Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author's brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted 'Top Tens' across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions - Why that story? Why that author? The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme. Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature.Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made. If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something.When light fails and the shadows form, evening trails into inky darkness and a malevolent world takes ethereal shape within our minds then our reasoning is somehow suspended as though hijacked by forces that our authors offer us and we greedily accept.In this volume ten of our most cunning authors offer up wares with malevolent purpose and diabolical intent.1 - The Top 10 - The Ghost Men - An Introduction2 - The Dream Woman by Wilkie Collins3 - The Signal Man by Charles Dickens4 - How it happened by Arthur Conan Doyle5 - Monkeys Paw by W W Jacobs6 - Oh Whistle and I'll come to you my lad by M R James7 - At the End of the Passage by Rudyard Kipling8 - Markheim by Robert Louis Stevenson9 - The Judges House by Bram Stoker10 - A Ghost Story by Mark Twain11 - The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde