The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories Read online

  THE PENGUIN BOOK OF GHOST STORIES

  MICHAEL NEWTON was both an undergraduate and postgraduate at University College London. He is the author of Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children (Faber & Faber, 2002) and of a book on Kind Hearts and Coronets for the British Film Institute’s Film Classics series (2003). He has also edited Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son for Oxford World’s Classics and Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent for Penguin. He has taught at UCL, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and Princeton University, and currently works at the University of Leiden. At present he is completing a book on the history of assassination and political violence.

  The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories

  From Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce

  Edited with an Introduction by

  MICHAEL NEWTON

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN CLASSICS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  This selection first published in Penguin Classics 2010

  Selection and editorial material copyright © Michael Newton, 2010

  All rights reserved

  The Acknowledgements on page ix constitute an extension of this page

  The moral right of the editor has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-14-194381-7

  To Lena Müller

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Chronology of the Ghost Story 1820–1914

  Introduction

  Further Reading

  A Note on the Texts

  Elizabeth Gaskell: The Old Nurse’s Story

  Fitz-James O’Brien: What Was It?

  Edward Bulwer Lytton: The Haunted and the Haunters: or, The House and the Brain

  Mary Elizabeth Braddon: The Cold Embrace

  Amelia B. Edwards: The North Mail

  Charles Dickens: No. 1 Branch Line: The Signal-man

  Sheridan Le Fanu: Green Tea

  Harriet Beecher Stowe: The Ghost in the Cap’n Brown House

  Robert Louis Stevenson: Thrawn Janet

  Margaret Oliphant: The Open Door

  Rudyard Kipling: At the End of the Passage

  Lafcadio Hearn: Nightmare-Touch

  W. W. Jacobs: The Monkey’s Paw

  Mary Wilkins Freeman: The Wind in the Rose-Bush

  M. R. James: ‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’

  Ambrose Bierce: The Moonlit Road

  Henry James: The Jolly Corner

  Mary Austin: The Readjustment

  Edith Wharton: Afterward

  Glossary of Scots Words

  Biographical and Explanatory Notes

  Acknowledgements

  For their support, patience and encouragement and ghostly advice, I thank my editors at Penguin, Marcella Edwards, Mariateresa Boffo and Rachel Love. For help with the text, I am grateful to Elisabeth Merriman and to Kate Parker for her invaluable attentiveness, her thoughtfulness and diligence. Thanks to Professor Dafydd Johnson and to Michiel de Vaan for their generous help with the Welsh language. I am similarly indebted to Evert-Jan van Leeuwen for help from the other side.

  For permission to reprint W. W. Jacobs’s ‘The Monkey’s Paw’, I am grateful to the Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of W. W. Jacobs.

  Chronology of the Ghost Story 1820–1914

  As well as ghost stories, this chronology includes significant critical and other non-fiction works on the supernatural.

  1820 Washington Irving, ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ (collected in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent)

  1823 Charles Lamb, ‘Witches and Other Night-Fears’ (from Essays of Elia)

  1824 Translation into English of Ernest Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann, The Devil’s Elixir (Die Elixiere des Teufels); Mary Shelley, ‘On Ghosts’ (published in the London Magazine); Sir Walter Scott, ‘Wandering Willie’s Tale’ (from the novel Redgauntlet)

  1827 Sir Walter Scott, ‘On the Supernatural in Fictitious Composition’ (published in the Foreign Quarterly Review)

  1830 James Hogg, ‘The Mysterious Bride’ (published in Blackwood’s Magazine); Robert MacNish, The Philosophy of Sleep, including an account of a woman who haunted herself; Sir Walter Scott, Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft

  1836–7 Charles Dickens, ‘The Story of the Goblins who Stole a Sexton’ (from the novel Pickwick Papers)

  1837 Nathaniel Hawthorne, Twice-Told Tales

  1838 Sheridan Le Fanu, ‘The Ghost and the Bone-setter’ (published in Dublin University Magazine)

  1839 Edgar Allan Poe, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque

  1840 Robert Barham, ‘The Spectre of Tappington’ and ‘The Leech of Folkestone’ (collected in The Ingoldsby Legends)

  1842 Edward Bulwer Lytton, Zanoni

  1843 Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

  1845 Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar’ (published in the American Review)

