title: Christmas Ghost Stories: a collection of winter tales
author:  Mark Onspaugh 
description: &quot;Mark Onpaugh's sixteen ghostly Christmas tales make the ideal read for filling cozy winter evenings with delectable shivers and chills. So pour your eggnog and settle in by the fire for a jolly haunted night!&quot;<br> <br>Janet Fitch, author, WHITE OLEANDER and PAINT IT BLACK<br><br>&quot;Powerful, poignant, and positively creepy just begins to describe Mark Onspaugh's Christmas Ghost Stories. Each story tops the next, building angst and excitement in the reader. You don't want the story you're reading to end, but you're anxious to get to the next! This collection is definitely one to add to your Christmas shopping list. It's certain to change your holiday ho-ho-ho into a ho-ho-WOW!&quot;<br><br>Deborah LeBlanc, best-selling author, VOICES <br><br>&quot;How do you know you're reading a Mark Onspaugh short story? I'll tell you. You'll laugh. Your skin will chill and crawl. You'll find yourself marveling that a writer can do so much so very well, all the while moving with a screenwriter's sense of pace and economy of words. But most importantly, you'll find yourself by turns surprised by love, warmed by the comforts of family, terrified by madness, and struck numb by sudden agony. Comparisons to Ray Bradbury will be, I think, inevitable...and far from out of place. Onspaugh is a gift to all lovers of the weird, and this book, a perfect sampling of his extensive range. Spend an evening this winter season with this collection and I know you'll thrill to it just as I did.&quot;<br><br>Joe McKinney, Bram Stoker Award-winning author, FLESH EATERS and INHERITANCE<br><br>&quot;Reading this book is like finding blood at the bottom of your glass of egg nog. You start off with something tasty and familiar and then everything goes to hell! Mark Onspaugh has taken all that is good and holy about Christmas and turned it into something terrifying -- the <br>way it should be!&quot;<br><br>JW Schnarr, award-winning journalist and author, ALICE &amp; DOROTHY<br><br>&quot;Whether you've been naughty or nice, these stories are a welcome holiday gift. Like snowflakes, they are uniquely individual adding up to a storm of pleasure that should jingle your bells!&quot;<br><br>Harvey Jacobs, author of the novels SIDE EFFECTS and AMERICAN GOLIATH<br><br>&quot;With Christmas Ghost Stories, Mark Onspaugh gives us stories full of longing, regret, and fear to while away those winter nights. There's even the occasional dash of whimsy, and the sudden hammer strike of horror waiting for when you least expect it. Onspaugh's collection runs the gamut of human emotions and will keep you enthralled until the last page is turned.&quot;<br><br>L.L. Soares, author, LIFE RAGE and ROCK'N' ROLL
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  The Pipe of Mystery  
    
  
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  # The Pipe of Mystery
  
  
  ### G.A. Henty
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
  
  A JOVIAL party were gathered round a blazing fire in an old grange near
  Warwick. The hour was getting late; the very little ones had, after dancing
  round the Christmas tree, enjoying the snap-dragon, and playing a variety of
  games, gone off to bed; and the elder boys and girls now gathered round their
  uncle, Colonel Harley, and asked him for a story—above all, a ghost story.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "But I have never seen any ghosts," the colonel said, laughing; "and,
  moreover, I don't believe in them one bit. I have traveled pretty well all
  over the world, I have slept in houses said to be haunted, but nothing have I
  seen—no noises that could not be accounted for by rats or the wind have I ever
  heard. I have never"—and here he paused—"never but once met with any
  circumstances or occurrence