If you’re fond of classical ghost stories such as those penned by MR James, the Benson brothers and other British masters of the genre, here’s good news for you. Habemus papam: we have found a worthy heir of that long gone tradition, today a bit out of fashion in the heterogeneous small world of dark fiction.

For some reason the name of this scottish writer, Daniel McGachey, has taken a while to stick to my memory, but when his debut collection reached my hands, I recognized him as the author of some excellent stories I had  already enjoyed in a number of  previously published anthologies.

McGachey’s stories have fascinated and thrilled me to such an extent that in four instances I have pinpointed them as the highlight or one of the highlights of books I was reviewing. This is the case with some stories originally published in different volumes of the ongoing series The Black Book of Horror: the superb Shalt Thou Know My Name? a creepy tale of witchcraft and haunting; the disturbing and compelling The Crimson Picture where a painter draws portraits predicting the fate of his unlucky models; the extraordinary And Still Those Screams Resound…,  a traditional ghost story set in a haunted house disclosing the deep roots of evil; and the title story They That Dwell In Dark Places (reprinted from the anthology The First BHF Book of Horror Stories) a frightening, splendid piece about the spiritual and physical darkness surrounding human existence.

The remaining stories assembled in the present volume are either original to this collection or taken from sources I was not familiar with. The Shadows In The Stacks is a truly delightful Jamesian tale in which a college library is visited by a red shadow trying to retrieve some old books containing something that belongs to him… In the unsettling The Mound an unknown horror is lurking underneath a man’s well tended lawn, while in the atmospheric The Wager, admission to an exclusive, secret gambling club following inflexible rules leads a gentleman to murder and madness.

Sheer terror pervades The Beacon, a dark story featuring a young girl whose desire for vengeance manages to summon the drowned from the sea. A Ravelled Tress, although rather predictable, is an effective uncanny story revolving around a tress belonged to a long deceased wicked beauty. In the powerful novelette The Travelling Companion a man is haunted by a disreputable book of ghost stories secured at an auction. The author is supposed to be a certain HS Grace who, elsewhere in the book, is claimed to have really existed as a now forgotten ghost story writer and to be the author of An Unwise Purchase, included in the present volume. Whatever the truth (is Grace a fictional character, or the true author of the included story?) this extremely enjoyable tale portrays the rise and fall of a University teacher after purchasing from a curiosity shop a set of the classical three little monkeys, unexpectedly endowed with disturbing properties.

Stern critics will probably argue that McGachey’s tales are actually no more than ingenuous, well-written pastiches echoing plots and atmospheres from the golden era of classical ghost stories. Maybe so (the author himself openly recognizes his literary influences) but traditions are the backbone of any narrative genre and when, as in McGachey’s case, the results are of such a high quality, the relative lack of originality can be easily forgiven.

Obviously, after showing that he has learned well the lessons from the genre masters, McGachey has now to prove he possesses a voice of his own. I’m sure he will and I’m already looking forward to his next title.

Note: click here for a free PDF download of the story The Mound.

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