Rather than detailing carnage and grue, Ramsey Campbell writes the sort of horror stories that slowly suffocate you to death all the while convincing you that this is perfectly normal and reasonable and why on earth are you frightened?

The tales which make up Ghosts and Grisly Things span Campbell's career from the early 1970s to the mid 1990s. A constant recurring theme is just how close the mundane, everyday world can exist to unimaginable terror when one considers how easily one may slip into nightmare. Campbell's characters often experience a surmounting fear which manifests itself through the play of shadows and light, creeping doubt and an abject belief in the existence of something outside the normal plane of existence.

The strongest tales, those narrated in the first person, reveal Campbell's ability to transform existential horror into visceral bloody terror. Fans of Thomas Ligotti should take notice, though Campbell's world is slightly more mundane than the lunatic geographies of Ligotti. ( )