Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories

This was a very scary book!

I usually don't read Ghost Stories. I think they are too scary and I always get nightmares so I'm not sure why I picked up this book in the first place. I do love the author so I guess I just wanted to see what he could possibly write to scare me. WELL, this book wasn't written by him, just compiled by him and it had plenty of ghosts to keep me up at night.

In 1958 Roald Dahl wanted to make a tv series of ghost stories. He read 749 short stories called ghost stories. He was very disappointed in the first fifty or so stories because they were trivial and not the least spooky. Finally he found one that gave him the shivers! In the end he found about 24 really good ones and the rest were just gibberish. At first the female ghost story authors were ahead but in the end the males caught up. He thought this was interesting that females write really good children's books and really good scary stories but weren't very top ranking in sculpture, painting or music. This is all in his Introduction in the book, which I liked better then the ghost stories. He really rambles on about interesting things. Anyway, he never got to do the tv series because their pilot was a big flop in Hollywood because it offended American Catholics or something. Bummer.

So the book has 14 short stories that will scare the pants off you! Each one by a different author, each one original and unpredictable.

"The best ghost stories don't have ghosts in them. At least, you don't see the ghost. Instead, you only see the result of his actions. Occasionally you can feel it brushing past you, or you are aware of its presence by subtle means...I hope you will be disturbed by all the stories in this book they were written with precisely that end in mind." R. Dahl