Ghosts have always haunted literature, and it seems that they always will. Spectres seem never to wear out or to die, but renew their tissue both of person and of raiment, in extravagant fashion, so that their number increases voluminously and continuously.

Today we have ghosts that haunted our ancestors, as well as our own modern revenants, and there appears to be no earthly use trying to banish or exorcise them by such a simple strategy as refusing to believe in them. Since man knows that whether or not he has seen a ghost, presently he will become one, and thus he has become fascinated with the subject. Therefore he creates ghosts, not merely in his own image, but according to his dreams of power.

Contents

1. Introduction - "The Imperishable Ghost" by Dorothy Scarborough

2. "The Willows" by Algernon Blackwood

3. "The Shadows on the Wall" by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

4. "The Messenger" by Robert W. Chambers

5. "Lazarus" by Leonid Andreyev

6. "The Beast with Five Fingers" by W.F.Harvey

7. "The Mass of Shadows" by Anatole France

8. "What Was It?" By Fitz-James O'Brien

9. "The Middle Toe of the Right Foot" by Ambrose Bierce

10. "The Shell of Sense" by Olivia Howard Dunbar

11. "The Woman at Seven Brothers" by Wilbur Daniel Steele

12. "At the Gate" by Myla Jo Glosser

13. "Ligeia" by Edgar Allan Poe

14. "The Haunted Orchard" by Richard le Gallienne

15. "The Bowmen" by Arthur Machen

16. "A Ghost" by Guy de Maupassant