  1846 Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from an Old Manse

  1847 Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

  1848 Catherine Crowe, The Night-Side of Nature

  1851 Sheridan Le Fanu, Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery

  1852 Elizabeth Gaskell, ‘The Old Nurse’s Story’ (published in Household Words)

  1855 Wilkie Collins, ‘Mad Monkton’ (published in Fraser’s Magazine); Elizabeth Gaskell, Lizzie Leigh; and Other Tales

  1857 Dinah Maria Mulock (Mrs Craik), ‘M. Anastatius’ and ‘The Last House in C— Street’ (collected in Nothing New)

  1858 Fitz-James O’Brien, ‘The Diamond Lens’ (published in the Atlantic Monthly)

  1859 Fitz-James O’Brien, ‘What Was It?’ (published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine) and ‘The Wondersmith’ (Atlantic Monthly); Edward Bulwer Lytton, ‘The Haunted and the Haunters’ (Blackwood’s Magazine); Catherine Crowe, Ghosts and Family Legends

  1860 Mary Elizabeth Braddon, ‘The Cold Embrace’ (published in Welcome Guest)

  1861 Edward Bulwer Lytton, A Strange Story; Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard (1861–3)

  1862 Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Ralph the Bailiff and Other Tales (including ‘Eveline’s Visitant’ and ‘T
he Cold Embrace’)

  1864 Daniel Dunglas Home, Incidents in My Life; Robert Browning, ‘Mr Sludge, “The Medium” ’ (collected in Dramatis Personae)

  1865 Amelia B. Edwards, ‘The North Mail’ (collected in Miss Carew); Charles Dickens and Charles Allston Collins, ‘The Trial for Murder’ (published in All the Year Round)

  1866 Alfred Russel Wallace, The Scientific Aspect of the Supernatural; Charles Dickens, ‘No. 1 Branch Line: The Signal-man’ (published in the Christmas number of All the Year Round)

  1868 Henry James, ‘The Romance of Certain Old Clothes’ (published in the Atlantic Monthly)

  1869 Sheridan Le Fanu, ‘Green Tea’ (published in All the Year Round)

  1871 Harriet Beecher Stowe, ‘The Ghost in the Mill’ and ‘The Ghost in the Cap’n Brown House’ (collected in Oldtown Fireside Stories)

  1872 Sheridan Le Fanu, In a Glass Darkly (including ‘Green Tea’)

  1873 Amelia B. Edwards, Monsieur Maurice; Rhoda Broughton, Tales for Christmas Eve

  1875 W. H. Mumler, Personal Experiences of William H. Mumler in Spirit Photography; foundation in New York of the Theosophical Society by Helena Blavatsky

  1879 Margaret Oliphant, A Beleaguered City

  1880 William Crookes, Experiments with Psychical Phenomena; Sheridan Le Fanu, The Purcell Papers

  1881 Fitz-James O’Brien, The Poems and Stories of Fitz-James O’Brien; Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘Thrawn Janet’ (published in the Cornhill Magazine)

  1882 Margaret Oliphant, ‘The Open Door’ (published in Blackwood’s Magazine); Mrs J. H. (Charlotte) Riddell, Weird Stories; foundation in London of the Society for Psychical Research by Frederic William Henry Myers, Henry Sidgwick, Edmund Gurney and others

  1884 Grant Allen, ‘Our Scientific Observances of a Ghost’ (collected in Strange Stories)

  1885 Margaret Oliphant, Two Tales of the Seen and Unseen (including ‘The Open Door’)

  1887 Robert Louis Stevenson, The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables; Lafcadio Hearn, Some Chinese Ghosts; Oscar Wilde, ‘The Canterville Ghost’ (published in the Court and Society Review); Mrs J. H. Riddell, Idle Tales

