From Publishers Weekly
Ghosts with surprising substance flit through this sterling anthology of new weird tales, and most have purposes more sophisticated than the chain rattling and caterwauling of their old-fashioned forebears. In Jeffrey Ford's "The Trentino Kid," the ghost of a teenager serves as an instructive specter of unfulfilled promise for the aimless narrator. Lucius Shepard's "Limbo" features an obsessive romance between a spiritually deadened criminal, who can't tell life from the afterlife, and an enigmatic young woman who complicates his predicament. In Glenn Hirshberg's "Dancing Men," the ghost is the shadow of the Holocaust, which haunts a survivor of the concentration camps and becomes an indelible legacy passed on to future generations of his family. Even when more traditional ghosts appear, such as the grandfather clock animated by the spirit of a murder victim in Tanith Lee's "The Ghost of the Clock" and the lingering influence of a madwoman that terrorizes a child in Ramsey Campbell's "Feeling Remains," they have a psychological dimension that adds depth and power to their horrors. Datlow has cast her net beyond the horror genre's usual names and pulled in contributors whose stories are the equal of their best work, as well as mystery, fantasy and SF writers whose tales seem to be the ghost story they've always wanted to tell. Just as her anthology Blood Is Not Enough (1989) helped redefine the vampire for modern readers, this book is sure to provide a yardstick by which future ghost fiction will be measured. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The ghost story is making a comeback, editor Datlow says. To prove the point, she presents 16 brand-new examples, agreeably varied in locale, period, and style. Jeffrey Ford's "The Trentino Kid" and Gahan Wilson's "The Dead Ghost" are faux memoirs, Ford's emotional, Wilson's characteristically wry. In the pitch-perfect "The Gallows Necklace," Sharyn McCrumb exploits an interwar Oxford setting, while in "The Hortlak," Kelly Link makes the most of the convenience store at the end of the world as we know it. In Death Valley in Mike O'Driscoll's "Silence of the Falling Stars" and in a not-so-old, dark house in Terry Dowling's "One Thing about the Night," no ghost shows, but that doesn't reduce their chill factors. If a few entries flop, Lucius Shepard's novella-length "Limbo" more than compensates. About a "retired" thief who, on the run from his former boss, repairs to a cabin in the woods, this stunner reads like a collaboration between Elmore Leonard and British horror icon Arthur Machen; hard as the former, lush as the latter, it's a masterpiece. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Publishers Weekly, October 20, 2003--Starred Review
"...sterling anthology of new weird tales....sure to provide a yardstick by which future ghost fiction will be measured."

St. Louis Today.com, October 23, 2003
".. must-buy...for anyone who enjoys well-written ghost stories that will have readers starting at shadows & turning on nightlights."

Cemetery Dance #41
"..superb job of assembling a terrific tome with a variety of top-notch tales."

Booklist, November 1, 2003
"Lucius Shepard's novella-length "Limbo"... (is) a masterpiece."

Book Description
Ghosts are among us. On the other side of death, the spirits of departed souls have been part of human myths and beliefs as long as anyone can recall. Some of the most powerful and affecting images in fiction are of ghosts, spirits, visitations from beyond the veil of death.
Ellen Datlow, an editor whose stellar career has garnered her World Fantasy Awards, a Stoker Award, and a Hugo Award, has long been fascinated by ghosts. Now she has brought together an array of all-new, original ghost stories for the shivering delight of readers who are ready to be frightened.
And that's no idle threat. These are not friendly ghost stories. This book is called The Dark because the editor asked her favorite authors specifically for stories that would provoke fear or disquietude, tales that would cause shivers down the spine and make readers want to keep a light on when they retire to bed for the night. The authors who answered her call compose an all-star cast of brilliant storytellers, including such award-winning, certifiably masterful authors as Ramsey Campbell, Jeffrey Ford, Charles L. Grant, Glen Hirshberg, Kathe Koja, Tanith Lee, Kelly Link, Sharyn McCrumb, Joyce Carol Oates, Lucius Shepard, and Gahan Wilson. Frighteningly good writers. Each has penned a unique tale unlike any of the others. All have cast dark spells that are sure to inspire fear or unease in the hardiest of readers.


