The Best Ghost Stories | Page 3

philosophy from his Darky boy: "I ain't
skeered ob ghosts whut am, c'ase dey ain't no ghosts, but I jes' feel kinder oneasy 'bout de
ghosts whut ain't!"
Humor is succeeded by pathos. In "The Interval" we find a sympathetic twist to the ghost
story--an actual desire to meet the dead.
It is not, however, to be compared for interest to the story of sheer terror, as in
Bulwer-Lytton's "The Haunted and the Haunters," with the flight of the servant in terror,

the cowering of the dog against the wall, the death of the dog, its neck actually broken by
the terror, and all that go to make an experience in a haunted house what it should be.
Thus, at last, we come to two of the stories that attempt to give a scientific explanation,
another phase of the modern style of ghost story.
One of these, perhaps hardly modern as far as mere years are concerned, is this same
story of Bulwer, "The Haunted and the Haunters." Besides being a rattling good
old-fashioned tale of horror, it attempts a new-fashioned scientific explanation. It is
enough to read and re-read it.
It is, however, the lamented Ambrose Bierce who has gone furthest in the science and the
philosophy of the matter, and in a very short story, too, splendidly titled "The Damned
Thing."
"Incredible!" exclaims the coroner at the inquest.
"That is nothing to you, sir," replies the newspaper man who relates the experience, and
in these words expresses the true feeling about ghostly fiction, "that is nothing to you, if I
also swear that it is true!"
But furthest of all in his scientific explanation--not scientifically explaining away, but in
explaining the way--goes Bierce as he outlines a theory. From the diary of the murdered
man he picks out the following which we may treasure as a gem:
"I am not mad. There are colors that we cannot see. And--God help me!--the Damned
Thing is of such a color!"
This fascination of the ghost story--have I made it clear?
As I write, nearing midnight, the bookcase behind me cracks. I start and turn. Nothing.
There is a creak of a board in the hallway.
I know it is the cool night wind--the uneven contraction of materials expanded in the heat
of the day.
Yet--do I go into the darkness outside otherwise than alert?
It is this evolution of our sense of ghost terror--ages of it--that fascinates us.
Can we, with a few generations of modernism behind us, throw it off with all our science?
And, if we did, should we not then succeed only in abolishing the old-fashioned ghost
story and creating a new, scientific ghost story?
Scientific? Yes. But more,--something that has existed since the beginnings of
intelligence in the human race.
Perhaps, you critic, you say that the true ghost story originated in the age of shadowy

candle light and pine knot with their grotesqueries on the walls and in the unpenetrated
darkness, that the electric bulb and the radiator have dispelled that very thing on which,
for ages, the ghost story has been built.
What? No ghost stories? Would you take away our supernatural fiction by your paltry
scientific explanation?
Still will we gather about the story teller--then lie awake o' nights, seeing mocking
figures, arms akimbo, defying all your science to crush the ghost story.

BEST GHOST STORIES

THE APPARITION OF MRS. VEAL
BY DANIEL DE FOE
THE PREFACE
This relation is matter of fact, and attended with such circumstances, as may induce any
reasonable man to believe it. It was sent by a gentleman, a justice of peace, at Maidstone,
in Kent, and a very intelligent person, to his friend in London, as it is here worded; which
discourse is attested by a very sober and understanding gentlewoman, a kinswoman of the
said gentleman's, who lives in Canterbury, within a few doors of the house in which the
within-named Mrs. Bargrave lives; who believes his kinswoman to be of so discerning a
spirit, as not to be put upon by any fallacy; and who positively assured him that the whole
matter, as it is related and laid down, is really true; and what she herself had in the same
words, as near as may be, from Mrs. Bargrave's own mouth, who, she knows, had no
reason to invent and publish such a story, or any design to forge and tell a lie, being a
woman of much honesty and virtue, and her whole life a course, as it were, of piety. The
use which we ought to make of it, is to consider, that there is a life to come after this, and
a just God, who will retribute to every one according to the deeds done in the body; and
therefore to reflect