  1888 Mary Louisa Molesworth, Four Ghost Stories

  1889 Mrs J. H. Riddell, ‘A Terrible Vengeance’ (collected in Princess Sunshine)

  1890 Vernon Lee, Hauntings; Mrs Henry Wood, ‘A Curious Experience’ (collected in Johnny Ludlow); Rudyard Kipling, ‘At the End of the Passage’ (published in the Boston Herald) and The Phantom Rickshaw, and Other Tales

  1891 Rudyard Kipling, Life’s Handicap (including ‘At the End of the Passage’); Ambrose Bierce, ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’ (collected in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians); Henry James, ‘Sir Edmund Orme’ (published in Black and White)

  1892 Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Nightmare Tales; Henry James, ‘Owen Wingrave’ (published in the Graphic)

  1893 Ambrose Bierce, Can Such Things Be?; E. Nesbit, Grim Tales; B. M. Croker, To Let

  1894 Sheridan Le Fanu, The Watcher and Other Weird Stories; Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan and The Inmost Light; F. Marion Crawford, The Upper Berth

  1895 M. R. James, ‘Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book’ (published in National Review) and ‘Lost Hearts’ (Pall Mall Magazine); Arthur Machen, The Three Impostors

  1896 Mary Louisa Molesworth, Uncanny Tales

  1898 Joseph Conrad, ‘The Idiots’ (collected in Tales of Unrest); Henry James, The Turn of the Screw

  1899 Henry James, ‘The Real Right Thing’ (published in Colliers Weekly); Arthur Machen, ‘The White People’; Vernon Lee, ‘The Doll’ (collected in For Maurice: Five Unlikely Stories)

  1900 Lafcadio Hearn, ‘Nightmare-Touch’ (collected in Shadowings); Robert Hichens, ‘How Love Came to Professor Guildea’ (collected in Tongues of Conscience); Richard Marsh, The Seen and the Unseen

  1901 Barry Pain, Stories in the Dark (including ‘The Undying Thing’)

  1902 H. G. Wells, ‘The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost’ (published in Strand Magazine); Frank Norris, ‘The Ship That Saw a Ghost’ (published in Overland Monthly); W. W. Jacobs, ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ (first published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine and collected in The Lady of the Barge); Frank Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and a Criticism

  1903 Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, The Wind in the Rose-Bush, and Other Stories of the Supernatural; William Dean Howells, ‘His Apparition’ (collected in Questionable Shapes); Mark Twain, ‘A Ghost Story’ (collected in Sketches New and Old); Robert Hugh Benson, The Light Invisible; Arthur Christopher Benson, The Hill of Trouble and Other Stories; F.W.H. Myers, Human Personality and Its Survival After Death

  1904 M. R. James, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (including ‘ “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” ’); William James, Varieties of Religious Experience; Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan; Rudyard Kipling, ‘They’ (collected in Actions and Reactions)

  1905 Arthur Christopher Benson, The Isles of Sunset

  1906 Algernon Blackwood, The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories; O. Henry, ‘The Furnished Room’ (collected in The Four Million)

  1907 Ambrose Bierce, ‘The Moonlit Road’ (published in Cosmopolitan); Robert Hugh Benson, A Mirror of Shalott; Algernon Blackwood, The Listener, and Other Stories

  1908 Algernon Blackwood, John Silence, Physician Extraordinary; William Hope Hodgson, The House on the Borderland; Perceval Landon, ‘Thurnley Abbey’ (collected in Raw Edges); Henry James, ‘The Jolly Corner’ (published in the English Review)

  1909 Mary Austin, ‘The Readjustment’ (collected in Lost Borders); William Hope Hodgson, The Ghost Pirates

  1910 Edith Wharton, ‘Afterward’ (published in Century Magazine) and Tales of Men and Ghosts (including ‘The Eyes’ and ‘Afterward’); Sir William Barrett, Automatic Writing; Algernon Blackwood, ‘The Wendigo’ (collected in The Lost Valley and Other Stories); Walter de la Mare, The Return; Ambrose Bierce, reissue of Can Such Things Be? (including ‘The Moonlit Road’) as vol. 3 of The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce

  1911 Oliver Onions, Widdershins (including ‘The Beckoning Fair One’); F. Marion Crawford, The Screaming Skull; M.R. James, More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary

  1912 E. F. Benson, The Room in the Tower and Other Stories

  1913 William Hope Hodgson, Carnacki the Ghost Finder

  Introduction

  The ghost is the most enduring figure in supernatural fiction. He is absolutely indestructible … He changes with the styles in fiction but he never goes out of fashion. He is the really permanent citizen of the earth, for mortals, at best, are but transients.

