REVIEW: “Anne’s Little Ghost” by H. D. Everett

Review of H. D. Everett, “Anne’s Little Ghost,” in Minor Hauntings: Chilling Tales of Spectral Youth, edited by Jen Baker (British Library, 2021): 277-292 — Order here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

This story is of that ilk of ghost stories which are sad, rather than scary or haunting. Anne and Godfrey have been married nearly eight years and yet they are still just the two of them; their daughter, born two years into their marriage, died only a few weeks later. So when both are visited by the ghost of a six year old little girl, there is nothing scary at all about the visage, only a deep aching sadness the reader has for parents who have not only lost a beloved child, but with it the future they might once have dreamed of. And this time it is not only the mother’s loss that we are able to mourn, but the father’s too, for is not “the father’s tie as valid as the mother’s, if not so close and fond” (p. 289)?

(First published in The Death Mask and Other Ghosts, 1920.)

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Two Little Red Shoes” by Bessie Kyffin-Taylor

Review of Bessie Kyffin-Taylor, “Two Little Red Shoes,” in Minor Hauntings: Chilling Tales of Spectral Youth, edited by Jen Baker (British Library, 2021): 251-275 — Order here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

This was an extremely intimate, and at times sometimes intensely difficult, story to read. The narrator tells her tale without any guile or hesitancy, which makes her recounting of the abuse of two young children that she witnesses all the more terrible.

It’s an extremely well written story, but not one I could in all conscience recommend anyone read.

(First published in From Out of the Silence, 1920.)

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment