Fantasmagoriana: Tales of The DeadMy rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first time I read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, I was hooked. The second time, I became obsessed. I turned to John Polidori’s The Vampyre. Both of these stories were germinated during a summer stay by Lake Geneva in 1816. Gathered at Lord Byron’s residence, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, her future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, her stepsister Claire Clairmont and Polidori read each other ghost stories to set a mood. These stories were contained in Fantasmagoriana, a French collection of German ghost stories. The edition I read was a print-on-demand, English translation of the French version.

Beginning with Johann Musäus’s “The Spectral Barber”, I found it an enjoyable read. Next up was August Apel’s “The Family Portraits”. This excellent tale also included a great way to approach ghost stories. Before a ghost story telling session, one of those present said:

”No one shall search for any explanation, even though it bears the stamp of truth, as explanations would take away all the pleasure from ghost stories” (p. 39)
So very true. This collection continued to get even better with Friedrich Laun’s “The Fated Hour”. I found it a well-told, chilling scare with no simplistic closure at the end. My reading notes say it all, “Well done.”

I wasn’t as excited about the rest of the stories in the collection, which included three more by Laun, add another by Apel. They mostly had simplistic, Hollywood-style trajectories and endings. Although, one story by Heinrich Clauren (“The Gray Room”) was interesting in that it reminded me of Ann Radcliffe’s approach to Gothic, in which the supernatural is always shown to have a rational explanation.

Overall, I’m glad I read this collection and would enjoy being able to see the 1812 French first edition some day.