The Best Ghost Stories, I Fancy; and Who in Turn Most Enjoy Reading Them
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Qass_ Book_ COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT f: THE BEST GHOST STORIES EDITED BY BOHUN LYNCH BOSTON SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY PUBLISHERS CoPTRICHT, 1924 By SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY (Incorporated) Printed in the United States of America THE MURRAY PRINTING COMPANY THE BOSTON BOOKBINDING COMPANY CAMBRIDGE, MASS. ©CU792075 ')• For J. C. SQUIRE CONTENTS Pack Introduction.ix The Shadow of a Midnight. (Baring, Maurice) *. 3 The Thing in the Hall. (Benson, E. F.) . 10 The Willows. (Blackwood, Algernon) .... 29 The Old Nurse’s Story. (Gaskell, Mrs.) .... 107 The Tractate Middoth. (James, M. R.) . 142 Thurnley Abbey. (Landon, Percival).169 The Fountain. (Mordaunt, Elinor) '.194 Not on the Passenger-List. (Pain, Barry) . 244 The Fall of the House of Usher. (Poe, Edgar Allan) 264 The Victim. (Sinclair, May).294 Tii X INTRODUCTION The Devil has assumed various guises in various times and countries, the most usual being that which he derived from Pan. At Northlew, a village in Devonshire, a stag that had wandered down from Exmoor died of the cold; and the people, recognising him by the horns, cloven hooves and tail, buried him and put a cross over him, which stands today. “ But,’’ said a native once, when being congratulated on this happy event, I rackon ther’ be plenny o’ ’is ancestors be still livvin’.” But for the purposes of ghost stories we dismiss the Devil. In his sulphurous place we have psycho-analysis. We dismiss the Devil quite firmly, though with a polite bow. Nevertheless we turn immediately upon the grinning children at our elbows and frown at them. We ask of a ghost story that it should thrill us, that it should make our rising from the fireside, our crossing of the hall, our approach to the stair¬ case adventures of real uneasiness. We should be brought to that plight when the cold wet nose of an Irish terrier unexpectedly thrust at our hands, or the subtle touch of a cat rubbing against us in a dark passage will produce sudden sweat upon our brows. And because a delightfully loathsome story by Dr. James, or the eerie suggestiveness of Mr. Blackwood genuinely terrify us, is that to say that we “ believe in ghosts ”? No — a thousand times, No! People who “ believe in ghosts ” are INTRODUCTION XI seldom able to write good ghost stories, or to enjoy reading them; or perhaps I should amend that by saying, “ people who believe in spiritualism.” For one thing, the earnest believer who tells his well- authenticated story devotes by far too great a share of his attention to the production of evidence and too little to the story itself. Perhaps I ought to qualify this too by drawing some distinction between the different brands of believers. I am not saying, for example, that the authors who have written good stories collected here, and because they have written good stories do not apprehend some sort of condition-of-being beyond normal experience, for I think that they do. People who “ believe in ghosts ” I seem to see as naive and ardent disciples of a modern cult, initiated by men who mingle with profound erudition a good wholesome credulity. The disciples, as a rule, manage very well without the erudition, whilst their credulity ripens to a point which is not, per¬ haps, entirely wholesome. And there are others, amongst whom are tellers of ghost stories, who do not trouble at all about the scientific aspects of any case, who, when they tell a story, tell it for that story^s sake and not for its value as evidence, and who at the same time are curiously aware of more things in Heaven and Earth — not than are dreamt of in our philos¬ ophy, because there is practically nothing that our philosophers don’t dream about, but — than are explicable by the customary standards of a Xll INTRODUCTION sound commercial education. Indeed, taking this quite literally, that is why Dr. James’ story of Mr. James Denton, M.A., F.S.A.* (who put his hand down beside his chair and found it was not the spaniel that he touched), is less terrible in a particular way than a story where some unpleasing experience of that sort befalls a stockbroker or an engineer. You rather expect Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries to suffer occult proceedings, but suppose that when you pulled open the drawer of the card-index. ? It doesn’t do to think about. It is people who have no scientific or pseudo¬ scientific excuse for their exploration, whose beliefs are vague, who do not trouble the Society for Psychical Research with letters, who succeed in writing the best ghost stories, I fancy; and who in turn most enjoy reading them. For there is a magic door, is there not?