realm to the next, like fog passing through a screen.
The Big Book of Ghost Stories places 75 tales of thin places between two covers. If you enjoy, as I have since childhood, a great ghost story well told … this book is required reading.
The editor, Otto Penzler, formerly owner of The Mystery Press in Manhattan for nearly 30 years, has anthologized volumes of mystery and detective stories through the years. Penzler has The Mystery Press imprint now with Grove Atlantic, and he anthologizes big sprawling doorstop-sized collections of noir and suspense and British espionage and spy stories, to the delight of us who love those genres.
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