In the previous chapters I have endeavored to show the continuance and persistence of the supernatural in English fiction, as well as in other forms of literature, and to give some idea of the variety of its manifestations. There has been no period in our history from Beowulf to the present when the ghostly was not found in our literature. Of course, there have been periods when the interest in it waned, yet it has never been wholly absent. There is at the present a definite revival of interest in the supernatural appearing in the drama, in poetry and in fiction, evident to anyone who has carefully studied the recent publications and magazines. Within the last few years, especially in the last two years, an astonishing amount of ghostly material has appeared. Some of these stories are of the hoax variety, others are suggestive, allegorical or symbolic, while others frankly accept the forces beyond man’s mortal life and human dominion. I hesitate to suggest a reason for this sudden rising tide of occultism at this particular time, but it seems clear to me that the war has had much to do with it. I have found a number of supernatural productions directly associated with the struggle. Among them might be mentioned Katherine Fullerton Gerould’s extraordinary, elusive story of horror[210]; The Second Coming, by Frederick Arnold Kummer and Henry P. Janes, where Christ walks the battlefields on Christmas Eve, pleading with the Kaiser to stop the slaughter of men, but in vain, and the carnage goes on till Easter, when the Christ stands beside the dying Emperor, with the roar of the rioting people heard in the streets outside, and softens his heart at last, so that he says, “Lord, I have sinned! Give my people peace!”; Kipling’s ghost-story,[211] with its specters of children slain by the Germans; The Gray Guest, showing Napoleon returning to lead the French forces to victory in a crisis; Jeanne, the Maid where the spirit of Joan of Arc descends upon a young French girl of to-day, enabling her to do wonderful things for her countrymen; War Letters from a Living Dead Man, a series of professed psychic communications from the other world, by Elsa Barker; Real Ghost Stories, a volume containing a number of stories by different writers, describing some of the phantoms seen by soldiers on the battlefield; and Arthur Machen’s The Bowmen, a collection of striking fictive instances of crowd-supernaturalism associated with the war. The last volume affords an interesting glimpse into the way in which legends are built up, for it is a contemporary legend in connection with the Angels at Mons. Carl Hauptmann has a striking play,[212] showing the use of war-supernaturalism in the drama. When the eyes of the world are turned toward the battlefields and death is an ever-present reality, it is natural that human thoughts occupy themselves with visions of a life after death. Kingdom Come, by Vida Sutton, shows the spirits of Russian peasants slain for refusing to fight, specters unaware that they are dead. Various martial heroes of the past are resurrected to give inspiration in battle in recent stories.

But whatever be the reason for this revival of the ghostly, the fact remains that this is distinctly the day for the phantom and his confrÈres. While romanticism is always with us, it appears in different manifestations. A few years ago the swashbuckling hero and his adventures seemed the most striking survival of the earlier days of romanticism, but now the weird and the ghostly have regained a popularity which they never surpassed even in the heyday of Gothic fiction. The slashing sword has been displaced by the psychographic pen. The crucial struggles now are occult, rather than adventurous, as before, and while realism in fiction is immensely popular—never more so than now—it is likely to have supernaturalism overlaid upon it, as in De Morgan’s work, to give a single example. Recent poetry manifests the same tendency, and likewise the drama, particularly the closet drama and the playlet. While literary history shows clearly the continuity of the supernatural, with certain rise and fall of interest in it at different periods, it is apparent that now there is a more general fondness for the form than at any other period in English literature. The supernatural is in solution and exists everywhere. Recent poetry shows a strong predilection for the uncanny, sometimes in the manner of the old ballads, while in other instances the ghostly is treated with a spirit of critical detachment as in Rupert Brooke’s sonnet,[213] or with skepticism as in his sardonic satire on faith.[214] In the recent volume of Brooke’s collected poems, there are about a dozen dealing with the supernatural. Maeterlinck expressed the feeling that a spiritual epoch is perhaps upon us, as Poe said that we are in the midst of great psychal powers. As Francis Thompson says in his Hound of Heaven, “Nature, poor step-dame, cannot slake our drought!” The interest in certain lines of thought which lead to the writing of supernatural fiction, as Spiritualism or folk-lore, or science or psychical research, may have the reflex action of arousing interest in the subjects themselves. But at all events, there is no lack of uncanny literature at present.

One feature of the modern supernatural literature as distinguished from that of other periods, is in the matter of length. Of course, the ballad and the folk-tale expressed the ghostly in brief form, but the epic held the stage longer, while in Elizabethan times the drama was the preferred form as in the eighteenth century the Gothic novel. During the nineteenth century, particularly the latter half, the preference was decidedly for the short story, while more recently the one-act play has come into vogue. But in the last few years the supernatural novel seems to be returning to favor, though without displacing the shorter forms. Brevity has much to commend it as a vehicle for the uncanny. The effect of the ghostly may be attained with much more unity in a short story or playlet than in a novel or long drama, for in the more lengthy form much outside matter is necessarily included. The whole plot could scarcely be made up of the unearthly, for that would mean a weakening of power through exaggeration, though this is sometimes found to be the case, as in several of Bram Stoker’s novels. Recently the number of novels dealing with supernatural themes has noticeably increased, which leads one to believe that the occult is transcending even the limitations of length and claiming all forms for its own. Now no literary type bars the supernatural, which appears in the novel as in the story, in the drama as in the playlet, and in narrative, dramatic, and lyric poetry. Even the epic of the more than mortal has not entirely vanished, as the work of Dr. William Cleaver Wilkinson attests, but popular taste does not really run to epics nowadays. The ghostly is more often seen in the shorter forms, where brevity gives a chance for compression and intensity of force difficult in longer vehicles. The rise of the one-act play in popular favor is significant in this connection. The short dramas of Synge, Yeats, Lady Gregory, William Sharpe, Gordon Bottomley, and Theodore Dreiser show the possibilities of the playlet for weird effect. Maeterlinck’s plays for marionettes are especially powerful, but the work of Lord Dunsany furnishes more peculiar ghostliness than that of any other present dramatist. His jade idols, for instance, that wake to terrible life and revenge themselves on presumptuous mortals, are a new touch in dramatics. Algernon Blackwood is doing more significant work in psychic fiction than anyone else, his prose showing poetic beauty as well as eerie power.

