FORGOTTEN BOOK: MORE DIXIE GHOSTS

More Dixie Ghosts, edited by Frank D. McSherry, Jr., Charles G. Waugh, & Martin H. Greenberg (1994)

More Dixie Ghosts is the last of seven anthologies in the American Ghosts series published by Rutledge Hill Press from 1988 to 1994.  This collection presents fourteen stories first published from 1895 through 1990, each set in a different Southern State.

• North Carolina, "Lost Boys" by Orson Scott Card.  From The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1989.  This one won the Locus Award for Best Short Story in 1970 and was nominated for the Hugo and the Nebula Awards.
• Florida, "What Say the Frogs Now, Jenny?" by Hugh B. Cave.  From Whispers IV, edited by Stuart David Shiff (1983).
• Mississippi, "First Dark" by Elizabeth Spencer.  From The New Yorker, June 20, 1959.
• Alabama. "The Trees Wife" by Mary Elizabeth Counselman.  From Weird Tales, March 1950.
• Texas, "The Chrome Comanche" by Alan Dean Foster.  A Mad Amos story from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 1990.
• Arkansas. "Toad's Foot" by Manly Wade Wellman.  From The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1979.
• Virginia, "The Ghost Whistle" by Eugene K. Jones.  From Everybody's Magazine, October 1923.
• Georgia, "The Crocodile" by Gouverneur Morris.  From Collier's, November 25, 1905.
• Louisiana, "The Jabberwock Valentine" by Talmadge Powell.  From 14 Vicious Valentines, edited by Charles G. Waugh, Rosalind M. Greenberg, & Martin Harry Greenberg (1988).
• Kentucky, "Through the Ivory Gate" by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews.  From Scribner's Monthly, June 1905.
• South Carolina, "a Tragedy of South Carolina" by Sarah Morgan Dawson.  From Cosmopolitan, November 1895.
• Louisiana, "Sleeping Beauty" by Robert Bloch.  From Swank, March 1958.
• West Virginia, "The Burlap Bag" by Davis Grubb.  From The Siege of 318:  Thirteen Mystical Stories by Davis Grubb (1978)
• Tennessee, "Two Military Executions" by Ambrose Bierce.  From Cosmopolitan, Noveember 1906.

There you have it:  a good mix of the old and the new, and the somewhat familiar to the unfamiliar.  Each story is a winner.  The best of the lot, to my mind, is Davis Grubb's story, a conte cruel with a redeeming ending.

As I said, there were seven volumes in the American Ghosts series, each is worth your time:  Dixie Ghosts (1988), Ghosts of the Heartland (1990), Western Ghosts (1990), New England Ghosts (1990), Eastern Ghosts (1990), Hollywood Ghosts (1991), and this volume.  In addition, the editors assembled Great American Ghost Stories (1991) for Rutledge Hill Press -- which, oddly, was not part of the American Ghosts series.