Thomas Ligotti’s “Ghost Stories for the Dead” first appeared in 1982 in the second issue of the small press horror magazine Grimoire. It opened with an epigraph drawn from E. M. Cioran: “That faint light in each of us which dates back before our birth, to before all births, is what must be protected if we want to rejoin that remote glory from which we shall never know why we were separated.” It then proceeded to tell a pointedly dark and reflective story about the bliss of nonexistence as contrasted with the nightmarish agony of existence, presented in four sections:
- The New Blackness
- The New Silence
- The Old Nonsense and the New
- Tales of the New Dream
Its showed up again seven years later, in 1989, in the special all-Ligotti 68th issue of Crypt of Cthulhu. Then it was posted at Thomas Ligotti Online from 1998 to 2002.
After that, it basically disappeared. The story has never been collected in any of Ligotti’s books (though it was included in the “collected short fiction” project — not carried out by Tom himself — that tried to bring together all of his stories in chronological order).
I find this omission to be unfortunate and somewhat mystifying, as “Ghost Stories for the Dead” is one of my favorite Ligotti stories, ever. I don’t know why Tom has chosen not to include it any of his fiction collections. I mentioned the story to him when I interviewed him in 2006, noting that it falls among the subset of his works that take a highly experimental approach and that convey plot only obliquely, choosing instead to foreground his signature variety of horrific philosophical speculation. But I didn’t ask why he had chosen to leave it uncollected.
If you find this interesting, be advised that you can read the story online, along with that entire issue of Crypt of Cthulhu, thanks to the Internet Archive
Or even better — and this is what I’d highly recommend — you can purchase a PDF download of the issue (at a very nice price) from Necronomicon Press.
Here’s a taste of “Ghost Stories for the Dead”:
For in the new dream such beings — wrenched from eternity and returned to earth—are capable of anything from indiscretion to atrocity. Those who have suffered most know how to inflict it best — it’s a law of the universe. The suicides, the murdered . . . the unfulfilled, the broken hearted: veterans of extraordinary suffering and mercenaries of its perpetuation.
These are my mind’s eyes, I who have no eyes. These are my mind’s mind, I who am not mind. I am bereft of traits, bankrupt of qualities. The riches of the dead are extravagant next to my destitute estate. I have nothing but my immortality; and now, desiring or not, they will have it too.
And I am glad I cannot know them.
But I am even gladder they cannot know me.
The Necronomicon press site seems to be dead.