Great American Ghost Stories Read online

  Great

  American

  Ghost

  Stories

  Lyons Press Classics

  Great

  American

  Ghost

  Stories

  edited by

  Bill Bowers

  guilford

  connecticut

  An imprint of Globe Pequot

  Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

  Copyright © 2017 by Rowman & Littlefield

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  ISBN 978-1-4930-2935-8 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-4930-2936-5 (e-book)

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Contents

  Contents

  Introduction

  1. The Crime of Micah Rood

  2. The Devil and Tom Walker

  3. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

  4. The Snow-Image: A Childish Miracle

  5. A Ghost of the Sierras

  6. The Lady’s Maid’s Bell

  7. A Ghost Story

  8. The Night Call

  9. Tom Toothacre’s Ghost Story

  10. A Strange Story from the Coast

  11. The Woman at Seven Brothers

  12. The Furnished Room

  13. The Cross-Roads

  14. Jean-ah Poquelin

  15. Mistress Marian’s Light

  16. Consequences

  17. The Tell-Tale Heart

  18. The Wind in the Rose-Bush

  Sources

  Acknowledgments

  About the Editor

  Introduction

  Let no ill dreams disturb my rest,

  Nor powers of darkness me molest.

  —from Thomas Ken’s “Evening Hymn,” ca. 1674

  Ghost stories are as ancient as humankind, and their appeal has never waned. Anthropologists tell us that all cultures worldwide have always believed in ghosts and supernatural beings. Fear of ghosts probably springs from the eternal mystery of death, and our nearly universal dread of the unknown. Perhaps it’s also tied with grief over departed loved ones—or lingering terror of departed enemies—and the hope, or fear, that their spirits may somehow continue to touch our earthly existence.

  No doubt the first ghost stories were told or sung around nighttime campfires whose flickering light helped to keep the cold and mysterious darkness at bay. With the advent of writing and, later, films and television, the means of telling supernatural tales has changed and improved. But the darkness and the fear remain.

  Like other cultures around the world, America has fostered a rich tradition of ghost stories. But what exactly is a “ghost story,” as opposed to a horror story or a mystery story? In choosing stories for a volume like this one, I wondered, must I limit the selection strictly to tales of disembodied spirits? To do so seemed arbitrary and needlessly restrictive. Edgar Allan Poe (represented here by his classic “The Tell-Tale Heart”) called his stories “tales of mystery and imagination.” So this is what I have attempted to assemble here: some of the finest tales of mystery and imagination, from the pens of some of America’s greatest authors.

  Most would agree that Mark Twain belongs in this “greatest authors” category, and I’ve included his “A Ghost Story.” Less famous than some of his work, it is nonetheless brilliantly written and suffused with Twain’s trademark sardonic wit.

  Many other celebrated American writers are included here, even though ghost stories may not be among their most famous works: Washington Irving, Bret Harte, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, O. Henry, and Pulitzer Prize winners Edith Wharton and Willa Cather.

  Another (posthumous) Pulitzer laureate was Amy Lowell, best known for her poetry. This is evident in “The Cross-Roads,” which reads almost like a poem in prose.

  Elia W. Peattie, Rebecca Harding Davis, and Ambrose Bierce are relatively little known today, though all were famous in their time. Peattie and Davis were pioneering female journalists and writers, and Bierce was renowned for his satire and his frighteningly realistic descriptions of his terrible battlefield experiences in the American Civil War. Henry van Dyke was well known as a foreign-service diplomat in the administration of President Woodrow Wilson, though few remember him today. Nonetheless, he was also a supremely talented writer, as you will see when you read “The Night Call.”

  Wilbur Daniel Steele, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, and George Washington Cable were perhaps best known for their many supernatural stories, though they are little read today. Perhaps this modest volume will help to change that unfortunate situation! Gertrude Morton (possibly a pseudonym) is known for only a single ghostly short story, “Mistress Marian’s Light,” gladly added here.

  Here, then, are a few of my favorite American tales of mystery and imagination. It is my hope that you will enjoy perusing them as much as I have enjoyed collecting them, and that they will provide you with many hours of reading enjoyment.

  Did you hear a strange noise just now, from out there in the darkness?

  —Bill Bowers

  Somewhere in New England

  Editor’s note: Because the stories in this volume were written long ago, some spellings, word choices, typographical errors, and punctuation may seem odd or even offensive to modern readers. Nonetheless, every effort has been made to preserve the “flavor” of the originals. This, after all, is what makes them classics.

  1

  The Crime of Micah Rood

  By Elia W. Peattie

  Elia W. Peattie (1862–1935) was raised in Chicago, Illinois, as Elia Wilkinson. She became a well-known journalist, first in Chicago and later in Omaha, Nebraska. The author of more than a dozen novels, she also wrote countless popular short stories, most of which first appeared in magazines. She was the mother of renowned naturalist Donald Culross Peattie (1898–1964). “The Crime of Micah Rood” first appeared in 1888.

