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About Five Short Stories by Sabine Baring-Gould

Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924) was a British writer, clergyman and member of the landed gentry, having inherited an estate of 3,000 acres. While a young curate, he met and fell in love with a beautiful 16-year-old mill worker. He paid for her education and married her, and they subsequently had 15 children. Their relationship formed the inspiration for George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion , which was turned into the musical My Fair Lady . Baring-Gould's strangest and most enduring works are those which are based on fantastical medieval myths and folklore. "A Dead Finger" is a strange vampire story about a parasitic dead human finger which feeds off living humans in an attempt to draw the life force out of them and thus regrow its body. "The Red-Haired Girl" is a ghost story about an eerie and ominous servant girl who stalks the house, watching its inhabitants malevolently. "The 9.30 Up Train" is a peculiar ghost story about a strange ghost which haunts both the road near the railway station and also a particular carriage of the train itself. "The Leaden Finger" is the tale of a young woman persistently and cruelly haunted by the sinister ghost of a previous admirer who committed suicide when she refused his marriage proposal. "Mustapha" is the strange story of a young Egyptian who takes a solemn vow to avoid alcohol, in order to win his beloved's hand in marriage. A British tourist finds it amusing to try to trick the locals into breaking their religious vows. When he fools Mustapha and gets him unwittingly to take a sip of brandy, Mustapha commits suicide. His ghost returns to exact a terrible revenge.