Let no ill dreams disturb my rest, No powers of darkness me molest.
—FROM THOMAS KEN’S “EVENING HYMN,” CA. 1674
GHOST STORIES ARE AS ANCIENT AS HUMANKIND, AND THEIR APPEAL has never waned. Anthropologists tell us that all cultures worldwide have always believed in ghosts and supernatural beings. Fear of ghosts probably springs from the eternal mystery of death and our nearly universal dread of the unknown. Perhaps it’s also tied with grief over departed loved ones—or lingering terror of departed enemies—and the hope, or fear, that their spirits may somehow continue to touch our earthly existence.
No doubt the first ghost stories were told or sung around nighttime campfires whose flickering light helped to keep the cold and mysterious darkness at bay. (The ancient Irish tale “Teig O’Kane and the Corpse” is one example.) With the advent of writing and, later, films and television, the means of telling supernatural tales has changed. But the darkness and the fear remain.
Like other cultures around the globe, American and Western European literature have fostered a rich tradition of ghost stories. But what exactly is a “ghost story,” as opposed to a horror story or a mystery story? In assembling this volume, I wondered: Must I limit the selection strictly to tales of disembodied spirits? To do so seemed arbitrary and needlessly restrictive. Edgar Allan Poe (represented here by his classics “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “Ligeia”) called his stories “tales of mystery and imagination.” So this is what I have attempted to assemble here: some superb tales of mystery and imagination from the pens of some of the Western world’s finest authors.
Many celebrated writers are included here, even though ghost stories may not be among their best-known works: Mark Twain, Washington Irving, H. G. Wells, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, Nobel Prize winner Rudyard Kipling, and Pulitzer Prize winners Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and Amy Lowell. Lowell is best known for her poetry, and “The Cross-Roads” reads almost like a poem in prose.
Elia W. Peattie, Rebecca Harding Davis, M. R. James, and Ambrose Bierce are relatively little known today, though all were famous in their time. Bierce was renowned for his satire and his frighteningly realistic descriptions of his terrible battlefield experiences in the American Civil War. Henry van Dyke was a diplomat in the administration of President Woodrow Wilson, though few remember him today. He was also a supremely talented writer, as you will see when you read “The Night Call.”
Wilbur Daniel Steele, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, and George Washington Cable were celebrated in their time for their many supernatural stories, though they are little read today. Perhaps this modest volume will help to change that unfortunate situation! Gertrude Morton (possibly a pseudonym) is known for only a single ghostly short story, “Mistress Marian’s Light,” which I’ve gladly included here.
Whatever you do, don’t miss Goethe’s haunting poem “The Erl-King” or “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book” by M. R. James or “The Body-Snatcher” by Robert Louis Stevenson. And I recommend reading W. F. Harvey’s “August Heat” on a stifling, muggy summer night.
Here, then, are a few of my favorite tales of mystery and imagination. It is my hope that you will enjoy perusing them as much as I have enjoyed collecting them, and that they will provide you with many hours of reading enjoyment.
Did you hear a strange noise just now, from out there in the darkness?
Bill Bowers
Somewhere in New England