Review: Tombstoning and Other Supernatural Tales by J. A. Gilbert

Autumn may be the season for scares and spooky happenings, but winter is the season for ghost stories. You can read my previous thoughts about this most distinctive category of eerie tales here. 

Ghost stories occupy an odd, liminal genre. Some could be classified as horror. Others would be better placed under the broader category of fantasy. And some are more like modern folktales.

 Ghost stories often have what author M. R. James- widely considered the master of ghostly tales- described as “a pleasing terror”- a chill that makes one want to hide under the covers and leave a little light burning to keep out the night. There is no crushing existential dread or cosmic Lovecraftian horror in ghost stories, and gore is rare. Fright and a slow-mounting dread are often components, however.  Ghost stories are really a category unto themselves, a fact which is illustrated well by this collection of diverse tales by J. A. Gilbert.

Many of the stories in Tombstoning read like anecdotes. Tales told by friends at a party about that strange thing that happened to them that one time. Some stories are small brushes with the supernatural like “The Camera”, “Windmill Hill” or “Hag Stones”. Others are classic hauntings by enigmatic entities or phantasmagoria from the past such as the ones encountered in “Abbot’s Marden Manor” or “The Gamekeeper”. Other stories, particularly “The Estate Agent” and the titular “Tombstoning”, are dark tales of supernatural revenge that wouldn’t be out of place in a classic EC horror comic like Tales from the Crypt.

The stories in this collection often focus on small, domestic details. These descriptions may slow down the narrative too much for some readers, but they serve to ground setting, making the supernatural elements that much more unearthly when they manifest. We get to know the characters and feel more connected to them. This is especially prominent in “The Maintenance Man”, where the majority of the story is about a wounded veteran adapting to a civilian job and home life with only a sprinkling of ghostly happenings. In some stories, the characters even learn to make peace with their ghostly neighbors and accept them as part of the household.

There are a few stories where the endings drag on longer than they need to, and sometimes the supernatural elements are explained too much, when leaving them ambiguous would have made the tale much more effective. Overall, though, Tombstoning makes an excellent introduction to the ghost story genre for newcomers, and provides a decent bundle of modern tales for long-time readers of the spooky and macabre.

You can get a copy of Tombstoning here.