GALLERY OF GHOSTS by James Reynolds

Some ghostly deja vu here as the Paperback Library recycles a cover photo originally used by Dell Publishing for Susy Smith's Reincarnation For the Millions. Hey, it's a good pic! And these are good stories, a cut above the tripe peddled by Steiger and Smith in so many of their "strange" collections. All the ghost stories here are true, in as much as they're actual existing legends as opposed to random nonsense made up to fill page counts. Some are especially bloody history, like the sad tale of Inês de Castro, and some are unearthed folklore like the Norwegian Saga of the Seven Spruce Trees, but what they all have in common is a focus on fear that stems from human darkness, rather than rattling chains and similar spectral cliches. 

Here's a contemporary review by author and poet Dorothy Quick, taken from an archival copy of the New Castle Tribune of NY:

(Click to embiggen)

Paperback Library, 1970 (original pub. 1949)

GHOSTS IN IRISH HOUSES by James Reynolds

New year, more new (old) books! And another entry in the see-through ghost gals cover gallery, along with a somber blurb that skeptics will either be petrified or fully converted by the stories within ... which is a bit beside the point as the 22 tales within don't offer themselves as anything other than folklore. Perhaps this 1968 reprint by the Paperback Library was trying to fit in among the then-current crop of scientific ghost books which promised hard evidence and PROOF of the other side. Not to say there aren't some real corkers here, selected by author James Reynolds out of over 200 (!) stories he catalogued from the Emerald Isle. This title has enjoyed frequent reprints through the years, a testament to the evocative stories from those "richly imaginative" Irish!

Available to read and download at archive dot org.

Paperback Library, 1968 (original pub. 1947)