A review by msand3
The Thousand and One Ghosts by Alexandre Dumas

4.0

3.5 stars. An entertaining collection of ghost stories in the style of the Thousand and One Nights or The Decameron. The frame narrative involves a man who beheads his wife and claims to have seen the head speaking to him. This inspires the local investigating authorities and onlookers (including a fictionalized version of Dumas, who narrates) to tell each other stories of their own first-hand accounts of ghosts and reanimated corpses. However, these are more than merely ghost stories, as an underlying thread throughout the book is the ghoulish and barbaric practice of the death penalty, extending from the use of the guillotine in France’s recent revolutionary past. The tales include a doctor making an examination of whether decapitated heads retain some awareness and sense of pain after execution, a priest relating a story of demonic possession in a hanged criminal, and various other characters telling of aristocratic ghosts, defiled corpses, and vampires. Although not exactly a classic on the level of Dumas’ other works, it certainly makes for a fun couple evenings of reading in the dark, blustery autumn months.