Another significant fact to be noted in connection with the later ghostly stories as compared with the Gothic is in the greater number and variety of materials employed. The early religious plays had introduced devils, angels, and divinity to a considerable extent, while the Elizabethan drama relied for its thrills chiefly on the witch and the revenge-ghost. The Gothic romance was strong for the ghost, with one or two Wandering Jews, occasional werewolves and lycanthropes, and sporadic satanity, but made no use of angels or of divinity. The modern fiction, however, gathers up all of these personages and puts them into service freely. In addition to these old themes brought up to date and varied astonishingly, the new fiction has adapted other types. The scientific supernaturalism is practically new—save for the Gothic employment of alchemy and astrology—and now all the discoveries and investigations of the laboratory are utilized and embued with supernaturalism. Diabolic botany, psychological chemistry, and supermortal biology appear in recent fiction. The countless arts and sciences, acoustics, optics, dietetics, and what-not are levied on for plots, while astronomy shows us wonders the astrologer never dreamed of. The stars knew their place and kept it in early romance, but they are given to strange aberration and unaccountable conduct in late narration.

The futuristic fiction gives us return trips into time to come, while we may be transported into the far past, as with Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee that visits King Arthur’s Court. The extent to which a homespun realist like Mark Twain uses the supernatural is significant. No province or small corner of science has failed to furnish material for the new ghostly fiction, and even the Fourth and Fifth Dimensions are brought in as plot complications. Microscopes are bewitched, mirrors are enchanted, and science reverses its own laws at will to suit the weird demands.

Another modern material is the mechanistic. This is the age of machinery, and even engines are run by ghost-power. Examples of the mechanical spook are legion. There is the haunted automobile in Harriet Prescott Spofford’s story, The Mad Lady, that reproduces through its speaking tube the long-dead voice, that runs away with its occupants, reliving previous tragic experiences. A phantom Ford is an idea combining romanticism with realism surely! In connection with this extraordinary car is a house that erects itself out of dreams and is substantial enough for living purposes. Other specimens are John Kendrick Bangs’s enchanted typewriter that clicks off psychograms in the dark, between midnight and three o’clock in the morning; Frank R. Stockton’s machine for negativing gravity; Poe’s balloon in which Hans Pfaal makes his magic trip to the moon; Wells’s new accelerator that condenses and intensifies vital energy, enabling a man to crowd the forces of a week into an hour of emergency, as likewise his time machine that permits the inventor to project himself into the future or the past at will, to spend a week-end in any era. The butterfly in Hawthorne’s story shows the spiritualization of machinery as the poor artist of the beautiful conceived it, the delicate toy imbibing a magnetism, a spiritual essence that gives it life and beauty and power of voluntary motion. This etherealized machinery is manifest in modern fiction as well as the diabolic constructions that wreck and ruin.

Inanimate objects have a strange power in later fiction as Poe’s ship that is said in certain seas to increase in size, as the trees told of by Algernon Blackwood that grow in the picture. There are various haunted portraits, as the picture of Dorian Gray that bears on its face the lines of sin the living face does not show, and whose hands are bloodstained when Dorian commits murder; and the painting told of in De Morgan’s A Likely Story, that overhears a quarrel between an artist and his wife, the woman wrongly suspecting her husband and leaving him. The picture relates the story to a man who has the painting photographed and a copy sent to the wife. There is the haunted tapestry[215] that is curiously related to the living and to the long dead.

Another aspect of the later as distinguished from the earlier occult literature is the attention paid to ghostly children. Youngsters are coming to the front of the stage everywhere nowadays, particularly in America, so it is but natural that they should demand to be heard as well as seen, in supernatural fiction. In the Gothic ghosts I found no individualized children, and children in groups only twice. In one of James Hogg’s short novels a vicious man is haunted on his death-bed by the specters of little ones dead because of him, but they are nameless and indistinguishable. In Maturin’s The Albigenses a relentless persecutor, while passing through a lonely forest, sees the phantoms of those he has done to death, little children and babes at the breast, as well as men and women. But here again they are not given separable character, but are merely group figures, hence do not count.

There is a ghost-child mentioned in Hawthorne’s Blithedale Romance, but it is not until more recent fiction that children’s ghosts enter personated and individualized. The exquisitely shy little ones in Kipling’s They are among the most wonderful of his child-creations, very human and lovable. In a war story,[216] he shows us the phantoms of several children whom the Germans have killed, natural youngsters with appealing childish attributes, especially the small boy with his pride in his first trousers. Arthur Machen[217] tells of a German soldier who has crucified a child against the church door and is driven to insanity by the baby spirit. Quiller-Couch[218] shows the specter of a little girl that returns at night to do housework for the living, visible only as two slender hands, who reminds us of the shepherd boy Richard Middleton tells of, who having died because of his drunken father’s neglect, comes back to help him tend the sheep. Algernon Blackwood relates the story of a little child who has been wont to pray for the unquiet ghost of Petavel, a wicked man who haunts his house. After the child is dead, the mother sees the little boy leading Petavel by the hand, and says, “He’s leading him into peace and safety. Perhaps that’s why God took him.”

