The Greatest Ghost Stories Ever Told in Two Volumes (ed. Sanguine Woods), Coming to Your Bookshelf Christmas 2019 & Halloween 2020!

News Release
Wick Press(sm)
Denver, Colorado
January 3, 2018

In January, Wick Press acquired the rights to publish a two-volume anthology of rare ghost stories originally published in 1700s and 1800s periodicals. Volume I of The Greatest Ghost Stories Ever Told will arrive in time for the 2019 Ghost Story for Christmas tradition practiced by master of the antiquated ghost story himself, M. R. James.

Many of the world’s greatest ghost stories, if not all of them, were first published in the widely read periodicals popular at the time, such as Belgravia, Punch, All Year Round, Blackwood’s Magazine, The Bulletin (Sydney), Ladies Home Journal, Harper’s Weekly—and the “Christmas/Holiday Numbers” these publications released annually, many of which were owned by the writers of ghost stories themselves! (Charles Dickens owned and wrote for Household Words and, later, All Year Round; and Mary Elizabeth (M. E.) Brandon did the same for her journal, Belgravia, which published the likes of Algernon Blackwood.)

Thanks to digital documentation and other conditions lining up in the 21st century, like the planets aligning so rare…there’s promise in the air, and editor Sanguine Woods has been working tirelessly like a sleuth poring through old magazines and books and penny dreadfuls and shilling shockers…to bring you the very best ghost stories ever told.

From the editor:

Belgravia was owned by writer M. E. Brandon who wrote some of the best ghost stories of her time.

“My criteria in selecting, from 19th- and early-20th-century periodicals, the stories and short novellas for Volume I, has been two-fold. First…I want the stories to be among the more rare. There are many ‘greatest stories ever told’ that have been over-anthologized. This is a fortunate thing for readers and writers. But the stories that once shined like gaslight, now dim and dusty in weathered periodical and book pages…they deserve to be dusted off and brought back into the light. Second, I have to not want to put the story down after reading one to two pages; and the stories I do finish, they have to have atmosphere in the Poe sense of a uniform artistic whole…and Lovecraft’s sense of creeping dread. I want to be scared, too. But, reading these old gems, I am coming to respect anew that hauntings come in many shades, and if atmosphere is skillfully handled, a seemingly benign ghost story can leave a soft warm mark on a reader’s psyche, that will burn, in its own time.”

Sanguine Woods
Deckers, Colorado
January 2018
Thesanguinewoods.com
Thesanguinewoods@gmail.com

Volume II of The Greatest Ghost Stories Ever Told, ed. Sanguine Woods, will be published Halloween 2020.

Wick Press has made a few changes in the content and direction of the books, working closely with Woods, to fit with our publishing vision; and we are confident you will agree this 2-volume set of rare ghost stories is going to be pretty amazing.

So, stay tuned!

William “Wick” Montana
Publisher
wickpress@gmail.com
wickpressblog.wordpress.com

---

The Greatest Ghost Stories Ever Told, Vol. I, cover concept and design, copyright 2017 Mick A. Quinn. Cover illustration inspired by John Bram’s 1944 film, The Lodger, based on the classic novel The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes.

For information contact us at wickpress@gmail.com.

---

Click here to read a sample story from The Greatest Ghost Stories Ever Told, Volume I ed. Sanguine Woods…

---

Wick Press, based in the Denver, Colorado area, publishes beautifully-designed gothic, supernatural, “weird”, horror, and occult mystery fiction in a unique interactive digital format, complete with original artwork, contextual information, and annotations.