Speaking of Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House has one of the best opening paragraphs in all literature, and pays it off. And the collections of stories are full of gems as well—try “The Summer People” or “The Rock” or “The Demon Lover.”

I can truly say that Robert Aickman is one of those rare writers who has changed how I see and experience the world—the way he invests banal streets and towns with inexplicable menace has infected my vision.

There are a lot of books of M. R. James our there, but this one from OUP is my favorite, in part because it includes James’s simplest, yet most chilling story, “A Vignette.” His last published work, from 1936, it tells of an . . . incident that seems drawn from James’s own life.

In the mid-2010s, @peterstraubnyc did all us readers a favor, editing two magnificent anthologies: @LibraryAmerica’s American Supernatural Tales, which runs the chronological gamut, and a collection of new creepy stories, Poe’s Children.

This one you’ve seen me praise before, but it can’t hurt to do it again: @AnnVanderMeer & @jeffvandermeer gather names you know and names you don’t, old and new, and the range of voice and style and effect is impressive.

From the nonfiction side: @Skionar’s Natural History of Ghosts nicely balances suitable skepticism and solid storytelling.

This anthology edited by Ray Bradbury is solid throughout, but it’s worth seeking out for the first story alone, Robert M. Coates’s subtly unsettling 1947 story of time slippage, “The Hour After Westerly.”

I’ll end with some anthologies no library should be without: the brilliant anthologist D. J. Enright’s Oxford Books of the Supernatural and Death, and Jenny Uglow’s Chatto Book of Ghosts.

And I’ll leave you with a short bit from Uglow’s, a tiny tale to take this thread out.