The third of Ash-Tree's annual gatherings of rare macabre stories. This year, as at perhaps no other point in history, the focus is very much on 'time' as we prepare to turn the calendar over from one millennium to the next. The concept of time—shifting, changing, distorting, playing tricks with hapless humans—is generally thought of as the preserve of science fiction and fantasy writers; but it plays a part in many a ghost story, too. Indeed, in his introduction, editor Jack Adrian argues that 'all, or at any rate most, ghost stories contain elements of time-distortion'.

In these six stories—originally published between 1908 and 1940—time, in all its shifting confusion, plays a part, blurring the lines between past and present, reality and illusion. The characters in these tales find themselves caught in a shadowy world in which time itself seems to have no meaning: where acts from the past return to haunt the present, and where the shadow of what is yet to pass mocks those who would try to change it.