THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERS

This companion to the well-received House of Nightmare anthology (1968) begins with the same sort of civilized, literate tales of ghostly possession--a longer Bulwer Lytton piece, three Algernon Blackwood stories, a florid evocation of paganism by John Buchan, Angus Wilson's freely controlled ""The Little Companion."" However, Lines appears to be well aware of the fact that another collection of English spirits, however distinguished, would be redundant, and she steers us increasingly in the direction of religious manifestations, whether the witty ""Markhampton Miracle"" in which a whole parish's prayers are answered with the winning line in a football pool; Anthony Boucher's fable of a rabbi and a priest reenacting Balaam and his mule on Mars; or the more specific calls to faith like Graham Greene's miracle of ""The Second Death"" and Heard's ""Vindicae Flammae."" This last stow in particular may surprise readers who would prefer a nice, conventional ghost stow and one can't help wondering what unexplained ""specific reasons"" caused Lines to include some of these. An odd turn of mind indeed, but the literary quality is high. . . though collectors should be aware that several of the pieces have been ""slightly cut and edited.