The Best Ghost Stories (Unabridged‪)‬

Collected and edited by Arthur B. Reeve

In the introduction to this selection of tales of the macabre, anthologist Arthur Reeve writes:

"What is the fascination we feel for the mystery of the ghost story?

Man is incurably fascinated by the mysterious. If all the ghost stories of the ages were blotted out, man would invent new ones.

For, do we not all stand in awe of that which we cannot explain, of that which, if it is not in our own experience, is certainly recorded in the experience of others, of that of which we know and can know nothing?

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."

Contents

1. Introduction - The Fascination of the Ghost Story by Arthur B. Reeve

2. The Apparition of Mrs. Veal by Daniel Defoe

3. Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book by Montague Rhodes James

4. The Haunted and the Haunters by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

5. The Silent Woman by Leopold Kompert

6. Banshees                                                                                                     

7. The Man Who Went Too Far by E.F. Benson

8. The Woman's Ghost Story by Algernon Blackwood

9. The Phantom Rickshaw by Rudyard Kipling

10. The Rival Ghosts by Brander Matthews

11. The Damned Thing by Ambrose Bierce

12. The Interval by Vincent O'Sullivan

13. Dey Ain't No Ghosts by Ellis Parker Butler

14. Some Real American Ghosts