MARK MORRIS

Last week I went to see Ghost Stories at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith, a play written by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman, which is inspired by the Ealing portmanteau horror movie, Dead Of Night and the similarly-structured movies produced by Amicus in the 60s and 70s.

Ghost Stories is a gushingly affectionate love letter to the horror genre from two genuine enthusiasts, and as such I watched the entire performance with a huge grin on my face - well, when I wasn't jumping out of my skin, that was.

I don't want to give too much away about the play, because part of the fun of going to see it is not knowing quite what to expect, but what I will say is that it perpetuates a timeless and nostalgic love for a genre which sank its claws into me at a very early age and which has not, thankfully, relinquished its grip since.

At the time of seeing Ghost Stories I was working my way through We've Been Waiting For You, a collection of stories by John Burke. I had read many of John's stories before in various anthologies during my teenage years, but it was an absolute pleasure to read them again - a bit like revisiting long-lost but much-loved old friends.

John's work is erudite and creepy, and he is one of a number of writers whose stories I always looked out for in the ghost and horror collections I used to devour during my school days. Both Ghost Stories and We've Been Waiting For You provided me with timely reminders - on the eve of the World Horror Convention in Brighton - of why I love this genre so much, and have encouraged me to take a fresh look at the anthologies I loved as a kid, and indeed to scour the internet in an attempt to fill in the (admittedly few) gaps in my various collections.

I have been delighted to find that second-hand copies of most of the books I'm looking for are available for mere pence on Amazon. First off is the Armada Ghost Stories series - remember them? I started reading these at the age of nine or ten, and they were a precursor to the more adult horror collections I graduated to a couple of years later.



These books (aside from the first two) were edited by the wonderful Mary Danby, a superb writer herself of ghost and horror stories. Contributors included the likes of Manly Wade Wellman, H.G. Wells, Sydney J. Bounds and the brilliant Rosemary Timperley and they - together with the Aramada Monster Books, which were edited by the legendary R. Chetwynd-Hayes, and Armada Sci-Fi, edited by Richard Davis, were an excellent introduction to the genre. I still get a frisson of delight whenever I look at the covers. They make me think of dark, stormy nights curled up in bed, reading ghost story after ghost story under the covers by torchlight when I should have been asleep.

Equally evocative are the covers of the Pan and Fontana ghost and horror anthologies. Here are a few to feast your eyes on:







Beautiful, aren't they?

These series of books gave me an incredible amount of pleasure during my teenage years, so much so that I still genuinely get a shiver of utter delight when I take them down from the shelves to look at them, read the back cover blurbs, and flick through the contents pages to remind myself of the titles and authors featured in each volume.

I'm delighted to report that there has recently been a renewed surge of interest in the Pan and Fontana books, thanks mainly to the sterling work of one man: Johnny Mains. Johnny has tracked down many of the long-unpublished stalwarts of the Pan and Fontana collections, and has persuaded a number of them to contribute new stories to a book he is launching at this weekend's World Horror Convention in Brighton - Back From The Dead: The Legacy of the Pan Book of Horror Stories. If you can't make it to the Convention itself, then you can order the book from www.nooseandgibbetpublishing.com or just grab it from Amazon. Additionally, Johnny has persuaded Pan MacMillan to re-issue volume one of the original Pan Book of Horror Stories later this year, and if you're still interested, why not head over to Johnny's own site, www.allthingshorror.co.uk where you'll find an interview with Mary Danby, talking about her years as editor of the Fontana Book of Horror Stories.

As I've already mentioned, it's the World Horror Convention in Brighton this weekend, an event which I've been looking forward to eagerly for months. This is the first time the WHC has come to Britain, and virtually everyone who is anyone in the genre will be in attendance. I'll be appearing on two panels - 'What Is Horror' at 2pm on Thursday 25, along with Gail Anderson, Paul Cornell, Steve Lockley, Adam Nevill and Conrad Williams, and 'No Royalties: Work For Hire?' at 10am on Friday 26, with Pat Cadigan, Tim Lebbon, Yvonne Navarro and Steve Savile. I'll also be doing a reading, in conjunction with Tim Lebbon, at 3pm on Friday 26. For some time now, when we can fit it in between all our other commitments, Tim and I have been co-writing a YA horror novel, and although the book is not yet finished, we will be given it its first airing at WHC. So if you're going to be there, why not come along for a world exclusive? Or if you're going to be at WHC but can't make the reading, just come up and say hi at some point during the weekend anyway.

Can't wait.