  In the early part of the last century there lived in eastern Connecticut a man named Micah Rood. He was a solitary soul, and occupied a low, tumble-down house, in which he had seen his sisters and his brothers, his father and his mother, die. The mice used the bare floors for a play-ground; the swallows filled up the unused chimneys; in the cellar the gophers frolicked, and in the attic a hundred bats made their home. Micah Rood disturbed no living creature, unless now and then he killed a hare for his day’s dinner, or cast bait for a glistening trout in the Shetucket. For the most part his food came from the garden and the orchard, which his father had planted and nurtured years before.

  Into whatever disrepair the house had fallen, the garden bloomed and flourished like a western Eden. The brambles, with their luscious burden, clambered up the stone walls, sentineled by trim rows of English currants. The strawberry nestled among its wayward creepers, and on the trellises hung grapes of varied hues. In seemly rows, down the sunny expanse of the garden spot, grew every vegetable indigenous to the western world, or transplanted by colonial industry. Everything here took seed, and bore fruit with a pro
digal exuberance. Beyond the garden lay the orchard, a labyrinth of flowers in the spring-time, a paradise of verdure in the summer, and in the season of fruition a miracle of plenty.

  Often the master of the orchard stood by the gate in the crisp autumn mornings, with his hat filled with apples for the children as they passed to school. There was only one tree in the orchard of whose fruit he was chary. Consequently it was the bearings of this tree that the children most wanted.

  “Prithee, Master Rood,” they would say, “give us some of the gold apples?”

  “I sell the gold apples for siller,” he would say; “content ye with the red and green ones.”

  In all the region there grew no counterpart to this remarkable apple. Its skin was of the clearest amber, translucent and spotless, and the pulp was white as snow, mellow yet firm, and without a flaw from the glistening skin to the even brown seeds nestling like babies in their silken cradle. Its flavor was peculiar and piquant, with a suggestion of spiciness. The fame of Micah Rood’s apple, as it was called, had extended far and wide, but all efforts to engraft it upon other trees failed utterly; and the envious farmers were fain to content themselves with the rare shoots.

  If there dwelt any vanity in the heart of Micah Rood, it was in the possession of this apple tree, which took the prize at all the local fairs, and carried his name beyond the neighborhood where its owner lived. For the most part he was a modest man, averse to discussions of any sort, shrinking from men and their opinions. He talked more to his dog than to any human being. He fed his mind upon a few old books, and made Nature his religion. All things that made the woods their home were his friends. He possessed himself of their secrets, and insinuated himself into their confidences. But best of all he loved the children. When they told him their sorrows, the answering tears sprang to his eyes; when they told him of their delights, his laugh woke the echoes of the Shetucket as light and free as their own. He laughed frequently when with the children, throwing back his great head, while the tears of mirth ran from his merry blue eyes.

  His teeth were like pearls, and constituted his chief charm. For the rest he was rugged and firmly knit. It seemed to the children, after a time, that some cloud was hanging over the serene spirit of their friend. After he had laughed he sighed, and they saw, as he walked down the green paths that led away from his place, that he would look lovingly back at the old homestead and shake his head again and again with a perplexed and melancholy air. The merchants, too, observed that he began to be closer in his bargains, and he barreled his apples so greedily that the birds and the children were quite robbed of their autumnal feast. A winter wore away and left Micah in this changed mood. He sat through the long, dull days brooding over his fire and smoking. He made his own simple meals of mush and bacon, kept his own counsels, and neither visited nor received the neighboring folk.

  One day, in a heavy January rain, the boys noticed a strange man who rode rapidly through the village, and drew rein at Micah Rood’s orchard gate. He passed through the leafless orchard, and up the muddy garden paths to the old dismantled house. The boys had time to learn by heart every good point of the chestnut mare fastened to the palings before the stranger emerged from the house. Micah followed him to the gate. The stranger swung himself upon the mare with a sort of jaunty flourish, while Micah stood heavily and moodily by, chewing the end of a straw.

  “Well, Master Rood,” the boys heard the stranger say, “thou’st till the first of next May, but not a day of grace more.” He had a decisive, keen manner that took away the breath of the boys used to men of slow action and slow speech. “Mind ye,” he snapped, like an angry cur, “not another day’s grace.” Micah said not a word, but stolidly chewed on his straw while the stranger cut his animal briskly with the whip, and mare and rider dashed away down the dreary road. The boys began to frisk about their old friend and pulled savagely at the tails of his coat, whooping and whistling to arouse him from his reverie. Micah looked up and roared:

  “Off with ye! I’m in no mood for pranks.”

  As a pet dog slinks away in humiliation at a blow, so the boys, hurt and indignant, skulked down the road speechless at the cruelty of their old friend.

  The April sunshine was bringing the dank odors from the earth when the village beauties were thrown into a flutter of excitement. Old Geoffry Peterkin, the peddler, came with such jewelry, such stuffs, and such laces as the maidens of Shetucket had never seen the like of before.

  “You are getting rich, Geoffry,” the men said to him.

  “No, no!” and Geoffry shook his grizzled head with a flattered smile. “Not from your women-folk. There’s no such bargain-drivers between here and Boston town.”