From the Author
Adapted from the Introduction: Ghost stories have been a popular and powerful tradition in fiction for centuries, and have inspired writers of many literary traditions, including such luminaries as William Faulkner, Edith Wharton, Oscar Wilde, Kate Chopin, Muriel Spark, and John Masefield. From the ghost of Hamlet’s father and Banquo’s ghost’s unexpected dinner appearance in Macbeth through disturbing hauntings as in the classic novella, The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, Faulkner’s "A Rose for Emily," and short stories by M.R. James up to eerie imaginings such as Graham Greene's terrifying, "A Little Place Off the Edgware Road," Robert Aickman’s disturbing short stories, and The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, ghost stories have continued to maintain their hold on the literary imagination. Although ghost stories fell out of fashion during the 1980s (with exceptions like Peter Straub’s Ghost Story), with horror moving toward the psychological and more realistic terror tales of serial killers and dysfunctional families, there is no doubt that ghost stories have made a comeback. I think this is because when done well, they are frightening. They're about something we humans cannot avoid—death. I hope these stories will unnerve you so that when you put down the book you'll spend the rest of the night nervous of the slightest noise, of the creak of a board or the tapping of a twig against a window.

About the Author
Ellen Datlow is a winner of six World Fantasy Awards, of the Hugo Award for Best Editor, and of the Bram Stoker Award. In a career spanning more than twenty-five years, she has been the long-time fiction editor of Omni and more recently the fiction editor of SCIFI.COM. She has edited many successful anthologies, including Blood Is Not Enough, A Whisper of Blood, and with Terri Windling Snow White, Blood Red and the rest of their Fairy Tales series. She has also edited the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror series, The Green Man, and for younger readers The Wind at the Door and Swan Sister. Ellen Datlow lives in Manhattan.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This collection single-handedly redefines the ghost story, going far beyond the accustomed tropes and gore of horror stories to consider the only realm that still truly frightens us: the unknown. The Dark takes a look at the tormented and unquiet dead; the darkness in us, the living; and the sometimes tenuous boundary between the two.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Ghosts with surprising substance flit through this sterling anthology of new weird tales, and most have purposes more sophisticated than the chain rattling and caterwauling of their old-fashioned forebears. In Jeffrey Ford's "The Trentino Kid," the ghost of a teenager serves as an instructive specter of unfulfilled promise for the aimless narrator. Lucius Shepard's "Limbo" features an obsessive romance between a spiritually deadened criminal, who can't tell life from the afterlife, and an enigmatic young woman who complicates his predicament. In Glenn Hirshberg's "Dancing Men," the ghost is the shadow of the Holocaust, which haunts a survivor of the concentration camps and becomes an indelible legacy passed on to future generations of his family. Even when more traditional ghosts appear, such as the grandfather clock animated by the spirit of a murder victim in Tanith Lee's "The Ghost of the Clock" and the lingering influence of a madwoman that terrorizes a child in Ramsey Campbell's "Feeling Remains," they have a psychological dimension that adds depth and power to their horrors. Datlow has cast her net beyond the horror genre's usual names and pulled in contributors whose stories are the equal of their best work, as well as mystery, fantasy and SF writers whose tales seem to be the ghost story they've always wanted to tell. Just as her anthology Blood Is Not Enough (1989) helped redefine the vampire for modern readers, this book is sure to provide a yardstick by which future ghost fiction will be measured. (Nov. 5) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

In "The Trentino Kid," Jeffrey Ford tells the tale of an encounter with a drowned child, while in "Dancing Men," Glen Hirschberg conjures up an elegant memorial to real-world horrors. The 16 original stories in this anthology include contributions from Joyce Carol Oates, Tanith Lee, Gahan Wilson, Charles Grant, and other veterans of the genre. Covering a wide range of topics that explore different avenues of horror, this volume belongs in most short story or horror collections. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews