Matt Cowan's 10 Favorite Ramsey Campbell Short Stories

As you can tell if you read this blog, I like lists. I even like those that aren't my one, if they're by someone whose opinion I respect. Speaking of which, Matt Cowan, whose opinions are invaluable, especially on vintage horror, has put together a list of his ten favorite Ramsey Campbell short stories, which you can read at the Vintage Horror website. I'm also a fan of Mr. Campbell, and Mr. Cowan knows what he's talking about. I'd be hard pressed to argue with any of these selections. Check it out. Vintage Horror is also a dependably good website for those of you interested in good horror writing that predates the 21st century. Browse around it, and you might find quite a reading list for yourself.
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Ramsey Campbell at Hypericon 2010

According to a recent announcement, the Guest of Honor for Hypericon in 2010 will be author Ramsey Campbell. This is great news for me, as I have been a Ramsey Campbell fan for many, many years, and wouldn't have thought he would ever come to a convention here in the Southeastern United States. Hypericon '09 is just a little more than a month in the past, and I'm already looking forward to the next one.
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Ancient Images

Ramsey Campbell is one of the few writers who can be deservedly called Grand Masters of the genre. Stephen King, Richard Matheson, probably Peter Straub…it’s a short list. Despite, my admiration for him, there are several of his novels that I missed the first time around, either because it slipped by unnoticed (even at the height of the horror boom, Campbell seemed under publicized here) or they came out while I was taking a break from horror. Thus, I often have the pleasure of reading a “new old” Campbell novel. The latest of these is Ancient Images.

The premise of Ancient Images is one that grabbed me in particular. A film researcher discovers a lost horror film from the 30s, starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi called Tower of Fear. (I really found myself wanting to see this imaginary movie, since Karloff and Lugosi are favorites of mine) A young film editor friend watches the researcher die in a strange manner before the film, which disappears, can be shown, and begins a quest to find it. The more she searches, the more strange events occur, until she finally reaches the village of Redfield, where she learns the movie was a little too close to the truth to be allowed to exist. In Redfield, she finds human sacrifice, and a supernatural attachment to the land. There is quite a bit of history of English film censorship along the way. The ending does seem slightly forced, but the book flows well. I’ve always thought Campbell’s work fell on the boundary between “quiet horror” and “splatterpunk” and there are elements of both here.

This book is one of Campbell’s best. I found it very reminiscent of Arthur Machen, which is a high compliment. There are also elements that recall the movie The Wicker Man (English version). Fortunately, nothing that brings to mind the remake of Wicker Man, so you don't have Nicholas Cage running around in a bear suit. It won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel in 1989, but is sadly out of print. Used copies are easy to come by, and I would suggest anyone who wants to read horror done well to check it out.


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The Overnight

Ramsey Campbell is something of the Stephen King of England. Since the publication of The Doll Who Ate His Mother and The Face That Must Die in the 70s, he has written a number of novels, as well as several short story collections. They are of consistently high quality, and Campbell is widely recognized as one of the greatest practitioners of “quiet horror”.

It was with some sadness that I read in the forward of his book The Overnight that he had taken a job at a Borders in his native England a few years back to ease some financial difficulty. I won’t engage in a full fledged rant about a society in which such a fine author can’t make a more than comfortable living on such a body of work, except to state that I consider it a tragedy.

The Overnight is inspired by the Borders sojourn. It takes place at a large book store called Texts, which could be a Borders, Barnes & Noble or whatnot. This is basically a haunted-bookstore novel. Each chapter is told from the point of view of a different store employee. For some reason, as the store manager (an American) is driven to madness, I couldn’t stop thinking about the British TV series The Office (never seen the American one). It is more creepy than terrifying, and probably not one of Ramsey Campbell’s best, but I’ve never read anything by Campbell that I wouldn’t recommend.