Richard Middleton’s story of a little ghost-boy[219] is poignantly pathetic. The little chap comes back to play with his grieving sister, making his presence known by his gay feet dancing through the bracken, and his joyous imitations of an automobile’s chug-chug. Mary MacMillan speaks of the spirits of little children that are “out earlier at night than the older ghosts, you know, because they have to go to bed earlier, being so young.” Two very recent child ghosts are Wee Brown Elsbeth whom Frances Hodgson Burnett shows to us, the wraith of a little girl pitifully slain centuries ago by her father to save her from torture, who comes back to play with a living playmate; and the terrible revenge-ghost of the child slain by her stepfather, who comes back to cause his death, whom Ellen Glasgow describes.

The spirits of children that never were enter into the late stories, as in The Children, by Josephine Daskam Bacon, a story of confused paranoia and supernaturalism. A woman grieves over the children she never had till they assume personality and being for her. They become so real that they are finally seen by other children who wish to play with them. This reminds us of Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s imagined child, Miss Mehitabel’s son. Algernon Blackwood[220] shows us a multitude of baby spirits, with reaching arms, pattering steps, and lisping voices, spirits of the unborn that haunt childless women. The room which they enter seems sacred with the potentialities of motherhood, so that a man sleeping there sees his own dead mother return to him among the babes. These ghosts of little children that never were and never may be are like the spirits of the yet to be born children in Maeterlinck’s dream-drama,[221] where, in the Land of the Future, the child-souls wait for the angel to summon them to life. In these stories associating children with the ghostly there is always a tender pathos, a sad beauty that is appealing.

The spectral insect or animal is another innovation in recent fiction, though there have been occasional cases before, as Vergil’s Culex, the story of the ghost of a gnat killed thoughtlessly coming back to tell its murderer of its sufferings in the insect hades. Robert W. Chambers shows us several ghostly insects, a death’s head moth that is a presager of disaster, and a butterfly that brings a murderer to justice, while Frederick Swanson in a story[222] makes a spectral insect a minister of fate. The most curdling example, however, of the entomological supernaturalism, is Richard Marsh’s novel, The Beetle, a modernized version of the ancient superstitions of Egypt, whereby a priestess of Isis continues her mysterious, horrid life alternately as a human being and as a beetle. This lively scarab has mesmeric, magic power over mortals and by its sensational shape-shifting furnishes complicating terror to the plot.

The dog is frequently the subject of occult fiction, more so than any other animal, perhaps because the dog seems more nearly human than any save possibly the horse. Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward shows us a dog very much at home in heaven, while she has a ghost-dog on earth coming back to march in a Decoration Day parade beside his master. Isabel Howe Fisk in a drama shows the Archangel Raphael accompanied by his dog, a cavortive canine, not apparently archangelic. Ambrose Bierce evokes one terrible revenge-ghost, a dog that kills the murderer of his master, while[223] Eden Phillpotts represents a pack of spectral dogs that pursue the Evil One over the earth till the Judgment Day, each being a lost soul. A young girl’s little unbaptized baby is thought to be one of the number. Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles is a terrifying canine of legendary power. Kerfol by Edith Wharton shows the ghosts of five dogs, each carefully individualized,—a Chinese sleeve-dog, a rough brindled bulldog, a long-haired white mongrel, a large white pointer with one brown ear, and a small black grayhound. These specters of animals that have been killed by a jealous husband—he had the cheerful habit of strangling every pet his wife cared for and laying it without a word on her pillow—appear once a year on the anniversary of the day on which the wife in desperation slew him. They preserve a most undoglike silence and follow the beholder with strange gaze. Kipling’s dog Harvey is a supernatural beast, but what he represents I have never been able to determine. At the Gate is a recent story, showing a great concourse of dogs just outside the portals of heaven, unwilling to enter till their masters come to join them.

The diabolic horse in Poe’s Metzengerstein is a curious composite of metempsychosis, haunted inanimate object, and straight ghost, but at all events sufficiently terrifying to the victim it pursued. Algernon Blackwood in Wendigo has created a supernatural animal that flies through the air and carries men away to insanity and death. Henry Rideout shows the ghost of a white tiger, while there are assorted elephant spooks, and Miss Burns in her studies in Shropshire folk-tales relates stories of human beings whose ghosts appear as animals suited to the personality of the deceased, as bears, bulls, hogs, and so forth. That adds a new terror to death!

