Masterpieces of Mystery: Ghost Stories

The ghost story is as old as human speech,--and perhaps even antedates it. A naïve acceptance of the supernatural was unquestionably one of the primal attributes of human intelligence. The ghost story may thus quite conceivably be the first form of tale ever invented. It makes its appearance comparatively early in the annals of literature. Who that has read it is likely to forget Pliny's account in a letter to an intimate of an apparition shortly after death to a mutual acquaintance? Old books of tales and legends are full of the ghost story. It has persisted throughout the ages. It began to attain some real standing in literature,--to take its definite place,--a little more than a century ago. Like the apparition it embodies it had always been--and is still to-day even--more or less discredited. Mrs. Radcliffe gave it a new being and even a certain dignity in her "Castle of Otranto"; and after her came Sir Walter Scott who frankly surrendered to the power and charm of the theme. The line of succession has been continuous. The ghost has held his own with his human fellow in fiction, and his tale has been told with increasing skill as the art of the writer has developed. To-day the case for the ghost as an element in fiction is an exceedingly strong one. There has indeed sprung into being within a couple of decades a new school of such writers. Nowadays almost every fictionist of account produces one good thriller at least of this sort. The temptation is irresistible for the simple reason that the theme imposes absolutely no limit on the imagination.

The reader will find here a careful selection illustrating the growth in art of this exotic in literature during the past fifty years, and for a contrast, spanning the centuries, the naïve narration of Pliny the Younger.

JOSEPH LEWIS FRENCH.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. THE LISTENER 3 Algernon Blackwood

II. NUMBER 13 45 Montague Rhodes James

III. JOSEPH: A STORY 70 Katherine Rickford

IV. THE HORLA 84 Guy de Maupassant

V. THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS 123 William F. Harvey

VI. SISTER MADDELENA 167 Ralph Adams Cram

VII. THRAWN JANET 191 Robert Louis Stevenson

VIII. THE YELLOW CAT 207 Wilbur Daniel Steele

IX. LETTER TO SURA 237 Pliny the Younger

MASTERPIECES OF MYSTERY

Masterpieces of Mystery

GHOST STORIES

THE LISTENER[A]

ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

Sept. 4.--I have hunted all over London for rooms suited to my income--£120 a year--and have at last found them. Two rooms, without modern conveniences, it is true, and in an old, ramshackle building, but within a stone's throw of P-- Place and in an eminently respectable street. The rent is only £25 a year. I had begun to despair when at last I found them by chance. The chance was a mere chance, and unworthy of record. I had to sign a lease for a year, and I did so willingly. The furniture from our old place in H--shire, which has been stored so long, will just suit them.

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Oct. 1.--Here I am in my two rooms, in the centre of London, and not far from the offices of the periodicals where occasionally I dispose of an article or two. The building is at the end of a cul-de-sac. The alley is well paved and clean, and lined chiefly with the backs of sedate and institutional-looking buildings. There is a stable in it. My own house is dignified with the title of "Chambers." I feel as if one day the honour must prove too much for it, and it will swell with pride--and fall asunder. It is very old. The floor of my sitting-room has valleys and low hills on it, and the top of the door slants away from the ceiling with a glorious disregard of what is usual. They must have quarrelled--fifty years ago--and have been going apart ever since.

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Oct. 2.--My landlady is old and thin, with a faded, dusty face. She is uncommunicative. The few words she utters seem to cost her pain. Probably her lungs are half choked with dust. She keeps my rooms as free from this commodity as possible, and has the assistance of a strong girl who brings up the breakfast and lights the fire. As I have said already, she is not communicative. In reply to pleasant efforts on my part she informed me briefly that I was the only occupant of the house at present. My rooms had not been occupied for some years. There had been other gentlemen upstairs, but they had left.