When a little penguin named Jake can't fall asleep due to strange noises, he calls repeatedly for his father who checks every area in Jake's room and reassures him that there are no ghosts in the room.

Something is under Simon’s bed. He can hear it breathing. Is it a monster? Simon has to find out. He shines a flashlight under the bed, to discover that something is hiding there—but what? This warm and humorous story will delight any child who has ever envisioned monsters lurking in the bedtime darkness.

Weeks after settling into their new home in Fort Collins, Colorado, retired police officer Kenneth W. Harmon and his family make a chilling discovery: they’re living with a ghost. This true haunting story begins during a ghost tour at the famous Stanley Hotel, where the Harmons experienced headaches and paranormal phenomena. Once back at home, strange rapping noises, eerie whispers captured on film, and unidentified figures in his photographs compel Ken to research the land’s history. What he learns shocks everyone: in the backyard sits the unmarked grave of Mary Bell Wilson, a young woman who died of typhoid fever in the late 1880s. As his fixation grows, Ken uses a dowsing rod to communicate with Mary Bell’s spirit and investigate her brief life. The spirit’s surprising answers shed light on the nature of the spirit world and the mysteries of crossing over.

There's nothing like a good ghost story to give you a frisson of fear on a dark winter's night. Gathered in this haunting collection are twenty-seven of the very best of their genre by British and American masters. As well as contributions from established names, you will also find forgotten gems by unjustly neglected writers who deserve an opportunity to find a new readership. Among these is The Spectre of Tappington, taken from The Ingoldsby Legends which appeared in serial form in the 1830s and were immensely popular with Victorian readers. Their author, Thomas Ingoldsby, was in fact an English clergyman, Richard Barham, who, unlike most of the writers in this compilation, put pen to paper out of pure enjoyment rather than necessity. The name Edith Nesbit is better known to modern readers than Thomas Ingoldsby, although probably not in the context of adult fiction. Famous as a writer of children's fiction (most notably The Railway Children), she also had a talent for ghost stories, as you will discover when you come to Man-Size in Marble. So settle back and enjoy myriad journeys through the highways and byways of one of literature's most rewarding genres. Included here are: The Moonlit Road by Ambrose Bierce Miss Jéromette and the Clergyman by Wilkie Collins The Captain of the Pole-star by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Goblins Who Stole a Sexton by Charles Dickens The Old Nurse's Story by Elizabeth Gaskell The Withered Arm by Thomas Hardy The Hollow of the Three Hills by Nathaniel Hawthorne The Furnished Room by O. Henry The Haunted Mill by Jerome K. Jerome A Ghost by Guy de Maupassant The Oval Portrait by Edgar Allan Poe The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson The Devil's Wage by W. M. Thackeray The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde

The ghost story is as old as human speech, - and perhaps even antedates it. A naïve acceptance of the supernatural was unquestionably one of the primal attributes of human intelligence. The ghost story may thus quite conceivably be the first form of tale ever invented. It makes its appearance comparatively early in the annals of literature...