"Spectral Shadows" is a collection of three novellas by Robert Westall. Each novella is a tale of horror: basic, primitive, overwhelming horror.

This isn't the fear of werewolves and vampires- humans in another skin - but the deep, involuntary dread of the dangerously wrong that raises the small hairs on your neck, causes your body to tremble and changes the way in which you see the world and your place in it.

"Blackham's Wimpey" published in 1982, starts the anthology. It's the slightest of the three tales but still compelling. It is a first person account by the young, barely out of his teens, Radio Operator of a World War II Wellington bomber (the Wimpey of the title) of an extraordinary haunting of and RAF plane.

What I liked about this story was that, in the process of creating a plausible and chilling haunting, Robert Westall also gave a vivid insight into the life of a bomber crew, flying a slow, cloth-skinned plane over German guns night after night in the freezing dark. Hearing the brittle, superstition-boosted bravado with which the young radio operator faced his daily opportunity to die was sad. Understanding that what happened in Blackham's Wimpey scared him much more than flying over Germany was chilling.

"The Wheatstone Pond", published in 1993 is the second novella. This time the first person account comes from a confident, self-aware, North London antiques dealer in his thirties who makes his living tarting up clocks and bits of furniture and selling them on, much improved, but not quite as antique as the buyer believes them to be.He is a man already balancing his genuine love for old things with his instinct for doing what it takes to turn a profit.

Against his better judgement, he allows himself to become involved in retrieving objects long-buried in the black slime at the bottom of the Wheatstone Pond in a nearby Park, which is being drained and filled in because of its notoriety as a suicide spot. The pond, once a proud feature of the Park, used by the rich to sail their model boats, has now fallen into decay and reaks, not just of foul mud at its base but of the despair of all who have dies there.

I was fascinated by Robert Westall's ability to make a pond a source of horror. Bit by bit, this sensible, grounded man sinks into the horror of the pond's true nature and exposure to it starts to change him. By the end of the tale, he and we have travelled deeply into a fantastic but completely credible evil from which there seems to be no escape.

"Yaxley's Cat", published in 1991, is the final novella and perhaps the best. This time the story is told in the close third-person but the intimacy is just as intense as with the first-person novellas.

Rose, thirty-something mother of two scarily competent children just entering their teens, is trying to find her way out from under the dominant influence of her austere and often absent husband. During a holiday with her son and daughter that her husband has arranged but is not taking part in, Rose gives way to impulse and rents a remote, broken-down cottage, with no electricity and and no indoor sanitation, so that she and her children can have an adventure.

Rose is not entirely welcome in the local village, where she is seen as a Yuppie outsider but as she starts to explore the cottage and to understand what happened to the old man who lived there until he disappeared seven years earlier, the village becomes hostile and Rose finds herself and her children under threat.

Robert Westall builds the suspense with great skill, weaving local myths and superstitions with a kind, liberal-minded woman's inability to recognise evil when she meets it.

As her isolation grows and the sense of threat escalates, Robert Westall amplifies the unease by making Rose's thirteen year old son into a young patrician warrior who, raised on war movies and expert with the airgun his father gifted him, is ready to deal fatally with the peasants at the door. This seemed very credible and very disturbing.

Throughout it all, Rose remains her kind-hearted but ineffectual self, raising interesting questions about whether evil should be met with mercy or lead pellet form an airgun.

Robert Westall is best known as a writer of books for children (when he was writing, the term "Young Adult" had yet to be marketed), for which he won the Carnegie Medal twice. His horror stories have not seen the light of day for some time but this year, Valencourt Books, who are bringing out of print genre classics back to life, brought these three novellas together in "Spectral Shadows" for the first time.

I will be going back for more of Rober Westall and more revivals from Valencourt Books.

I found this remarkable anthology thanks to a review on "Char's Horror Corner" Take a look at her other horror recommendations. ( )

Spectral Shadows is a collection of three novellas written by Robert Westall. This is my third story collection from Westall and I've loved them all.

Blackham's Wimpy is the story of a haunted plane. There's lots of English slang, but it's easy to glean the meanings from the surrounding text. Now that I've read this masterfully told story, I wonder why no one else has thought or wrote about a haunted warplane before? Perhaps it's not really as easy as Westall makes it look, but it's one helluva story!

The Wheatstone Pond-is a nifty tale, returning to the framing device of a mature antique dealer, a technique Westall used in [b:Antique Dust: Ghost Stories|1819998|Antique Dust Ghost Stories|Robert Westall|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1352328411s/1819998.jpg|1819572]. It worked for me then, and it worked for me now. Also, it's just interesting to think about the history of things only recently unearthed, (or in this case unwatered?) Who did they belong to and how did they get there? Sometimes, curiosity kills the cat.

Speaking of which, Yaxley's Cat is the last story here, and even though I didn't care much for the main character, this one was my favorite of the bunch. I'm a sucker for evil in a small town stories and this one certainly fits the bill. An abandoned home in a small village becomes the vacation destination of a young married woman, her son and daughter. Even though there's no electricity, her children beg her to stay and stay they do. I can't say much more without spoiling things, but I thought this tale was fun, even if a bit predictable.

Robert Westall is an author I would have never discovered without the aid of Valancourt Books. He was a treasure that I somehow missed and I'm glad he was finally brought to my attention. His stories are usually genuinely creepy and family friendly. I like that and find it refreshing.

