Here goes - (not in any particular order):
*The Room in the Tower - EF Benson
*The Face - EF Benson
*The House of the Nightmare - Edward Lucas White
*The Dreams in the Witch House - HP Lovecraft
And just about anything by MR James, but especially The Ash Tree, and the little known but subtly terrifying “A Neighbour’s Landmark”.
The Shining by Steven King was pretty scary to me when I first read it.
Does The Haunting of Hill House count as a story?
(And does it contain a ghost? Hmmm…)
I just realized some of the stories in the OP also don’t contain ghosts, so I’m nominating Hill House. Do you mean scary stories?
Two that stand out for me-
“August Heat” by W.F. Harvey. Brief, absolutely brilliant spooky story; you can find it if you hunt through a few supernatural anthologies. Gives me shivers thinking about it.
“Afterward” by Edith Wharton. Son of a bee, this is a chilling one. Can’t understand why someone hasn’t filmed it.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman always gave me a serious case of the creeps.
Read it online here
Great one, Archegal.
I forgot my personal favorite collection of strange tales-- Joyce Carol Oates’ Haunted. Wicked, wicked stuff. “The Doll” alone is worth the price of submission.
:smack: Sorry. Archergal.
Not a ghost story, strictly speaking, but spooky: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown
“The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James. End of thread
Oh wait forget I wrote that. The best ghost story ever is “Pedro Paramo” by Juan Rulfo. That man is one of the best contemporary hispanic-american writers, I don’t know how well known in Anglo-Saxon countries but if you can get it you won’t be dissapointed. It’s creepy, sad and has a very surprising end.
Can I nominate 1/2 of a book? If so Voices In The Basement has the best beginning of any ghost story I’ve ever read. (and I really liked one character’s reaction to the ghost he gets the hell out of the house and won’t come back until later. Slowly he goes from being afraid to trying to prove the experience was real. A very human reaction IMO)
Unfortunately the last 1/2 of the book is eye rollingly bad.
http://www.annexed.net/box/augustheat/
August Heat.