---

Not only are new materials introduced in the later fiction of the uncanny but new types are stressed. In addition to the weird stories told with direct aim and art—ghosts for ghosts’ sake—there are tales where the supernatural element is of secondary importance, being used to teach some truth or ridicule some fallacy. The symbolistic, humorous, and satiric methods abound in modern occult fiction and when well done have a double effect, that of primary supernatural impressiveness, and, in addition, of the subtler purposes behind the stories. Moralized legends, spiritual allegories such as Hawthorne wrote with consummate art, have continued to the present and form a contrast to the crude machinery of Gothic horrors. The delicacy of suggestion, the power of hinted ghostliness, though manifest in Shakespeare, are really modern achievements, for no one save him attained to them in earlier art. Mystic poetic fiction, spiritual symbolism appears in much of the modern unearthly writing. In certain cases it is interesting to note the change of old mythological stories into moral allegory. The plays and the stories of Lord Dunsany are peculiarly symbolic and have the force of antique mythology made instant and real. Yet they have a distinctive touch all their own. For instance, the story of the king who goes over the world seeking his lost yesterday, his dear past, who is told by the weird keeper of the bygone years that he cannot have it back, no not one golden second, has a delicate pathos of poetry. When the mournful king has gone back to his palace, a hoar harper comes who plays for him, and lo! to the strings of the harp have clung the golden seconds of his happiest hours, so that he lives them over again while the music lasts. The Book of the Serpent tells symbolic stories that are poems in prose, fantastic fables. The Creator is making experiments with dust-heaps, while the Serpent, the Turtle, and the Grasshopper look on, ask questions, and offer comments. The Serpent trails all through the dust-heap meant as stuff for artists, and the Maker drops a tear in that whereof He means to make mothers. He experiments with monkeys trying to learn how best to make man, and after man is complete, He makes woman. The stories of Oscar Wilde have, some of them, a beauty like that of some antique illuminated missal, with its jeweled words, its mystic figures. Wilde’s ornate style, prose that trembles on the verge of poetry, full of passion and color and light, makes one think of his own words in The Nightingale and the Rose, where the poet’s song was “builded of music by moonlight and stained with his own heart’s blood.”

The delicate suggestion of the unearthly, the element of suspense that gives the sense of the supernatural to that which may be mortal, is seen in such stories as A Dream of Provence, by Frederick Wedmore. The ancient belief that the soul may return to the body within a few days after death forms the basis for this dream-poem in prose. It shows the soul on tiptoe for the Unseen, with a love transcending the barriers of the grave, revealing idyllic sorrow in a father’s love that denies death, and expresses the sense of expectancy in the hope of a miracle, with a beauty that is almost unbearable. Something of the same theme, of a father’s waiting by his daughter’s grave to hear the loved voice once more, is expressed in Andreyev’s story.[224] But here there is horror and remorse instead of holy love. When the father cries out, the silence that issues from the grave is more terrible than ghostly sounds would be, more dreadful in its supermortal suggestion.

---

The purely humorous supernaturalism is essentially a new thing. The old religious dramas had used comic devils, and Peele’s Ghost of Jack is supposed to be humorous, but not at all in the modern sense. There was nothing in early drama or fiction like the rollicking fun of Richard Middleton’s Ghost Ship, or Frank R. Stockton’s spectral humorists. The work of John Kendrick Bangs illustrates the free and easy manner of the moderns toward ghosts, picturing them in unconventional situations and divesting them of all their ancient dignity. He shows us the wraith of the maiden who drowned herself in a fit of pique, for which she is punished by having to haunt the ancestral house as a shower-bath. His spectral cook of Bangletop is an original revenge-ghost, with a villainous inversion of h’s, who haunts an estate because a medieval baron discharged her without wages. His convivial spooks in their ghost club, his astrals who play pranks on mortals, and their confrÈres are examples of the modern flippancy toward supernaturals.

The satirical use of supernaturalism is also new. Late literature laughs at everything, with a daring familiarity undreamed of before, save in sporadic cases. The devil has been an ancient subject for laughter, but recent fiction ridicules him still more, so that we have scant respect for him, while the ghost, formerly a personage held in great respect, now comes in for his share of ragging. No being is too sacred to escape the light arrows of fun. Heaven is satirically exploited, and angels, saints, and even Deity have become subjects for jesting, conventionalized with the mother-in-law, the tenderfoot, the Irishman, and so forth. There is a considerable body of anecdotal literature of the supernatural, showing to what extent the levity of treatment has gone. Various aspects of mortal life are satirized, as in Inez Haynes Gilmore’s Angel Island, which is a campaign document for woman’s suffrage. Satiric supernaturalism is employed to drive home many truths, to puncture conceits of all kinds, and when well done is effective, for laughter is a clever weapon.

The advance of the later supernatural fiction over the earlier is nowhere seen more distinctly than in the increased effectiveness with which it manages the mechanics of emotion, its skill in selecting and elaborating the details by which terror and awe are produced. The present-day artist of the uncanny knows how to strike the varied tones of supernaturalism, the shrill notes of fear, the deep diapason of awe, the crashing chords of horror. The skillful writer chooses with utmost care the seemingly trivial details that go to make up the atmosphere of the unearthly. Shakespeare was a master of that, but none other of his time. The knocking at the gate in Macbeth, for instance, is a perfect example of the employment of a natural incident to produce an effect of the supernatural, as De Quincey has pointed out in his essay on the subject.

The Gothic novel relied largely for its impressiveness on emphasizing ghostly scenes by representing aspects of weather to harmonize with the emotions of the characters. This was overworked in terror fiction, and while it still possesses power it is a much less common method of technique than it used to be. Poe’s introductory paragraph in The Fall of the House of Usher is a notable example of skill in creating atmosphere of the supernatural by various details including phenomena of weather, and Hardy shows special power in harmonizing nature to the moods and purposes of his characters. Yet many a modern story produces a profound sense of awe, and purges the soul by means of terror with no reference at all to foreboding weather. However, the allusions now made are more skillful and show more selective power than of old.

Gothic fiction had much to say of melancholy birds that circled portentously over ancient castles filled with gloom and ghosts, but they were generic and not individual specimens. The fowl was always spoken of as “a bird of prey,” “a night bird,” “a bat,” “an owl,” or by some such vague term. Natural history has become more generally known since those times and writers of to-day introduce their ominous birds with more definiteness and appropriateness. The repulsive bat that clings to the window ledge in Bram Stoker’s novel is a vampire, a symbol of the whole horrible situation, as the kite that soars menacingly overhead in another of his novels is individualized and becomes a definite thing of terror. Poe’s raven is vastly more a bird of evil than any specimen in the Gothic aviary. Robert W. Chambers brings in a cormorant several times as a portent of ghostly disaster, particularly foreboding when it turns toward the land. “On the dark glistening cliffs, silhouetted against the glare of the sea, sat a cormorant, black, motionless, its horrible head raised toward heaven.” There is in recent fiction no bird more dreadful in import than the belled buzzard that Irvin Cobb makes the leading figure in his story by that name. This is an excellent example of the use of the natural to produce terror and awe, for the murderer sees in the bird a minister of fate, and the faint tinkle of its bell as it soars over the marsh where the body lies buried paralyzes him with horror. At last he can bear no more, and hearing it, as he thinks, close at hand, he shrieks out his confession,—only to find this time that it is not the belled buzzard at all that he hears, but only an old cowbell that a little negro child has picked up in the barnyard!

Robert W. Chambers in his early stories contrives to give varying supernatural effects by descriptions of shadows as symbolic of life and character. He speaks of shadows of spirits or of persons fated to disaster as white; again his supernatural shadows may be gray—gray is a favored shade for ghostly effect whether for witches or for phantoms—and sometimes they are perfectly black, to indicate differing conditions of destiny. Quiller-Couch has a strange little allegory, The Magic Shadow, and other writers have used similar methods to produce uncanny effects.

The Gothic romance made much use of portents of the supernatural, which later fiction does as well, but differently and with greater skill. The modern stories for the most part abandon the conventional portents, the dear old clock forever striking twelve or one—there was no Gothic castle so impoverished as to lack such ghostly horologue!—the abbey bell that tolls at touch of spirit hands or wizard winds, the statuesque nose-bleed, the fire that burns blue at approach of a specter, and so forth. The later story is more selective in its aids to ghostly effect, and adapts the means desired to each particular case, so that it hits the mark. For instance, the sardonic laughter that sounds as the burglars are cracking the gate of heaven to get in, and imagining what they will find, is prophetic of the emptiness, the nothingness, that meets their astounded gaze when they are within. Ambrose Bierce in some of his stories describes the repulsiveness of the fleshly corpse, reanimated by the spirit, perhaps not the spirit belonging to it, with a loathly effect more awful than any purely psychic phantom could produce, which reminds us somewhat of the corpse come to life in Thomas Lovell Beddoes’s Death’s Jest Book.

The horrors of invisibility in modern fiction avail to give a ghastly chill to the soul that visible apparitions rarely impart. Likewise the effect of mystery, of the incalculable element, in giving an impression of supernaturalism is a recognized method of technique in many stories, as the minister’s black veil in Hawthorne’s symbolic story. The unspeakable revolting suggestion in Edith Wharton’s The Eyes, where a man is haunted by two hideous eyes that “have the physical effect of a bad smell, whose look left a smear like a snail,” is built up with uncommon art. We do not realize how much is due to insanity and how much to the supernatural, when, after telling the story of his obsession, his fears that as a climax he will become like those Eyes, the man suddenly sees his reflection in the mirror and meets their dreadful gaze. “He and the image confronted each other with a glare of slowly gathering hate!” Mention might be made of an incident in a recently published literary drama, where a man seeks over the world for the unknown woman with whom he has fallen in love, and on his calling aloud in question as to who she is, “the grave, with nettle-bearded lips replied, ‘It is I, Death!’” These are only suggestions of numberless instances that might be given of a modern technique of supernaturalism that surpasses anything in Gothic fiction.

The effectiveness of modern ghostly stories is aided by the suggestiveness of the unearthly given by the use of “sensitives,” animals or persons that are peculiarly alert to the occult impressions. We see in many stories that children perceive the supernatural presences more quickly than adults, as in Mrs. Oliphant’s story of the ghost returning to right a wrong, trying strenuously to make herself known to the grown person and realized only by a little child. In Belasco’s play the little boy is the first and for a long time the only one to sense the return of Peter Grimm. In Maeterlinck’s The Blind, the baby in arms is aware of the unearthly presences better than the men and women. Sometimes the sensitive is a blind person, as the old grandfather in another of Maeterlinck’s short plays, who is conscious of the approaching Death before any of the others, or blind Anna in D’Annunzio’s drama, The Dead City.

Animals are quick to perceive supernatural manifestations. Cats in fiction are shown as being at ease in the presence of ghosts perhaps because of their uncanny alliance with witches, while dogs and horses go wild with fear. This is noticed in many stories, as in Bulwer-Lytton’s story of the haunted house where the dog dies of terror in the face of the ghostly phenomena. The Psychic Doctor told of in Blackwood’s uncanny stories, who goes to a house possessed by evil spirits, takes with him a cat and a dog which by their difference of action reveal to him the presence of the spirits long before they are visualized for him.

In general, there is more power of suggestion in the later ghostly stories than in the earlier. The art is more subtle, the technique more skillfully studied, more artfully accidental.