I highly recommend this collection of novellas and if you decide to give it a try, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

*A free e-copy of this book was provided by Valancourt Books in exchange for my honest review. This is it!* ( )

Three terrific novellas here. "Blackham's Wimpey" is an excellent World War Two ghost story, with powerful aerial combat scenes and a vivid sense of place and time. "The Wheatstone Pond", the longest tale (and my favorite) of the collection, is very much an M.R. James-ian tale updated to modern times, with a slow but increasingly unsettling revealing of details until the ghastly denouement. "Yaxley's Cat" takes place in a small village in the seaside, and is equally effective as a suspenseful mystery as it is supernatural horror story. All in all, I highly recommend this book! ( )

If it had not been for discovering Valancourt books or discussions with my good friends on goodreads I would never have heard the name Robert Westhall and indeed his contribution to tales of the ghostly and supernatural. Spectral Shadows is a compilation of three short stories previously published as individual works. If you are a reader who prefers your horror to be bloody and visceral then these stories may not appeal , but if you are a discerning reader who enjoys intelligent well crafted tales with an underlying horror that slowly, unexpectedly and expertly reveals itself...then you will enjoy the delicious little gems within the pages of Spectral Shadows.

"Blackham's Wimpey" is the story of a second world war bomber, its crew, and the supernatural forces prevalent within the claustrophobic surroundings of the bomber's interior. So many of Westhall's writings, and in particular the 40 or so books that he published for young readers, drew for influence and ideas on his boyhood adventures during the war. This story in particular creates a picture of the constant dangers that being part of a bomber crew involved and the overwhelming camaraderie that existed between the crew..."We found out that Matt had been the top pilot of his course, and Kit top navigator. Mad Paul, the front-gunner, and Billy the Kid were top stuff, too; reaction times like greased lightning." I found myself fascinated and intrigued by the constant dangers that these young men endured and accepted as part of everyday routine..."Suddenly, light-flak tracer is Morse-coding past the windows. And then rods of pure white light, leaking in through every chink in the fabric. We're caught in a searchlight. Then a throbbing through the Wimpey's frame; a light, rhythmic throbbing; our front guns firing." What happens when the crew is given a change of aircraft, a bomber that is seemingly indestructible but contains a deadly secret that will affect all those who come into contact with it?

In "The Wheatstone Pond" Jeff Morgan as an antique dealer is interested when he learns that the pond is to be drained. It is a locality with a dangerous reputation and rumoured to be accountable for the disappearance of a number of residents. The local council must be seen to take action and therefore the Wheatstone Pond must be made safe by drainage and filling to ensure that no one ever again disappears below its murky surface. As the drainage proceeds a number of valuable model ships are revealed under the muddy deluge, one in particular containing three small, and possibly human skeletons. It is nice to mention that the author, at a period in his life, had been an antique dealer and no doubt this story pays homage to that profession. A number of interesting characters pervade this excellent and colourful tale; Hermione Studdart, beautiful partner in crime to Jeff Morgan; J Montague Wheeler entrepreneur, responsible for the creation of the model ships; Mossy Hughes the loveable cockney always at hand to buy you a drink in the Duke of Portland..."I decided to drop in to the Duke of Portland. It was always rather nice and quiet, before the pre-lunch mob dropped in. I'd buy an observer on the way and...Mossy Hughes saw me the moment I poked my head round the swing-door. "Mr Morgan. What you havin? Guinness Bitter, innit? He smiled, pleased with himself for remembering. Fetched the two pints to a sunlit corner-table. Can't beat Sunday, can you, Mr Morgan? Day o'rest. Good enough for Gawd, good enough for me, is what I say."

Yaxley's Cat is the final story in the trilogy and is a mix of Thomas Tyron's Harvest Home and the classic horror movie The Wicker Man. Rose, together with her two children Timothy and Jane, has escaped from her controlling husband Philip for a holiday in Norfolk around the community of Cley-next-the-Sea. As they stroll along the salt marshes they discover an old ,and seemingly unoccupied house....."The house was very Norfolk; flint and dull red brick, except where storms had nibbled the corners, leaving patches or raw bright orange. Gable on the right, two dormer-windows in the roof on the left; all covered with massive red pantiles that made the roof sag." The family decide to rent the house for a short period but what they discover within its walls has a devastating effect not only on them but on the rather odd and intimidating local people. This is horror writing of the finest; unsuspecting outsiders attempting to settle in rural communities with their questionable morals and sexual proclivities. Once again there is some excellent characterization; we meet the beautifully named Nathan Gotobed...."Mr. Gotobed did look exactly like a dog. A blunt-faced jowly sort of dog, with streaks of silver in his black hair, a farmer's three-day growth of whiskers on his face, and his spectacles mended with black adhesive tape." The original owner of the cottage Sepp Yaxley disappeared some 7 years ago, his discovery will prove most unexpected, however his cat is still in residence and refuses to leave. Will the local people learn to accept Rose and her family or will she always be viewed as..."A rich bitch and her two overprivileged brats..."

I received a gratis copy of this wonderful book from the good people at Valancourt in exchange for an honest review, and that is what I have written. Great praise must go to Valancourt Books who are rediscovering and reprinting rare, neglected and out-of-print fiction. ( )