The essential collection of beloved ghost stories, compiled by the editor who helped define the genre—including stories from award-winning, bestselling authors such as Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Hoffman, Seanan McGuire, and Paul Tremblay.

Everyone loves a good ghost story, especially Ellen Datlow—the most lauded editor in short works of supernatural suspense and dark fantasy. The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories is her definitive collection of ghost stories.

These twenty-nine stories, including all new works from New York Times bestselling authors Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Hoffman, Seanan McGuire, and Paul Tremblay, span from the traditional to the eclectic, from the mainstream to the literary, from pure fantasy to the bizarrely supernatural. Whether you’re reading alone under the covers with a flashlight, or around a campfire with a circle of friends, there’s something here to please—and spook—everyone.

Contributors include: Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Hoffman, Vincent J. Masterson, A.C. Wise, M. Rickert, Seanan McGuire, Lee Thomas, Alison Littlewood, M.L. Siemienowicz, Richard Kadrey, Indrapramit Das, Richard Bowes, Nick Mamatas, Terry Dowling, Aliette de Bodard, Carole Johnstone, Dale Bailey, Stephen Graham Jones, Bracken MacLeod, Garth Nix, Brian Evenson, Jeffrey Ford, Gemma Files, Paul Tremblay, Nathan Ballingrud, Pat Cadigan, John Langan.

Ellen Datlow

Ellen Datlow has been editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction for forty years as fiction editor of Omni and Sci Fiction magazines. She currently acquires short stories and novellas for Tor.com. In addition, she has edited about one hundred science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies, including the annual Best Horror of the Year series.

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Nathan Ballingrud

Nathan Ballingrud is the author of The Strange, Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell, and North American Lake Monsters. He's twice won the Shirley Jackson Award, and has been shortlisted for the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, Bram Stoker, and Locus Awards. His stories have been adapted into the Hulu limited series Monsterland and the film Wounds. He lives in Asheville, NC.

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Richard Bowes

Based in Bristol, Richard Bowes is a music journalist, reviewer and biographer who writes for Clash, Louder Than War and Live4Ever. He has written books on Oasis, The Verve and Arctic Monkeys, with each book earning plaudits from dedicated fans.

An Oasis expert, Richard was approached for comment and appeared on several major news outlets when they announced their reunion in August 2024, including BBC News, Sky News, CBC and CTV.

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Pat Cadigan

Pat Cadigan (1953 -)Pat Cadigan was born in Schenectady, NY, and grew up in Fitchburg, MA. Attending the University of Massachusetts on a scholarship, she eventually transferred to the University of Kansas where she received her degree. Since embarking on her career as a fiction writer in 1987, her Hugo and Nebula Award-nominated short stories have appeared in such magazines as Omni, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine as well as numerous anthologies. Her first collection, Patterns, was honoured the Locus Award in 1990, and she won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1992 and 1995 for her novels Synners and Fools. Pat Cadigan moved to the UK in 1996 and now lives in London.

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Siobhan Carroll

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Terry Dowling

Terry Dowling has been called “Australia’s finest writer of horror” by Locus magazine. TheYear’s Best Fantasy and Horror series featured more horror stories by Dowling in its twenty-one–year run than any other writer. Dowling is author of Basic Black: Tales of Appropriate Fear (International Horror Guild Award for Best Collection, 2007), An Intimate Knowledge of the Night, Blackwater Days, and The Night Shop: Tales for the Lonely Hours. He can be found at www.terrydowling.com.

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Gemma Files

Gemma Files, a former film critic, journalist, screenwriter, and teacher, has been an award-winning horror author since 1999. She has published two collections of short work; two chapbooks of speculative poetry; the “weird western” Hexslinger Series; a story-cycle; and the standalone novel Experimental Film, which won the 2016 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel and the 2016 Sunburst Award for Best Adult Novel. Files also has several story collections and a collection of poetry forthcoming.

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Jeffrey Ford

Jeffrey Ford is the author of the novels The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, the Edgar Award–winning The Girl in the Glass, The Cosmology of the Wider World, The Shadow Year, and The Twilight Pariah, and his collections include The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life, Crackpot Palace, and A Natural History of Hell. He lives near Columbus, Ohio, and teaches writing at Ohio Wesleyan University.

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Alice Hoffman

Alice Hoffman is the bestselling author of twenty-one acclaimed novels, including The River King, The Ice Queen, The Third Angel, Here on Earth and Practical Magic (made into a film starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman). She currently lives in Boston and New York.

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Carole Johnstone

Carole Johnstone grew up in Lanarkshire, Scotland, and in her twenties relocated to Essex to work as a radiographer. She has been writing as long as she can remember and is an award-winning short story writer.

She now writes full-time and lives with her husband in an old farmhouse outside Glasgow, though her heart belongs to the sea and the wild islands of the Outer Hebrides.

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Stephen Graham Jones

Stephen Graham Jones is the author of fifteen novels and six story collections. He has received numerous awards, including the NEA Literature Fellowship in fiction, the Texas Institute of Letters Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction, the Independent Publisher Book Award for Multicultural Fiction, and the This Is Horror Award, as well as making Bloody Disgusting’s Top Ten Horror Novels of the Year. Stephen was raised in West Texas. He now lives in Boulder, Colorado, with his wife and children.

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Richard Kadrey

Richard Kadrey is the New York Times bestselling author of the Sandman Slim supernatural noir series. Sandman Slim was included in Amazon’s “100 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books to Read in a Lifetime.” Some of Kadrey’s other books include The Grand Dark, The Everything Box, The Flesh King, and Butcher Bird. In comics, he’s written for Lucifer, Hellblazer, Heavy Metal, and Z2. He also records with the band A Demon In Fun City.

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John Langan

John Langan is the author of two novels, The Fisherman and House of Windows, and two collections of stories, The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies and Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters. With Paul Tremblay, he coedited Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters. He's one of the founders of the Shirley Jackson Awards, for which he served as a juror during its first three years. Currently, he reviews horror and dark fantasy for Locus magazine.

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Seanan McGuire

SEANAN McGUIRE is the author of the Hugo, Nebula, Alex, and Locus Award–winning Wayward Children series, the October Daye series, the InCryptid series, and other works. She also writes darker fiction as Mira Grant. Seanan lives in Seattle with her cats, a vast collection of creepy dolls, horror movies, and sufficient books to qualify her as a fire hazard. She won the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2013 became the first person to appear five times on the same Hugo ballot. In 2022 she managed the same feat, again!

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Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is a novelist, critic, playwright, poet and author of short stories and one of America’s most respected literary figures. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University and a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction.

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Lee Thomas

Lee Thomas is the Bram Stoker and two-time Lambda Award–winning author of the books Stained, The Dust of Wonderland, The German, Parish Damned, Like Light for Flies, Down on Your Knees, and Distortion. His work has been translated and optioned for film. Lee lives in Austin, Texas, with his husband, John.

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Paul Tremblay

Paul Tremblay is the multiple award-winning, critically acclaimed, New York Times bestselling author of eight previous novels (Horror Movie, The Pallbearers Club, Survivor Song, The Cabin at the End of the World, Disappearance at Devil's Rock, A Head Full of Ghosts, No Sleep Till Wonderland, and The Little Sleep); a middle-grade novel, Another; and two short fiction collections (The Beast You Are and Growing Things). He lives outside of Boston with his family.

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A. C. Wise

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