Voices in the Dark

Alfred Hitchcock’s Ghostly Gallery

By Alfred Hitchcock

3 Dec, 2024

**Special Requests**

12 comments

Support me with a Patreon monthly subscription! — 3 Dec, 2024

**Special Requests**

12 comments

Alfred Hitchcock’s Alfred Hitchcock’s Ghostly Gallery is an anthology of ghost stories targeted at school-age readers. Ghostly Gallery was illustrated by Fred Banbery.

Hitchcock put out a zillion of these themed anthologies, or so it seemed at the time. The schools I attended always had a selection — the Hitchcock name was comfortably familiar to school librarians — but I don’t recall reading this volume.

I don’t know how the anthologies were produced: did Hitchcock actually chose the contents or was his contribution limited to the introduction? Either way, the results were perfectly readable, something reliable to read over a lunch break. I didn’t actually buy them so even if I had read this volume, I would not have had a copy to review.

This is a fair example of the Hitchcock anthologies. Hitchcock draws on both literary and genre sources. None of the stories are especially challenging to read. The actual target market was not kids, but rather people buying books on behalf of kids. Hitchcock sidesteps the obvious trap of satisfying school library gate-keepers while boring kids to death.

I wanted something light to read on an evening when I didn’t feel especially energetic. Ghostly Tales delivered. The anthology is long out of print, but if you see a copy, consider picking it up.

Introduction (Alfred Hitchcock’s Ghostly Gallery) • essay by Alfred Hitchcock

What it says on the tin.

I never cared for Hitchcock’s editorial voice, so this section was never my favourite part of his anthologies.

“Miss Emmeline Takes Off” • (1945) • short fiction by Walter Brooks

Forced to sell her beloved home to a wealthy scoundrel, Miss Emmeline realizes too late that she left a treasured possession behind when she vacated her former home. Her attempts to retrieve her treasure lead Miss Emmeline quite unexpectedly to embrace the Dark Arts.

Well, maybe not Dark Dark. Gray Dark Arts. There’s nothing inherently evil about witchcraft, particularly since a lot of it does not work at all. Witchcraft can definitely be unsafe in the wrong hands.

“The Valley of the Beasts” • (1921) • novelette by Algernon Blackwood and Wilfred Wilson

An arrogant white hunter ignores his Native American guide’s doleful warnings. The results are transformative.

Portions of this story have not aged well, although the guide is entirely correct to be wary and his white boss completely in the wrong. This is the anthology’s first foray into scary material.

“The Haunted Trailer” • short story by Robert Arthur

Bad luck saddles the protagonist with a haunted trailer. His problems only become worse.

This is another comedy.

“The Upper Berth” • (1885) • novelette by F. Marion Crawford

A traveler relates the eerie tale of a haunted berth he had the misfortune to encounter.

Not a comedy. People do die in this story. As the story is told after the fact, readers may be confident that the narrator survives. Although as it happens, another story in this very collection violates that rule of thumb.

“The Wonderful Day” • (1940) • novelette by Robert Arthur

Magic in the hands of an innocent, literal-minded boy transforms the people of his town.

This was a very amiable tale. One odd detail: the malevolent businessman has $15,000 worth of gold on hand. I thought gold ownership was curtailed at this time in the US?

“The Truth About Pyecraft” • (1903) • short story by H. G. Wells

Injudicious use of euphemism transforms a well-meaning spell into a curse.

This is another comedic tale.

“Housing Problem” • (1944) • short story by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore

Two bumblers, entrusted with a supposed birdcage about which they have been denied vital, need-to-know information, offend the small house’s current occupants. The new tenants are not entirely pleased.

This was a popular Moore and Kuttner. I own three or four copies of it. And now one more!

“In a Dim Room” • [Jorkens] • (1945) • short story by Lord Dunsany

Jorkens entertains with the tale of how he was once pursued by a patient tiger from whom escape seemed utterly impossible.

This is the sort of story where at the end of it, the narrator has food items thrown at his head.

“Obstinate Uncle Otis” • [Murchison Morks] • (1941) • short story by Robert Arthur

A disagreeable man is imbued with powers that make him an existential threat to all existence.

It reflects well on Otis’ kin that they do not, as soon as they realize what Otis can do, immediately smother him.

“The Waxwork” • (1931) • short story by A. M. Burrage

What dreadful fate awaits the man willing to spend the night among terrifying waxworks?

