The Screaming Skull a Reading Report Extra

by Jeff Baker

For this month’s Reading Report I’m mentioning several stories I’ve read out of the same anthology: “The Screaming Skull, and Other Great American Ghost Stories.” Edited by the late David G. Hartwell, a 1994 TOR paperback. One of those wonderful paperback anthologies you could once find everywhere. I found my copy at the grocery store, but didn’t dig it out and read it until just recently when I wanted to read the title story.

Hartwell was an expert on popular fiction and an experienced anthologist and his selections for the book were doubtless taken from similarly-titled anthologies from the early 1900s.

The contents page includes Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe and a couple I was unfamiliar with. Also there are a few humorous ghost stories, like John Kendrick Bangs’ “Water Ghost Of Harroby Hall” which I first read in Grade School. As well as the not at all humorous “The Shadows On the Wall” by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (which was adapted on TV by Night Gallery.)

Among the humorous stories, I read one that I was already familiar with: Frank Stockton’s story “The Transferred Ghost,” which I’d read as a play in a book in High School. It’s a different take on ghosts with a sweet, romantic and funny last line! I’m a big fan of Stockton who was more popular than Mark Twain during their lifetimes.

I had not heard of the once-famous writer Brander Matthews but I saw a reference to his story “The Rival Ghosts” while looking up stuff about “The Transferred Ghost” online. To my surprise when I looked up that story it’s in “The Screaming Skull,” which I had right beside me! So I read “The Rival Ghosts,” which I felt was a slight story with much of its humor coming from the wraparound story of the ghost story being told aboard ship. (Look up Brander Matthews, he was interesting! He’s mentioned in the novel “Sister Carrie,” as well as in Twain’s “Fennimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses.” And yeah, he knew Twain!)

From that same paperback I read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Ghost Of Doctor Harris.” A ghost story with rare touches of Hawthorne’s humor. The club he mentions was real and so was Dr. Harris. Hawthorne didn’t let it be published in his lifetime and it may be a true story! The club reportedly has a picture of Dr. Harris hanging on its wall to this day…

The main reason I have been reading from the book is because I couldn’t find my collection of F. Marion Crawford’s ghost stories and I had already read “The Upper Berth” as well as “For the Blood Is the Life.” and I wanted to read his story “The Screaming Skull,” and I did! It’s creepy and well-told. I will add very cleverly told as well in the style of our narrator telling his guest the tale of the skull on the property that screams because it hates him. The ending is a kicker!

Crawford, by the way, was an American even though he lived most of his life abroad, especially in Italy where he was born. He became well-known and lived very comfortably off the novels he wrote, most set in Italy, many of them historical novels.

And I will give praise to the cover artist for “The Screaming Skull and Other Great American Ghost Stories,” Jim Thesen. The skull depicted on the cover is missing two lower teeth. Just like the skull in Crawford’s story.

This is another reason I will miss those paperbacks.

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