Ghosts was, for a long time, my favorite volume of the Time-Life Enchanted World series. I was wild about ghosts when I was a kid (and also utterly terrified of them). This book, again by virtue of its in-universe writing style, imbues ghosts with a definite hostility. These are vengeful, angry spirits, a danger to whoever crosses them.

This comes across in the cover painting pretty clearly, I think. That’s La Ballade de Lenore, by Horace Vernet, which is pretty much the best gothic painting I’ve ever seen. So strongly I believe this, I have included the full version of the painting so you can revel in its gloomy terror.

A nice selection of art otherwise. John Jude Palencar again (the skulls and the banshee), as well as Marshall Arisman (the keyhole ghost which uuuuugh, so creepy). The big surprise in flipping through the book to write this post was spotting the distinct style of Chris Van Allsberg (the famed children’s book illustrator, probably best known for Jumanji and The Polar Express at this point). He does a bunch of stuff in here, but my favorite by a large margin is his series of illustrations for the classic Swedish ghost story about the woman who mistakenly attends a Christmas mass of the dead.