There is in modern fiction, notably the work of Poe, and that of many recent writers, Russian, French, and German as well as English, a type of supernaturalism that is closely associated with insanity. One may not tell just where the line is drawn, just how much of the element of the uncanny is the result of the broodings of an unbalanced brain, and how much is real ghostliness. Poe’s studies of madness verge on the unearthly, as do Maupassant’s, Hoffmann’s, and others. Josephine Daskam Bacon illustrates this genre in a recent volume of stories, The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchion, the plots centering round instances of paranoia occurring in the practice of a famous alienist,—yet they are not paranoia alone! One instance is of a young girl who is haunted by the ghost of a nurse who has died because given the wrong medicine by mistake. She is on the border-line of insanity when her lover cries aloud that he would take the curse on himself for her if he could, which, by some unknown psychic law, does effect a transference which frees her and obsesses him. Another is that of a man in the insane asylum, who recognizes in a mysterious housekeeper the spirit of his wife, who comes from the grave to keep him company and vanishes on the day of his death. These are curious analyses of the idÉe fixe in its effect on the human mind, of insanity as a cause or effect of the supernatural. Barry Pain’s Celestial Grocery is a recent example, a story of a man whose madness carries him to another planet, showing him inverted aspects of life, where emotions are the only real things, all else but shadows. Du Maurier’s pathetic novel portraying the passion and anguish and joy of Peter Ibbetson that touches the thin line between sanity and madness, showing in his dream-metempsychosis a power to relive the past and even to live someone else’s life, is a striking example. One interesting aspect of that story is the point where the spirit of Mary changes from the dream-lover of twenty-eight to the ghost of the woman of fifty-two, since she has died and can no more come to her lover as she once did, but must come as her own phantom. There are extraordinary effects of insanity associated with the supernatural in the work of Ambrose Bierce, of Arthur Machen and others of the modern school. Italian literature shows some significant instances in Fogazzaro’s The Woman and D’Annunzio’s Sogno d’un Mattino di Primavera. As Lord Dunsany says of it, “Who can say of insanity,—whether it be divine or of the Pit?”

---

We have noticed in preceding chapters two aspects of modern supernaturalism as distinguished from the Gothic,—the giving of cumulative and more terrible power to ghostly beings, and on the other hand the leveling influence that makes them more human. The access of horror and unearthly force as shown in the characters described by certain writers is significant. In the work of Bierce, Machen, Blackwood, Stoker, and others supernaturalism is raised to the nth power and every possible thrill is employed. The carrion ghosts of Bierce, animated by malignant foreign spirits, surpass the charnel shudders produced by the Gothic. Algernon Blackwood’s Psychic Invasions, where localities rather than mere apartments or houses alone are haunted, diabolized by undying evil influences with compound power, his Elementals that control the forces of wind and wave and fire to work their demon will, are unlike anything that the early terror novel conceived of. Horace Walpole and Mrs. Radcliffe knew no thrills like those of Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula who is an immemorial evil, a vampire and werewolf as well as man, with power to change himself into a vampire bat or animal of prey at will. The Unburied, by Josephine Daskam Bacon, is more horrific than any mere revenge ghost, however much it shrieked “Vindicta!” The diabolism in Arthur Machen’s work reeks obscurely of a Pit more horrible than epic or drama has portrayed. In general, many of the later ghostly characters are more complex, more intense in evil than the Gothic.

While it is true that certain writers show a tendency to create supernatural characters having an excess of evil power beyond the previous uncanny beings, on the other hand there is an equally strong and significant tendency to reduce the ghostly beings nearer to the human. Fiction here, as frequently, seems ahead of general belief, and refuses to believe in the altogether evil. Ghosts, angels, witches, devils, werewolves, and so forth are now made more human, more like to man, yet without losing any of their ancient power to thrill. Ghosts in late literature have more of the mortal characteristics than ever before, as has been pointed out in a previous chapter. They look more human, more normal, they are clad in everyday garments of varied colors, from red shirts and khaki riding-habits to ball-gowns,—though gray seems the favored shade for shades as well as witches,—and they have lost that look of pallor that distinguished early phantoms. Now they are more than merely vaporous projections as they used to be, more than merely phantasmogenetic apparitions,—but are healthy, red-blooded spooks. They are not tongue-tied as their ancestors were, but are very chatty, giving forth views on everything they are interested in, from socialism to the present war. And their range of interests has widened immeasurably. It would seem that the literacy test has been applied to ghosts in recent fiction. Modern specters are so normal in appearance that often no one recognizes them as ghosts,—as in Edith Wharton’s story Afterwards, where the peculiar thing about the apparition haunting a certain house is that it is not till long afterwards that one knows it was a ghost. The man in the gray suit whom the wife thinks a chance caller is the spirit of a man not yet dead, a terrible living revenge-ghost, who finally takes his victim mysteriously away with him. Modern ghosts have both motions and emotions like men, hence mortals are coming to regard them more sympathetically, to have more of a fellow-feeling for them.

Likewise the angels are now only a very little higher if any than men. Seraphs are democratic, and angels have developed a sense of humor that renders them more interesting than they used to be. The winged being that H.G. Wells’s vicar goes gunning for is a charming youth with a naÏve satire, as the angels in Mark Twain’s story of heaven are realistically mortal and masculine in tastes. They care little for harps and crowns, grow fidgety under excess of rest, and engage in all sorts of activities, retaining their individual tastes. James Stephens’s archangel, seraph, and cherub are chatty, cordial souls with an avidity for cold potatoes and Irish companionship.