“The Isle of Voices” • (1893) • novelette by Robert Louis Stevenson

A greedy, lazy Hawaiian sets out to discover his father-in-law’s source of wealth and is lucky to survive the experience.

This too has not aged especially well.

Comments

Cora Buhlert

Well, Alfred Hitchcock did not write the Three Investigators books - he apparently was friends with the book packager and allowed them to use his name and persona.

The Three Investigators were super-popular in Germany, both as books and audio dramas (Hitchcock shares a voice with Skeletor in those audio dramas, voiced by Peter Pasetti, who was the go-to villain in these audio dramas). They're still around, too. I just got a Three Investigators book as a premium at a supermarket.

AndrewCora Buhlert

The Three Investigators were popular with me, in the States. I think I still have the Case of the Nervous Lion

Joel PolowinAndrew

I was quite fond of them in Ottawa, borrowing them from school and/or community libraries. I don't recall if I owned any of them. I remember reading a few of the Hitchcock anthologies as well. There was a story in which a boy is locked in a safe by a bank robber, given a "fair chance" to escape based on figuring out the safe's combination. Something about "What is so rare as a day in June?" and "in the middle of that June day". Alfred Hitchcock’s Solve-Them-Yourself Mysteries and Robert Arthur's "The Mystery of the Three Blind Mice", apparently, per a bit of searching.

Mark SchaalJoel Polowin

omg, I owned that one! It had the locked safe, a circus mystery, a kidnapping of two precocious kids, and....no, I don't remember the fourth one.

A different one of the Hitchcock collections had a werewolf story that for some reason was the only story that ever freaked out 7 year old me.

Mike S

I remember reading these as a kid via the library. I think they were out of print even then. I was also into the 3 investigators, but that was much later.

Tim

There were restrictions on gold ownership, but it was not a complete ban. For some discussion, though not completely on point for this, you can see https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1g87bcm/in_1933_the_us_government_seized_all_the_gold/ It's a pretty scholarly subreddit. There's mention of stings and going after dealers, & even the art exemption was tried in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._One_Solid_Gold_Object_in_Form_of_a_Rooster . But not the Gold Coppers breaking down doors.

But that's pretty much irrelevant. I found the text of the story. Jacob Earl's gold was in his strong box. There's no sign that anyone knew it was there. He thinks, "He’d had them since long before the government called in gold. And he was going to keep them, government or no. If he ever had to sell them, he’d claim they’d been forgotten, and found again by accident."

So the author did account for the details of the law in his own time.

Mcannon

I certainly read this one as a youngster - I probably borrowed it from my local library. Somewhere along the way I picked up a second-hand copy of a mid-60s Puffin (UK) paperback edition as well. Reading the review I instantly remembered most of the contents, but found that I’d completely forgotten some, such as what was certainly the first Dunsany I’d ever read.

The real editor of the anthology was Robert Arthur. Hmmmm - perhaps that accounts for the presence of several stories written by Robert Arthur? He edited numerous anthologies that were published under Hitchcock’s name, as well as being the author of the Three Investigators novels. He also worked on the OTR series “The Mysterious Traveller”; I’ve heard an episode that was an adaptation of “The Haunted Trailer”.

Pam Adams

Perhaps Hitchcock was like the writers who paired up with Martin Harry Greenberg- loaning his name and the occasional theme. I'm sure I read most of these, and recently ran across my Three Investigators books, so am planning a reread.

Chris Buckey

I think I recall reading one of these anthologies myself in school at the end of the 1990s, so they certainly had a long shelf life. The only story I remember was a Richard Matheson piece about a large man who arrives in a small town with a dark but fairly telegraphed secret.

Chris BuckeyChris Buckey

One web search and trip to the ISFDB later, the story was "Children of Noah" and the anthology was called A Hangman's Dozen. It also has Jack Ritchie's "Bomb #14" which I remember only because it was somehow the first time I had encountered its particular variety of twist ending in a print story.

Robert Carnegie

A very interesting cover - Mad Magazine-ish. "Art (C) Fred Banbery". Is the shadow Mr. Hitchcock? Is the headboard of the bed also Mr. Hitchcock?

Chakay Firepaw

A thought for a way to subvert "obviously the narrator survives" when the story has supernatural elements, free to a good home:

The story is going along, being told by the narrator, when it comes to a sudden halt. "Now, I don't know what happened next. All I saw was my near-headless body on the ground in front of me then I was here, sorry."

At which point it is revealed that the story is being told through the mouth of a medium. They story may continue with either a new narrator, (possibly also dead), or switch to unnarrated third-person.