In the present age, which is saturated with psychic research, whatever the motive or outcome of that movement, ghost stories have been revived partly because you can invoke interest under the cloak of science and partly because of an interest in the unknown and the desire to please our fancies, and fiction, which is art and not science, can escape the duty of preaching. The psychologist, however, may detect a concealed realism in the most audacious feats of the imagination or an interest in the supernatural when the mind struggles to conceal or to ridicule it. Hence a collection of ghost stories, whatever their nature, may have their value for every class of readers. Some will want to invoke age and general human interest in behalf of certain prejudices, and others will want to quote them as illustrations of superstition. But all will like a good story well told and appealing to the imagination which always affords mankind more satisfaction than facts.
Besides a collection of them may reveal disguises which science may uncover, however deeply concealed by the respectability that will not offend science, or by the ignorance which suspects that there is more in them than is dreamt of in our philosophy. At any rate, we may read them without demanding that they shall conform to our sense of reality and without expecting science to restrain the imagination. In other words, literature and its artistic interests will excuse us for an interest in them while science will not hold us accountable for any indulgence of that interest. If the knowing can penetrate the veil and discover any truth in them far beyond the ken of ordinary mortals, all others may complacently enjoy the illusion that they are superior to both science and superstition. With Macaulay literature was more than the consolations of philosophy. This was because philosophy has only to be true while literature has only to please. Or is it because literature is nearer the truth and can please at the same time? Perhaps in this age when we are beginning to break down the barriers which science has set to the imagination, and this by an expansion of science itself, which is the Nemesis of its own prejudices and arbitrarily imposed limits, we may find the salvation of both the intellect and the will. However this may be, with apparitions as a proved fact, and on any theory not due to chance in all instances, the fancies of the past may prove to have been founded in fact, however dressed to suit the purposes of literary art.
James H. Hyslop.
New York, September 15, 1917.
CONTENTS
| PAGE | ||
| [Foreword. ] | James H. Hyslop | v |
| [The House and the Brain. ] | Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton | 1 |
| [The Roll-Call of the Reef. ] | A. T. Quiller-Couch | 38 |
| [The Open Door. ] | Mrs. Margaret Oliphant | 62 |
| [The Deserted House. ] | Ernest Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann | 115 |
| [The Mysterious Sketch. ] | Erckmann-Chatrian | 143 |
| [Green Branches. ] | Fiona Macleod | 166 |
| [The Four-Fifteen Express. ] | Amelia B. Edwards | 187 |
| [The Were-Wolf. ] | H. B. Marryatt | 221 |
| [The Withered Arm. ] | Thomas Hardy | 246 |
| [Clarimonde. ] | Théophile Gautier | 281 |
| [The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral. ] | Montague Rhodes James | 324 |
| [What Was It? ] | Fitz-James O'Brien | 346 |