The demons as well have felt the same leveling influence experienced by the ghosts and the angels. Only, in their case, the thing is reversed, and they are raised to the grade of humanity. We are coming to see, in modern fiction, at least, that the devil is not really black, only a pleasant mottled gray like ourselves. Satan, in Mark Twain’s posthumous novel,[225] is an affable young fellow, claiming to be the nephew and namesake of the personage best known by that name. Bernard Shaw’s devil is of a Chesterfieldian courtesy, willing to speed the parting as to welcome the coming guest. I have found no comic use of the werewolf or of the vampire, though there are several comic witch stories, yet all these personages are humanized in modern fiction. We feel in some recent supernatural stories a sense of a continuing current of life. These ghosts, devils, witches, angels, and so forth are too real to be cut short by an author’s Finis.

Another aspect of the leveling influence is seen in the more than natural power of motion, feeling, and intelligence given to inanimate objects, machinery, plants, and animals, in late literature. The idea of endowing inanimate figures with life and personality is seen several times in Hawthorne’s stories, as his snow image, Drowne’s wooden image, the vivified scarecrow, Feathertop, that the witch makes. The clay figures that Satan in Mark Twain’s novel models, endues with life, then destroys with the fine, casual carelessness of a god, remind one of an incident from mythology. The statue in Edith Wharton’s The Duchess at Prayer that changes its expression, showing on its marble face through a century the loathing and horror that the living countenance wore, or Lord Dunsany’s jade idol[226] that comes with stony steps across the desolate moor to exact vengeance on four men helpless in its presence, has a more intense thrill than Otranto’s peripatetic statue. Lord Dunsany’s The Gods of the Mountains, of which Frank Harris says, “It is the only play which has meant anything to me in twenty years,” shows an inexorable fatality as in the Greek drama.

Science is revealing wonderful facts and fiction is quick to realize the possibilities for startling situations in every field. So diabolic botanical specimens, animals endowed with human or more than human craft—sometimes gifted with immortality as well—add a new interest to uncanny fiction. And the new machines that make all impossibilities come to pass inspire a significant class of supernatural stories. In general, a new force is given to all things, to raise them to the level of the human.

In the same way nature is given a new power and becomes man’s equal,—sometimes far his superior—in thought and action. The maelstrom in Poe’s story is more than merely a part of the setting,—it is a terrible force in action. Algernon Blackwood stresses this variously in his stories, as where Egypt is shown as a vital presence and power, or where the “goblin trees” are as awful as any of the other characters of evil, or in the wind and flame on the mountain that are elements of supernatural power, with a resistless lure for mortals, or in the vampire soil that steals a man’s strength. This may be illustrated as well from the drama, as in Maeterlinck’s where Death is the silent, invisible, yet dominant force, or in Synge’s where the sea is a terrible foe, lying in wait for man, or in August Stramm’s The Daughter of the Moor, where the moor is a compelling character of evil. Gothic fiction did associate the phenomena of nature with the moods of the action, yet in a less effective way. The aspects of nature in recent literature have been raised to the level of humanity, becoming mortal or else diabolic or divine.

In general, in modern fiction, man now makes his supernatural characters in his own image. Ghosts, angels, devils, witches, werewolves, are humanized, made like to man in appearance, passions, and powers. On the other hand, plants, inanimate objects, and animals, as well as the phenomena of nature, are raised to the human plane and given access of power. This leveling process democratizes the supernatural elements and tends to make them almost equal.

---

The present revival of interest in the supernatural and its appearance in literature are as marked in the drama as in fiction or poetry. Mr. E.C. Whitmore, in a recently published volume on The Supernatural in Tragedy, has ably treated the subject, especially in the Greek classic period and the Elizabethan age in England. His thesis is that the supernatural is most frequently associated with tragedy, and is found where tragedy is at its best. This may be true of earlier periods of the tragic drama, yet it would be going too far to make the assertion of the drama of the present time. The occult makes its appearance to a considerable extent now in melodrama and even in comedy, though with no decrease in the frequency and effectiveness of its use in tragedy. This only illustrates the widening of its sphere and its adaptability to varying forms of art.

A brief survey of some of the plays produced in the last few years, most of them being seen in New York, will illustrate the extent to which the ghostly motifs are used on the stage of to-day. Double personality is represented[227] by Edward Locke, in a play which is said by critics to be virtually a dramatization of Dr. Morton Prince’s study,[228] where psychological apparatus used in laboratory experiments to expel the evil intruder from the girl, a chronoscope, a dynograph, revolving mirrors, make the setting seem truly psychical. But the most dramatic instance of the kind, of course, is the dramatization of Dr. Jekyll’s alter ego.

The plays of Charles Rann Kennedy[229] and Jerome K. Jerome[230] are akin to the old mystery plays in that they personate divinity and show the miracle of Christly influence on sinful hearts. Augustus Thomas[231] and Edward Milton Royle[232] introduce hypnotism as the basis of complication and denouement. Supernatural healing, miraculous intervention of divine power, occur in plays by William Vaughan Moody,[233] BjÖrnson,[234] and George M. Cohan.[235] Another[236] turns on converse with spirits, as does Belasco’s Return of Peter Grimm, while a war play by Vida Sutton[237] shows four ghosts on the stage at once, astonishing phantoms who do not realize that they are dead. Others[238] have for their themes miracles of faith and rescue from danger, though the first-named play satirizes such belief and the latter is a piece of Catholic propaganda.

Magic, by G.K. Chesterton, introduces supernatural forces whereby strange things are made to happen, such as the changing of the electric light from green to blue. Peter Ibbetson, the dramatization of Du Maurier’s novel, shows dream-supernaturalism, and various other psychic effects in a delicate and distinctive manner. And The Willow Tree, by Benrimo and Harrison Rhodes, is built upon an ancient Japanese legend, relating a hamadryad myth with other supermortal phantasies, such as representing a woman’s soul as contained in a mirror.

