Face In Dark And Other Haunting: Collected Stories of the Supernatural
Ruskin Bond once quipped that whilst he doesn't believe in ghosts, they're perpetually at his side—lurking in forests, materialising in taverns, flickering past cinema queues. So it makes sense that his supernatural tales treat phantoms, djinn, and witches as flesh-and-blood as any living character. He possesses a peculiar gift for rendering the otherworldly utterly mundane, which somehow makes it far more unnerving. This anthology gathers five decades of Bond's paranormal fiction into one volume, beginning with the justly celebrated 'A Face in the Dark', positioned amongst Simla's pine groves, and culminating in the deeply unsettling 'Night of the Millennium', set within a derelict burial ground. Between these bookends lie strange encounters: spectral canines prowling the countryside, an elderly woman who transforms into something sinister when darkness falls, a phantom cyclist eternally traversing the road where he met his end, and even Kipling's restless spirit haunting a London museum. With twenty-eight stories spanning the genuinely frightening to the delightfully comic (the paranormal, after all, isn't without its lighter moments), this collection strikes an intriguing balance. Whether you're after genuine scares or wry amusement, it's the perfect companion for those unsettling nights when sleep seems distant.
- Author: Ruskin Bond
- Publisher: Penguin
- Genre: Health & Fitness
- ISBN: 978-0143067863
- Pages: 208 pages