Halloween is creeping up on us. What better way to scare yourself than with a good book all about the UK's scariest ghosts and ghouls
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1. Haunted London (£9.99)
From heart-stopping accounts of apparitions, manifestations and supernatural phenomena to first-hand encounters with ghouls and spirits, Haunted London contains new and well-known spooky tales from famous sights and buildings in London.
Drawing on historical and contemporary sources the book contains a chilling range of ghostly phenomena. From the monk ghost who clanks his chains at Buckingham Palace’s terrace every Christmas Day, the phantom horse-bus that occasionally rattles along Bayswater Road to the haunted Pig Tree, a terrifying apparition that frequents Green Park, the colourful tales featured here create a scary selection of ghostly goings-on that is bound to captivate anyone interested in the supernatural history of great London town.
2. The English Ghost (£7.99)
The English Ghost is Peter Ackroyd’s study of spectres through time. Apparently the English see more ghosts than any other nation, with each region laying claim to its own particular spirits – from the Celtic ghosts of Cornwall to the dobies and boggarts of the north. Like all good ghost stories, the tales featured here are comical and scary, but all have something to say about the English psyche and its yearnings for justice, freedom and love.
Some spirits speak, some are silent, and some waft with the fragrance of thyme while others smell of old leather. Ackroyd has compiled a treasury of English sightings packed with eerie detail, from medieval times to present day, ranging from the moaning child that
terrified Wordsworth’s nephew in Cambridge to the headless bear of Kidderminster, via the violent cravat strangling daemon of Devon and right up to the modern-day hitchhikers on Blue Bell Hill...
3. Ghost Train to the Eastern Star (£7.99)
In Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Paul Theroux recreates the classic 1975 journey across Europe and Asia that he documented in The Great Railway Bazaar.
This exceptional journey – from London, through Europe and Central Asia to India, then through South-East Asia to Japan, and back through Russia, largely by train – is one of the most incredible journeys of its time, and The Great Railway Bazaar secured Theroux’s place in the pantheon of great travel writers.
In Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Theroux recreates the journey over 30 years – half his lifetime – later, reflecting on the trip’s impact upon himself, on his changed perceptions, and on the radical changes that have swept through his destinations since: A pacified South-East Asia, an altered but still troubled Central Asia, the exhilarating rate of change in India and China, and a fallen USSR.
A perceptive, sharp and utterly beautiful chronicle of a journey that is every bit as stunning as it was in 1975.
