The Best Ghost Stories: The Modern Library of the World's Best Books - Softcover

“A thrilling collection ranging from De Foe to Algernon Blackwood. The introduction, by Arthur B. Reeve, analyzes the incurable fascination of the unknown and the changing styles in ghost stories.” -Bulletin of the Brooklyn Public Library, October, 1919

“The ghost story is not born of science, nor even of super-science, whatever that may be. It is not of science at all. It is of another sphere, despite all that the psychic researchers have tried to demonstrate. “There are in life two sorts of people who, for want of a better classification, I may call the psychic and the non-psychic. If I ask the psychic to close his eyes and I say to him, "Horse," he immediately visualizes a horse. The other, non-psychic, does not. I rather incline to believe that it is the former class who see ghosts, or rather some of them. The latter do not--though they share interest in them. “The artists are of the visualizing class and, in our more modern times, it is the psychic who think in motion pictures, or at least in a succession of still pictures. “However we explain the ghostly and supernatural, whether we give it objective or merely subjective reality, neither explanation prevents the non-psychic from being intensely interested in the visions of the psychic. “Thus I am convinced that if we were all quite honest with ourselves, whether we believe in or do not believe in ghosts, at least we are all deeply interested in them. There is in this interest something that makes all the world akin. “Who does not feel a suppressed start at the creaking of furniture in the dark of night? Who has not felt a shiver of goose flesh, controlled only by an effort of will? Who, in the dark, has not had the feeling of some thing behind him--and, in spite of his conscious reasoning, turned to look? “If there be any who has not, it may be that to him ghost stories have no fascination. Let him at least, however, be honest. “To every human being mystery appeals, be it that of the crime cases on which a large part of yellow journalism is founded, or be it in the cases of Dupin, of Le Coq, of Sherlock Holmes, of Arsene Lupin, of Craig Kennedy, or a host of others of our fiction mystery characters. The appeal is in the mystery.” -ARTHUR B. REEVE (from the Introduction)

INTRODUCTION--"THE FASCINATION OF THE GHOST STORY" Arthur B. Reeve THE APPARITION OF MRS. VEAL Daniel De Foe CANON ALBERIC'S SCRAP-BOOK Montague Rhodes James THE HAUNTED AND THE HAUNTERS Edward Bulwer-Lytton THE SILENT WOMAN Leopold Kompert BANSHEES THE MAN WHO WENT TOO FAR E.F. Benson THE WOMAN'S GHOST STORY Algernon Blackwood THE PHANTOM RICKSHAW Rudyard Kipling THE RIVAL GHOSTS Brander Matthews THE DAMNED THING Ambrose Bierce THE INTERVAL Vincent O'Sullivan DEY AIN'T NO GHOSTS Ellis Parker Butler SOME REAL AMERICAN GHOSTS