Famous Modern Ghost Stories

Ghosts are the true immortals and the dead grow more alive all the time. Wraiths have a greater vitality to-day than ever before. They are far more numerous than at any time in the past and people are more interested in them. There are persons that claim to be acquainted with specific spirits to speak with them to carry on correspondence with them and even some who insist that they are private secretaries to the dead. Others of us mortals more reserved are content to keep such distance as we may from even the shadow of a shade. But there''s no getting away from ghosts nowadays for even if you shut your eyes to them in actual life you stumble over them in the books you read you see them on the stage and on the screen and you hear them on the lecture platform. Even a Lodge in any vast wilderness would have the company of spirits. Man''s love for the supernatural which is one of the most natural things about him was never more marked than at present. You may go a-ghosting in any company to-day and all aspects of literature novels short stories poetry and drama alike reflect the shadeless spirit. The latest census of the haunting world shows a vast increase in population which might be explained on various grounds.Life is so inconveniently complex nowadays what with income taxes and other visitations of government that it is hard for us to have the added risk of wraiths but there''s no escaping. Many persons of to-day are in the same mental state as one Mr. Boggs told of in a magazine story a rural gentleman who was agitated over spectral visitants. He had once talked at a séance with a speaker who claimed to be the spirit of his brother Wesley Boggs but who conversed only on blue suspenders a subject not of vital interest to Wesley in the flesh. Still Mr. Boggs reflected I''m not so darn sure! In answer to a suggestion regarding subliminal consciousness and dual personality as explanation of the strange things that come bolting into life he said It''s crawly any way you look at it. Ghosts inside you are as bad as ghosts outside you. There are others to-day who are not so darn sure!Contents include:The WillowsBy Algernon BlackwoodThe Shadows on the WallBy Mary E. Wilkins FreemanThe MessengerBy Robert W. ChambersLazarusBy Leonid AndreyevThe Beast with Five FingersBy W. F. HarveyThe Mass of ShadowsBy Anatole FranceWhat Was It?By Fitz-James O''BrienThe Middle Toe of the Right FootBy Ambrose BierceThe Shell of SenseBy Olivia Howard DunbarThe Woman at Seven BrothersBy Wilbur Daniel SteeleAt the GateBy Myla Jo ClosserLigeiaBy Edgar Allan PoeThe Haunted OrchardBy Richard Le GallienneThe BowmenBy Arthur MachenA GhostBy Guy de Maupassant