Ghost Stories Read online

  GHOST STORIES

  GHOST STORIES

  36 Spine-Chilling Tales of Terror and the Supernatural

  EDITED BY BILL BOWERS

  Guilford, Connecticut

  An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

  4501 Forbes Blvd., Ste. 200

  Lanham, MD 20706

  www.rowman.com

  Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

  Copyright © 2003, 2017, and 2020 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

  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

  Names: Bowers, Bill, 1957- editor.

  Title: Ghost stories : 36 spine-chilling tales of terror and the supernatural / edited by Bill Bowers.

  Description: Guilford, Connecticut : Lyons Press, [2020] | Summary: “Ghost Stories is a ghoulish collection of true classics, both legendary and long-forgotten, with frightening stories from Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Bret Harte, Ambrose Bierce, Edith Wharton, Mark Twain, Harriett Beecher Stowe, O. Henry, Willa Cather, and many others. This ghostly collection delivers the ghastly, horrifying, and otherwise haunting tales of terror we love to read - late at night, with the lights off”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020010416 (print) | LCCN 2020010417 (ebook) | ISBN 9781493049165 (cloth) | ISBN 9781493057924 (epub)

  Subjects: LCSH: Ghost stories.

  Classification: LCC PN6071.G45 G46 2020 (print) | LCC PN6071.G45 (ebook) | DDC 808.83/8733—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020010416

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020010417

  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.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Half Title

  Title

  Copyright

  Contents

  Introduction

  1: The Crime of Micah Rood by Elia W. Peattie

  2: The Devil and Tom Walker by Washington Irving

  3: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce

  4: The Snow-Image: A Childish Miracle by Nathaniel Hawthorne

  5: A Ghost of the Sierras by Bret Harte

  6: The Lady’s Maid’s Bell by Edith Wharton

  7: A Ghost Story by Mark Twain

  8: The Night Call by Henry van Dyke

  9: Tom Toothacre’s Ghost Story by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  10: A Strange Story from the Coast by Rebecca Harding Davis

  11: The Woman at Seven Brothers by Wilbur Daniel Steele

  12: The Furnished Room by O. Henry

  13: The Cross-Roads by Amy Lowell

  14: Jean-ah Poquelin by George Washington Cable

  15: Mistress Marian’s Light by Gertrude Morton

  16: Consequences by Willa Cather

  17: The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

  18: The Wind in the Rose-Bush by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

  19: The Ghost of Fear by H. G. Wells

  20: Teig O’Kane and the Corpse [Traditional]

  21: The Screaming Skull by F. Marion Crawford

  22: Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book by M. R. James

  23: A True Story by Benjamin Disraeli

  24: The Phantom ’Rickshaw by Rudyard Kipling

  25: The Lagoon by Joseph Conrad

  26: On the Water by Guy de Maupassant

  27: The Erl-King by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  28: The Body-Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson

  29: The Phantom Coach by Amelia B. Edwards

  30: Ligeia by Edgar Allan Poe

  31: The Secret of Macarger’s Gulch by Ambrose Bierce

  32: The Old Nurse’s Story by Elizabeth Gaskell

  33: August Heat by W. F. Harvey

  34: How He Left the Hotel by Louisa Baldwin

  35: The Man Who Went Too Far by E. F. Benson

  36: The Toll-House by W. W. Jacobs

  About the Editor

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  Guide

  Cover

  Half Title

  Title

  Copyright

  Contents

  Introduction

  Start of Content

  About the Editor

  INTRODUCTION

  Let no ill dreams disturb my rest, No 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. (The ancient Irish tale “Teig O’Kane and the Corpse” is one example.) With the advent of writing and, later, films and television, the means of telling supernatural tales has changed. But the darkness and the fear remain.

  Like other cultures around the globe, American and Western European literature have 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 assembling this volume, 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 classics “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “Ligeia”) called his stories “tales of myste
ry and imagination.” So this is what I have attempted to assemble here: some superb tales of mystery and imagination from the pens of some of the Western world’s finest authors.

  Many celebrated writers are included here, even though ghost stories may not be among their best-known works: Mark Twain, Washington Irving, H. G. Wells, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, Nobel Prize winner Rudyard Kipling, and Pulitzer Prize winners Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and Amy Lowell. Lowell is best known for her poetry, and “The Cross-Roads” reads almost like a poem in prose.

  Elia W. Peattie, Rebecca Harding Davis, M. R. James, and Ambrose Bierce are relatively little known today, though all were famous in their time. 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 a diplomat in the administration of President Woodrow Wilson, though few remember him today. 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 celebrated in their time 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,” which I’ve gladly included here.

  Whatever you do, don’t miss Goethe’s haunting poem “The Erl-King” or “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book” by M. R. James or “The Body-Snatcher” by Robert Louis Stevenson. And I recommend reading W. F. Harvey’s “August Heat” on a stifling, muggy summer night.

  Here, then, are a few of my favorite 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

  1

  The Crime of Micah Rood

  By Elia W. Peattie

  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 prodigal 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.