Solid ghost stories with a range of moods by Rosa Mulholland, an Irish author who was well-known in her day. She wrote many books, stories and poems, produced her first works in her teens and was encouraged by Charles Dickens, who published several of her works in All the Year Round.

Her best-known story is the title one, which has an Irish setting, as in many of her stories. This disturbing work is set in the Connemara mountains and describes the legend of gloomy, isolated Coll Dhu (Black Coll) who frightens the locals and has a grudge against the newly arrived Colonel Blake. Coll Dhu develops an obsession with Blake’s daughter, Evleen, and enlists the witch Pexie na Pishrogie to help him with a rather gruesome charm.

“The Ghost at the Rath” is a good haunted house story; the narrator stays at the Rath, his newly inherited estate, with a friend and sees various scenes from the past at night. He has to investigate the visions and right past wrongs.

“The Haunted Organist of Hurly Burly” has a terrific title, and the build-up to the supernatural events is good, but I was constantly annoyed by the description of Lisa, a young Italian woman who is manipulated by a long-dead man, who was constantly referred to as “little”, “dark” and “wild”. Some of these characteristics lead to the predictable ending, where people act annoyingly stupid.

In “The Mystery of Ora”, the narrator is on a walking tour of the Irish coast and is warned to avoid the reclusive and strange astronomer Collum and his daughter, but when he stumbles on the daughter, Ora, in obvious distress, he tries to learn their secrets. This one had a nicely tense development. I thought I knew where the story was going, but the ending turned out to be completely different. However, the ending and the supernatural events seemed somewhat random.

“A Strange Love Story” is indeed just that, a strange, twisty, sad and involving story. The author spends some time describing the relationship of Max and Hilda, artists who are deeply in love and move from Innsbruck to Rome. Although Hilda is as talented as Max (maybe more talented?), their relationship does not follow the usual pattern. Max encourages Hilda, but she is extremely self-sacrificing, which eventually leads to her death. Max becomes obsessed with the idea that Hilda will come back to him.

“The Ghost at Wildwood Chase” and “The Lady Tantivy” have very different moods from the previous stories: the former is, if possible, a sweet ghost story and the latter is a cheerful ghost story. The narrator of the former is an ill artist who seems resigned to his death and goes down to Wildwood Chase for a client. He has an enjoyable affair in his head with a woman in a portrait but then starts seeing her–is it his illness or a ghost? In the last story, the narrator sees the lady in question come up to the estate she’s watching in too-old clothes and with too much knowledge of past events. This ghost cheerfully sets out to visit her old home and fix some past errors. ( )