Back Through the Haunted Looking Glass

The Haunted Looking Glass is an anthology of ghost stories selected by the one and only Edward Gorey (see illustrations in past two posts). He not only selected the stories, but illustrated each one as well as the cover and frontispiece. HLG was originally published in 1959, and that was the edition I found in the Our Lady of Victory Elementary School library in Ft Worth in the early sixties. My hair stood straight up off my head with horror at the illustrations, especially the frontispiece, which gave me “the fantods” as Mark Twain would say. Even today that picture, of some sort of nameless floating thing gliding toward an open doorway, generates a frisson of fear, no doubt because of the association with my feelings back then (I’ve searched for an image of it on the web to no avail).

At the time I read only some of the stories -- the ones that immediately captured my interest. Upon finding the book again several years ago, I read them all, and every one is a little treasure in its own right.

The New York Review of Books republished HLG in recent years, in paperback, thankfully with all the illustrations. But as always, I most enjoy reading it in the original edition as I first did so many years ago.

The stories contained therein:

Algernon Blackwood, "The Empty House"
W. F. Harvey, "August Heat"
Charles Dickens, "The Signalman"
L. P. Harley, "A Visitor from Down Under"
R. H. Malden, "The Thirteenth Tree"
Robert Louis Stevenson, "The Body-Snatcher"
E. Nesbit, "Man-Size in Marble"
Bram Stoker, "The Judge's House"
Tom Hood, "The Shadow of a Shade"
W.W. Jacobs, "The Monkey's Paw"
Wilkie Collins, "The Dream Woman"
M.R. James, "Casting the Runes"

At the age of 11, I just considered them wonderfully scary stories; it wasn’t until I bought the book as a 40-something that I realized who these writers are, having encountered them again later in life, usually in much lighter contexts. Dickens, Stevenson, and Stoker need no introduction; L. P. Hartley is the author of one of my favorite books, The Go-Between, discovered when I was a teenager; and E. Nesbit’s juveniles, particularly the series on the Bastable children, would eventually join the Bedtime Canon and give me hours upon hours of reading delight. And then I came up here to FSU, got interested in the Victorians, and realized that 11-year-old Kathy had held in her hands an excellent sampler of Victorian ghost stories. Only now have I heard about Collins and James, who are well-known Victorian authors of mysteries and the supernatural.

And to think I first met them all long ago, when to me they were just shades, beckoning me into their blood-chilling worlds through the Haunted Looking Glass.

Of all the stories, “The Monkey’s Paw” was the most terrifying to me as a child. After reading it I couldn’t fall asleep unless I took my rosary out of its case and slept with it in my hand. Of course, I did this many times over, so I know I enjoyed having the wits scared out of me.

As an adult, I must award that pride of place to “The Judge’s House.” Every time I read it my eyes hurt from bugging out so, and I have to shake my head to dispel the fading echoes of “RUN, you fool!!” that ricochet around my brain.