by Jean Marie Stine (ed.) ~
STORIES OF GHOSTS, WEREWOLVES, VAMPIRES & DETECTION Here are nine fascinating, shuddery tales about those most overlooked of sleuths - the ghost hunters and psychic detectives who spiced up the pages of turn-of-the century magazines. Equipped with a deep knowledge of things occult - often with a pinch of paranormal power themselves - these bloodhounds of the borderland pick up where more mundane detectives like the immortal Sherlock Holmes or Miss Jane Marple leave off. When the likes of Mason Bell, Dr. Munsing, Quinn's Jules DeGrandon, Moris Klaw, Flaxman Low, or Carnacki are on the trail, you can be sure the explanation for eerie and ectoplasmic doings will never involve some mundane trick like painting a hound's jaws with phosphorous. The ghost down the hall or the werewolf at the window, the awful demon seeking vengeance from another dimension, will all turn out to be very real indeed. This anthology brings together nine rare and vintage tales of ghost hunters and psychic sleuths. In it you will meet such legendary, and nearly forgotten fictive practitioners as Gordon Acreage's Dr. Munsing in "The Exorcist"; Seabury Quinn's Jules DeGrandon in "Body and Soul"; Sax Rohmer's Moris Klaw in "The Headless Mummies"; E. and H. Heron's Flaxman Low in "The Grey House"; T. Meade and Robert Eustace's Bell, Master of Mystery in "The Warder of the Door"; Conrad Richter's Mason Bell in "The Toad Man"; William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki, Ghost Finder, in "The Whistling Room"; Victor Rousseau's Ivan Brodsky, Surgeon of Souls, in "The Tenth Commandment"; and Algernon Blackwood's John Silence in "A Victim of Higher Space." Don't be surprised if reading their cases proves addictive, and you find yourself finishing the book, yearning for more.