Haunted Hearths and Sapphic Shades: Lesbian Ghost Stories
Edited by Catherine Lundhoff
Featuring stories by Sacchi Green, M. Christian, Marilyn Jaye Lewis, Dayle A. Dermatis, Suzan Tessier, Kathleen Bradean, Brenta Blevins, M.E. Cooper, Selina Rosen, Lyn McConchie, Jean Roberta, Kaite Welsh, L.C. Jordan, Elise Matthesen, Ka Vang, Lynne Jamneck, and Melissa Scott
2008, Lethe Press

There are two horse-ghost stories in this anthology! That’s what you get for letting women write! It’s awesome. Sacchi Green’s Spirit Horse Ranch and Melissa Scott’s One Horse Town combine all women’s love of horses with vengeful sprits seeking to fulfill their duties from beyond the grave. Both involve strong lesbian relationships that are threatened by these spirits and that are wary of outsiders possibly destroying their happiness by not accepting their “queerness”.

Strong partnerships, and the ghosts that come between them, play a huge part in most of the stories. Meeting Mr. Krenshaw , and to a certain degree (though it is more confusing) Sprit Horse Ranch, are surprisingly the only two stories where malevolent male sprits try to harm the peaceful, ranch-living, horse-riding, holistic-living lesbians (who probably also use hemp soap and cook with lots of tofu and curry).

Marilyn Jaye Lewis’s A Path to the Woods is the only story dealing with a relationship between one woman and her dying lover. It’s a touching and beautiful one as well that describes how the fear of death and the fear of losing someone you love can be eased by being there for one another at the moment of passage.

Some Old Lover’s Ghost by Dayle A Dermatis and Airtight by L.C Jordan are about match-making from beyond the grave. A dead girlfriend - or in the case of Words like Candy Conversation Hearts  where it is a restless haunted bookstore setting up an unsuspecting lesbian bookseller with a lovely young author – try to match up living women so they can be happy and/or get on with their lives. In any case, someone/thing does a little romantic plotting and happy endings abound.

A Quiet Love by Susan Tessier, Brenta Blevins’ Ostraca, Authentic by Jean Roberta, City of the Dead by Kaite Welsh, and Focus of Desire by Elise Matthesen all deal with women falling in love with someone from beyond the grave. These ghostly women are all intelligent or beautiful and everything that their live counterparts are seeking in a companion – only they happen to be dead. Sometimes, as in Focus of Desire, lust and rampant passion can play a large part, but rarely do the relationships take on a real depth other than a semi-cliché yearning for someone far-off and unattainable. Waiting Tables and Time by Lyn McConchie is about a teenage girl who falls in love with the ghost of her aunt or cousin’s dead lover (can’t really recall) is perhaps the most confusing story in the anthology. Not because it is an intricate story but because it is not very well written and seems juvenile next to more sophisticated writing like Focus of Desire or A Path to the Woods. In the story, a young woman “finds herself” by dancing at a very clean night club where no one drinks alcohol and only once a “bad man” tries to seduce the innocent Mary. Mary meets Jan, and every night they innocently twist the night away to 60’s music and Mary learns how to be happy. It’s definitely a story written by someone out of tune with how the kids are talkin’ these days, as well as the inner workings of a sexually confused young woman. There’s almost no believability in the character of Mary, and this story seems so out of place and amateur next to the other authors’ work that I regret it was included.

Also unsatisfying is the vaguely “stream of consciousness” Midnight Confession by M.E. Cooper, in which someone dies and/or watches someone else die. There’s some lesbianism thrown in there somewhere, I just honestly couldn’t tell you where or how. I’d also say that The One I Left Behind, by M. Christian, in which a woman has lunch with herself and talks herself out of a crappy relationship, is a little bit disappointing. Why? Not scary. Having lunch with yourself is just not scary at all. Especially if you’re talking amiably to yourself and actually give yourself some good advice. In fact, I’d enjoy that.

I think a major problem I had, as a lover of ghost stories, is that most of these stories focus so much on the Sapphic nature of their narrative and not enough on the “ghostly” one. Some Old Lover’s Ghost has a tongue-in-cheek panache that’s very fun and noir-detective-y; The Oath by Lynne Jamnek actually has developed male characters equal to their female counterparts and some gypsies that add a much-needed traditional horror flavor; The Dyke You Know by Selina Rosen keeps things snappy and disturbing with a poltergeist that stays creepy by staying put; Focus of Desire is a real kick in the pants and has two of the most engaging ghosts I’ve read in a long time, but it is only Meeting Mr. Krenshaw that actually makes an attempt to add any element of terror to the story.

I’m not sure if I wanted to be scared or to see the oft-neglected lesbian element in horror literature, but I think I would have only been satisfied with having both together. And while this isn’t a “horror” anthology (it is subtitled “Lesbian Ghost Stories”, after all) I have always found the ominous and threatening ghosts of Poe far more frightening and interesting than say, something out of The Canterbury Ghost that conducts conversations with children. There is also not so much erotica in Haunted Hearths, so if you are expecting to whack off to this, forget it, you might get a boob or two, but remember that lesbians actually respect women, so wrap your head around that.

While it isn’t completely awesome in every way, and every story isn’t amazing, Haunted Hearths does represent a very select group of women writers and for that reason alone it is important. The only time lesbians are every depicted in ghost stories is usually as mournful spirits denied true love in the past; gun-toting bull dykes who shoot zombies/aliens; or as evil succubae who tempt women into lustful lesbianism and suck the blood out of their necks, so Haunted Hearths is very refreshing in that all the lesbians depicted don’t fall into the usual categories of gay women in horror. Neat. I’d just like to remind authors who use lesbian characters, or lesbians who write ghost stories that it is okay to scare the crap out of your readers. Sometimes, we like our lesbians super-scary.