—through which we sometimes catch a glimpse; there are moments of ecstatic enlightenment, which have nothing at all to do with planchette boards, or tumblers, or crystals, or seances^ or societies. Somewhere — out, beyond, or far within us — there is a region of terror and of unimaginable beauty too. Such magic doors, such moments are, I think, inde¬ pendent of appropriate settings, or of settings, at least, which we consider appropriate. The loveli¬ ness of a rose garden, the desolation of vast open ♦ TAe Diary of Mr. Poynter from A Thin Ghost 'and Others^ by M. R. James (Edward Arnold). INTRODUCTION xiii spaces — moors, with high jagged pinnacles of rock, or of whispering forests — such scenes as these not merely induce but thrust upon us an easy self-conviction of ulterior powers, of hidden meanings, of forces, or presences even that are latent and not manifest. But choose less obvious ground: lean upon a plain and lonely gate and stare and stare before you into the field, and keep quite still and go on staring. And the sun goes down and there is almost complete silence. Wheels rattle upon a distant road and cease, the bark of a dog, the clucking of fowls are noticeable because the world is quiet: these, too, are heard no more, and there come to you only the littlest sounds that Nature sends — minute squeakings and buzzings and twitterings — and the colours change before you, the grass, the hedgerows and the trees, and their shapes alter and the scent of earth rises up to you — the most intimate, the most thrilling of natural experiences. Listen, for there are noises now for which we have no explanation. Keep still, for you may feel a strange vibration; watch, for the haze is a deepening blue, and in it, through it, out of it what may not glide? You are all alone, out there, with the earth and sky, and the dim hugeness of evening wraps you about, and you know that anything can happen, in a moment must happen, if only your senses remain S3mipa- thetic. No writer that I can think of has so well XIV INTRODUCTION suggested this secret kingdom of spiritual appre¬ hension as Mr. Blackwood; and I have chosen his story, The Willows^ because apart from its intrinsic merits as a story (and they are consider¬ able) it illustrates two phases of his peculiar gift. It conveys to the reader the sense of fear in such a way that he can easily, indeed dreadfully, iden¬ tify himself with the narrator, and it is a richly imaginative work in which the author first creates and then explores a very borderland of the soul. It is not easy to define a ghost story. Now¬ adays the expression, like a good many others, is loosely employed, so that every kind of occult, queer, or magical fiction is so called. Must a ghost story deal only with the appearances of some person who is known to be dead and perhaps buried? No, for that would exclude the whole body of horrible tales about Elementals, or un¬ known Powers of the earth and air, things like The Thing in the Hally or Fiends, such as that which stood behind Mr. Dennistoun whilst he turned over the leaves of Canon Alberic^s Scrap- Bo ok.I think these may reasonably enough be called ghosts; for they at any rate, and obviously, belong to some other state of existence than our own. But that unforgettable and awful story of Mr. Barry Pain, The Undying Thingy\ is, as its title implies, not a ghost story; nor is Mr. Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan. Indeed, Mr. * Ghost Stories ‘of an Antiquary. By M. R. James (Edward Arnold). "t Stories in the Dark. By Barry Pain (Grant Richards). INTRODUCTION XV Machen’s work, like much of Mr. Blackwood’s, is deeply and sometimes appallingly suggestive, and their art consists largely of their extraordinary power of preparing the reader’s mind for things which only just happen, in print, at all. You might almost say that, in reading some of Mr. Machen’s work, you supply your own facts, making them suitable to his atmosphere. And then, of course, there was the old type of ghost story, which bid fair to keep you awake all night in agony, until you came to the end and found that it had or might have a natural explanation. Such a story, but for the receipt for Steenie’s rent, is Wandering Willie^s Tale in Redgauntlet, The ape stole the money, and the rest of it might well have been a dream. A ghost story needs to be one of two things — either a definite exploration of new spiritual country, so to put it, such as is to be found in much of Mr.