I was very intrigued when I saw this book, because I love Roald Dahl’s stories, James and the Giant Peach and Matilda most of all. I had never read a ghost story composed by him, and I was slightly disappointed in reading the introduction to find out that the stories within were not ones he had written. The collection is the result of research, consisting of the reading of hundreds of short stories, and these few he deemed scary enough to be made into episodes for a potential television show. The show never happened, but Dahl wanted the stories to reach others.
I’m sure in another time, like, when the book was first published, these stories would have been a little bit scary. But they are from another time even more distant than that. None of the stories in this collection scared me. I find it hard to believe that anyone reading this when it was first published in 1983 would have been frightened by any of the tales. I think it more likely that the stories in this book would have scared someone reading it when I imagine a lot of them were originally written, which I am guessing is around the end of the 19th century.
So all I can say about this collection of scary stories is that it is a great example of how the bar moves with time. What was once guaranteed to frighten people over a hundred years ago would probably not even make a person gasp in the slightest now. This could just be me, I think I do have a very liberal opinion of what constitutes being scary, but how could I not when I was literally brought up watching Scream, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Poltergeist. The only way to judge for yourself would be to read this Book of Ghost Stories.
Nonfiction and Nonsense 