Maupassant and others
"What is It? a Mystery" by Fitz James O'Brien shows how very, very material the horror story may be; and yet O'Brien's is not an uninteresting narrative; for it is full of vigor and truth-likeness in the beginning; the end only is bad art; where the frightened people take a plaster cast of the mysterious being they have captured and can not see. "The Hand" by Maupassant is another such touch horror tale, but of course better told. His "Apparition" is almost pure narrative and builds to a fine realistic climax, despite the ghostliness of the visitant. Matthew's "Venetian Glass" is also weird plot rather than weird place, while "The Wind in the Rose Bush" is emphatically character study, and the "Phantom Rickshaw" is a good old-fashioned, if Oriental, ghost story.
Suggestions on writing a weird tale
For your first attempt at this type of narrative, you might try the modern ghost story, and later, when more practised, the delicate psychological analysis of states of conscience. The modern ghost stories differ from folk-tales concerning weird beings in this respect particularly: the modern ghost is usually explainable, a fact you would expect because of our inheritance from the terror school. He is a logical ghost—a creature of one's own making, an hallucination at best or a white cow at worst. The author sets out to depict not so much the ghost, as the ghost's effect upon the hero. In a number of instances the modern narrative of this kind rises to the plane of the true short-story, complying with all the canons of art. Read for example one of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's six "Stories of the Supernatural," of which the "Wind in the Rose Bush" is one.
Material and method
The material is comparatively simple. Get eerie circumstances, a credulous or boastfully incredulous mind, a probable incident, an explainable apparition, and any modern setting that will hold the course of events together. See to it that the construction is unified and coherent. Build to a climax, and stop quickly afterwards. Make the apparition a logical outgrowth of the environment and the state of mind of the victim. The ghost of the folk-tale usually appears to the half-witted, the foolish, the credulous; but the ghost of the modern story, to prove his existence, perhaps, is far bolder; he speaks out to the skeptic, the person who calls a shadow a shadow. That the unearthly spirit must catch the strong man at his weak moment is obvious—otherwise there would be no story. But when the events are given, stop. Do not explain too much.
Form
It is well to notice the different methods of getting the facts before the reader. Sometimes everything is set forth by the author, and the characters speak but little or not at all. Sometimes one character speaks in a continued monologue. Sometimes the events come out in conversation or dialogue, the dramatic method, and the author appears but little. When he appears not at all we have true drama instead of narrative. The larger number of stories, doubtless, are a mixture of author and character talk.