  Dorothy Scarborough,

  The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction

  GHOST, n. The outward and visible sign of an inward fear.

  Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

  It is the haunted who haunt.

  Elizabeth Bowen, ‘The Happy Autumn Fields’

  GHOST WORDS

  Someone is afraid. In a dark house or on an empty railway platform, at the foot of the staircase or there on a lonely beach. When critics discuss the ghost story, they often pay no more than lip-service to the intended impact of the tale itself. The critics’ words remove us from the place where the story’s words first took us. In the ghost story, through the representation of another’s fear, we become afraid. We take on the sensation of terror, the alert uneasiness that translates random sounds into intentions, a room’s chill into watchfulness, and leaves us with the anxious apprehension of an other’s presence. The stories fix images of profound uneasiness in our minds. These images remain and act afterwards, when the story is over, as paths to renewed anxiety. From the stories in this collection, memories rise up of Thrawn Janet’s crooked walk, like a rag doll that has been hanged; the bereaved mother desperately reaching for the bolt to the door in ‘The Monkey’s Paw’, with the visitor outside; or in M. R. James’s tale, on a sunless day, in a dream, a man running along the sands, breathless, worn out, pursued inexorably by a blind, muffled figure.

  The gho
st story aims at the retention of such pictures; it intends the production of such fears. It wants sympathetic shudders. There is undoubtedly something disreputable about that intention. Certainly M. R. James, a Cambridge don and the greatest writer of ghost stories, was made to feel so. Like pornography, or the ‘weepie’, ghost stories are meant to evoke a physical reaction. Their art mobilizes emotion; it organizes feeling. In recent years, the figure of the ghost has been rehabilitated by theorists, taken as a symbol for almost any kind of cultural or philosophical haunting. In the process, the ghost has been taken seriously, made into a matter for the intellect. Ghosts are no longer dreamt, no longer felt, no longer feared, but rather played with and thought through.

  Yet such theorizing surely obscures the main point. In pornography, we are aroused by another’s arousal; in a ‘weepie’, we shed tears for another’s sadness; in a ghost story, we are frightened by another’s fear. Imaginative sympathy lies at the centre of this art form. Exchange is the key; all the stories turn on this idea of correspondence. Yet it is curious how regularly such identifications falter at the figure of the ghost. The spectre is that with which, in most cases, we cannot identify. We see the ghost, we hear it, but we can rarely place ourselves in its position. The ghost acts as the limit of our compassion. Only those tales, such as Margaret Oliphant’s ‘The Open Door’ (1882), that can see the human in the spirit, allow pity for the ghost. More usually, it is precisely the sense that the ghost is not human at all, but somehow anti-human, that prevents our acknowledgement of kinship. Instead, we side with the haunted, not the haunters; with the terrified, and not the menacing. This may be because ultimately the haunters are the texts themselves, and the haunted their readers.

  There have of course always been stories about ghosts; however, the ‘ghost story’ itself, as understood by literary critics, is a Romantic invention. Its prime begins, tentatively, in the 1820s, hits its stride in the 1850s, reaches its zenith between the 1880s and the outbreak of the First World War, and peters out in the 1950s, as its last great exponents, Elizabeth Bowen and Walter de la Mare, end their careers as short-story writers. Naturally, however, there are great ghost stories written after that period, notably Kingsley Amis’s The Green Man (1969), and the genre continues to enjoy great success in film and also on stage in the excellent plays of Conor MacPherson and in the highly popular stage adaptation of Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black (1983).