The Black Phone and Other Stories

Originally published as "20th Century Ghosts" but retitled to "The Black Phone in 2021" to capitalise on the the success of the film of the same name.

British Fantasy Award 2006 for Best Fiction Collection, Bram Stoker Award 2005 for Best Collection, International Horror Guild prize 2006 for Best Collection. World Fantasy Award nominee 2006 (Best Collection), Tähtifantasia award nominee 2010.

Imogene is young, beautiful... and dead, waiting in the Rosebud Theater one afternoon in 1945...

Francis was human once, but now he's an eight-foot-tall locust, and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing...

John is locked in a basement stained with the blood of half a dozen murdered children, and an antique telephone, long since disconnected, rings at night with calls from the dead...

Nolan knows but can never tell what really happened in the summer of '77, when his idiot savant younger brother built a vast cardboard fort with secret doors leading into other worlds...

The past isn't dead. It isn't even past...

Contents

Introduction (20th Century Ghosts) (2005) by Christopher Golden
1. Best New Horror (2005)
2. 20th Century Ghost (2002)
3. Pop Art (2001)
4. You Will Hear the Locust Sing (2004)
5. Abraham's Boys (2004)
6. Better Than Home (1999)
7. The Black Phone (2004)
8. In the Rundown (2005)
9. The Cape (2005)
10. Last Breath (2005)
11. Dead-Wood (2005)
12. The Widow's Breakfast (2002)
13. Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead (2005)
14. My Father's Mask (2005)
15. Voluntary Commital (2005)
Acknowledgements (20th Century Ghosts) (2007)