[Gutenberg 36712] • The Best Psychic Stories

PREFACE

The case for the "psychic" element in literature rests on a very old

foundation; it reaches back to the ancient masters,--the men who wrote

the Greek tragedies. Remorse will ever seem commonplace alongside the

furies. Ever and always the shadow of the supernatural invites, pursues

us. As the art of literature has progressed it has grown along with it.

To-day there is a whole new school of writers of Ghost-Stories, and the

domain of the invisible is being invaded by explorers in many paths. We

do not believe so much more, perhaps, that is, we do not so openly

express a belief, but art has finally and frankly claimed the

supernatural for its own. One discerning authority even goes so far as

to assert that the borders of its domain will be greatly enlarged in the

wonderful new field of the screen.

There is no motive in a story, no image in poetry, that can give us

quite the thrill of a supernatural idea. If we were formally charged

with this we might resent the imputation, but the evidence has persisted

from the beginning, lives on every hand, and multiplies daily. What we

have been in the habit of calling the "machinery" of the old Greek

drama--its supernatural effects--has come finally to be an art

cultivated with care at the present hour, and has given us some

wonderful new writers. In fact, few of the best masters for a generation

now have been able to resist its persistent and abiding charm. Every

writer of true imagination, almost without exception, including even

certain realists, has given us at least one story, long or short, in

which the central motive is purely psychical in the Greek sense of the

word.

The whole subject opens up a virgin field which has after all only begun

to be tilled. Within the coming generation we may look for great artists

to devote their whole powers to it, as Algernon Blackwood is doing

to-day. A simple underlying reason is enough to account for it all-- *the

new field imposes simply no limit on the imagination*. In addition to

all that science has taught us, there is illimitable store of myth and

legend to aid, to draw from, to work in, to work over, as Lord Dunsany

has shown us. It is the most significant movement in literature at the

present hour, and whether it is supported by a special background of

interest--as at present in spiritism--or not, the assertion is logical

that it is creating a new body of fictional literature of permanent

importance for the first time in the history of literature. The human

comedy seems to have been exploited to its final limits; as the art of

the novel, the art of the stage, but too sadly prove to-day. We have

turned outward for new thrills to the supernatural and we are getting

them.

It only remains to be added that the present great interest in

spiritualism and allied phenomena has made necessary the addition of

certain material of a "literal" character which we believe will be found

quite as interesting by the general reader as the purely literary

portion of the book.

JOSEPH LEWIS FRENCH

CONTENTS

PREFACE *Joseph Lewis French*

INTRODUCTION *Dorothy Scarborough*

WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG *Jack London*

THE RETURN *Algernon Blackwood*

THE SECOND GENERATION *Algernon Blackwood*

JOSEPH--A STORY *Katherine Rickford*

THE CLAVECIN--BRUGES *George Wharton Edwards*

LIGEIA *Edgar Allan Poe*

THE SYLPH AND THE FATHER *Elsa Barker*

A GHOST *Lafcadio Hearn*

THE EYES OF THE PANTHER *Ambrose Bierce*

PHOTOGRAPHING INVISIBLE BEINGS *William T. Stead*

THE SIN-EATER *Fiona Macleod*

GHOSTS IN SOLID FORM *Gambier Bolton*

THE PHANTOM ARMIES SEEN IN FRANCE *Hereward Carrington*

THE PORTAL OF THE UNKNOWN *Andrew Jackson Davis*

THE SUPERNORMAL: EXPERIENCES *St. John D. Seymour*

NATURE-SPIRITS, OR ELEMENTALS *Nizida*

A WITCH'S DEN *Helena Blavatsky*

SOME REMARKABLE EXPERIENCES OF FAMOUS PERSONS *Dr. Walter F. Prince*

INTRODUCTION

THE PSYCHIC IN LITERATURE

War, that relentless disturber of boundaries and of traditions in a

spiritual as well as a material sense, has brought a tremendous revival

of interest in the life after death and the possibility of communication

between the living and the dead. As France became nearer to millions

over here because our soldiers lived there for a few months, as French

soil will forever be holy ground because our dead rest there, so the far

country of the soul likewise seems nearer because of those young

adventurers.