  “Thou’lt be a-setting up in Boston town, Geoffry,” said another. “Thou’rt getting too fine to travel pack a-back amongst us simple country folk.”

  “Not a bit of it,” protested Geoffry. “I couldn’t let the pretty dears go without their beads and their ribbons. I come and go as reg’lar as the leaves, spring, summer, and autumn.”

  By twilight Geoffry had made his last visit, and with his pack somewhat lightened he tramped away in the raw dusk. He went straight down the road that led to the next village, until out of sight of the windows, then turned to his right and groped his way across the commons with his eye ever fixed on a deeper blackness in the gloom. This looming blackness was the orchard of Micah Rood. He found the gate, entered, and made his way to the dismantled house. A bat swept its wing against his face as he rapped his stick upon the door.

  “What witchcraft’s here?” he said, and pounded harder.

  There were no cracks in the heavy oaken door through which a light might filter, and old Geoffry Peterkin was blinded like any owl when the door was flung open, and Micah Rood, with a forked candle-stick in his hands, appeared, recognized him, and bade him enter. The wind drove down the hallway, blew the flame an inch from the wicks, where it burned blue a moment, and then expired, leaving the men in darkness. Geoffry stepped in, and Micah threw his weight against the door, swung the bar into place, and led Geoffry into a large bare room lit up by a blazing hickory fire. When the candles were relit, Micah said:

  “Hast thou supped this night, friend Peterkin?”

  “That have I, and royally too, with Rogers the smith. No more for me.”

  Micah Rood stirred up the fire and produced a bottle of brandy from a cupboard. He filled a small glass and offered it to his guest. It was greedily quaffed by the peddler. Micah replaced the bottle, and took no liquor himself. Pipes were then lit. Micah smoked moodily and in silence. The peddler, too, was silent. He hugged his knee, puffed vigorously at his pipe, and stared at the blazing hickory. Micah spoke first.

  “Thou hast prospered since thou sold milk-pans to my mother.”

  “I’ve made a fortune with that old pack,” said the peddler, pointing to the corner where it lay. “Year after year I have trudged this road, and year after year has my pack been larger and my stops longer. My stuffs, too, have changed. I carry no more milk-pans. I leave that to others. I now have jewels and cloths. Why, man! There’s a fortune even now in that old pack.”

  He arose and unstrapped the leathern bands that bound his burden. He drew from the pack a variety of jewel-cases and handed them to Micah. “I did not show these at the village,” he continued, pointing over his shoulder. “I sell those in towns.”

  Micah clumsily opened one or two, and looked at their contents with restless eyes. There were rubies as red as a serpent’s tongue; silver, carved as daintily as hoar-frost, gleaming with icy diamonds; pearls that nestled like precious eggs in fairy golden nests; turquois gleaming from beds of enamel, and bracelets of ebony capped with topaz balls.

  “These,” laughed Geoffry, dangling a translucent necklace of amber, “I keep to ward off ill-luck. She will be a witch indeed that gets me to sell these. But if thou’lt marry, good Master Rood, I’ll give them to thy bride.�
��

  He chuckled, gasped, and gurgled mightily; but Micah checked his exuberance by looking up fiercely.

  “There’ll be never a bride for me,” he said. “She’d be killed here with the rats and the damp rot. It takes gold to get a woman.”

  “Bah!” sneered Geoffry. “It takes youth, boy, blue eye, good laugh, and a strong leg. Why, if a bride could be had for gold, I’ve got that.”

  He unrolled a shimmering azure satin, and took from it two bags of soft, stout leather.

  “There is where I keep my yellow boys shut up!” the old fellow cried in great glee; “and when I let them out, they’ll bring me anything I want, Micah Rood, except a true heart. How have things prospered with thee?” he added, as he shot a shrewd glance at Micah from beneath his eyebrows.

  “Bad,” confessed Micah, “very bad. Everything has been against me of late.”

  “I say, boy,” cried the peddler, suddenly, “I haven’t been over this old house for years. Take the light and show us around.”

  “No,” said Micah, shaking his head doggedly. “It is in bad shape and I would feel that I was showing a friend who was in rags.”

  “Nonsense!” cried the peddler, bursting into a hearty laugh. “Thou need’st not fear, I’ll ne’er cut thy old friend.”

  He had replaced his stuffs, and now seized the branched candle-stick and waved his hand toward the door.

  “Lead the way,” he cried. “I want to see how things look,” and Micah Rood sullenly obeyed.

  From room to room they went in the miserable cold and the gloom. The candle threw a faint gleam through the unkept apartments, noxious with dust and decay. Not a flaw escaped the eye of the peddler. He ran his fingers into the cracks of the doors, he counted the panes of broken glass, he remarked the gaps in the plastering.

  “The dry rot has got into the wainscoting,” he said jauntily.

  Micah Rood was burning with impotent anger. He tried to lead the peddler past one door, but the old man’s keen eyes were too quick for him, and he kicked the door open with his foot.