We have fairy plays by J.M. Barrie,[239] W.B. Yeats,[240] and Maeterlinck,[241] and the mermaid has even been staged,[242] Bernard Shaw shows us the devil in his own home town, while Hauptmann gives us Hannele’s visions of heaven. The Frankenstein theme is used to provoke laughter mixed with thrills.[243] Owen and Robert Davis[244] symbolize man’s better angel, while The Eternal Magdalene, a dream-drama, shows another piece of symbolic supernaturalism. Lord Dunsany’s plays have already been mentioned.

Yet the drama, though showing a definite revival of the supernatural, and illustrating various forms of it, is more restricted than fiction. Many aspects of the occult appear and the psychic drama is popular, but the necessities of presentation on the stage inevitably bar many forms of the ghostly art that take their place naturally in fiction. The closet drama does not come under this limitation, for in effect it is almost as free as fiction to introduce mystical, symbolic, and invisible presences. The closet drama is usually in poetic form and poetry is closer akin to certain forms of the supernatural than is prose, which makes their use more natural.

The literary playlet, so popular just now, uses the ghostly in many ways. One shows the Archangel Raphael with his dog, working miracles, while another includes in its dramatis personÆ a faun and a moon goddess who insists on giving the faun a soul, at which he wildly protests. As through suffering and human pain he accepts the gift, a symbolic white butterfly poises itself on his uplifted hand, then flits toward Heaven. In another, Padraic yields himself to the fairies’ power as the price of bread for the girl he loves. Theodore Dreiser’s short plays bring in creatures impossible of representation on the stage, “persistences” of fish, animals, and birds, symbolic Shadows, a Blue Sphere, a Power of Physics, Nitrous Acid, a Fast Mail (though trains have been used on the stage), and so forth.

Instances from recent German drama might be given, as the work of August Stramm, who like Rupert Brooke and the ill-starred poets of the Irish revolution has fallen as a sacrifice to the war. An article in the Literary Digest says of Stramm that “he felt behind all the beauty of the world its elemental passions and believed these to be the projections of human passions in the waves of wind and light and water, in flames of earth.” He includes among his characters[245] a Spider, Nightingales, Moonlight, Wind, and Blossoms. Carl Hauptmann[246] likewise shows the elemental forces of nature and of super-nature. On the battlefield of death the dead arise to join in one dreadful chant of hate against their enemies.

Leonid Andreyev’s striking play[247] might be mentioned as an example from the Russian. King-Hunger, Death, and Old time Bell-Ringer, are the principal actors, while the human beings are all deformed and distorted, “one continuous malicious monstrosity bearing only a remote likeness to man.” The starving men are slain, but over the field of the dead the motionless figure of Death is seen silhouetted. But the dead arise, and a dull, distant, manifold murmur, as if underground, is heard, “We come! Woe unto the victorious!”

But as I have said, these are literary dramas, impossible of presentation on the stage, so that they are judged by literary rather than dramatic standards. For the most part fiction is infinitely freer in its range and choice of subjects from the supernatural than is the drama. The suggestive, symbolic, mystic effects which could not in any way be presented on the stage, but which are more truly of the province of poetry, are used in prose that has a jeweled beauty and a melody as of poetry. Elements such as invisibility, for instance, and various occult agencies may be stressed and analyzed in fiction as would be impossible on the stage. The close relation between insanity and the weird can be much more effectively shown in the novel or short story than in the drama, as the forces of mystery, the incalculable agencies can be thus better emphasized. Ghosts need to be seen on the stage to have the best effect, even if they are meant as “selective apparitions” like Banquo, and if thus seen they are too corporeal for the most impressive influence, while in fiction they can be suggested with delicate reserve. Supernatural presences that could not be imaged on the boards may be represented in the novel or story, as Blackwood’s Elementals or Psychic Invasions. How could one stage such action, for instance, as his citizens turning into witch-cats or his Giant Devil looming mightily in the heavens? Likewise in fiction the full presentation of scientific supernaturalism can be achieved, which would be impossible on the stage.

In conclusion, it might be said that fiction offers the most popular present vehicle for expression of the undoubtedly reviving supernaturalism in English literature. And fiction is likewise the best form, that which affords the more varied chances for effectiveness. The rising tide of the unearthly in art shows itself in all literary forms, as dramatic, narrative, and lyric poetry, with a few epics—in the playlet as in the standard drama, in the short story as in the novel. It manifests itself in countless ways in current literature and inviting lines of investigation suggest themselves with reference to various aspects of its study. The supernatural as especially related to religion offers an interesting field for research. The miracles from the Bible are often used, as in Lew Wallace’s Ben Hur, and Christ is introduced in other times and places, as the war novel,[248] or in Marie Corelli’s satire on Episcopacy,[249] where the cardinal finds the Christ child outside the cathedral. The more than mortal elements, as answers to prayer, the experience of conversion, spiritual miracles, and so forth, are present to a considerable extent in modern fiction. Two very recent novels of importance base their plots on the miraculous in religion, The Brook Kerith, by George Moore, and The Leather-wood God, by William Dean Howells. I have touched on this aspect of the subject in a previous article.[250]

One might profitably trace out the appearances of the ghostly in modern poetry, or one might study its manifestations in the late drama, including melodrama and comedy as well as tragedy. This present treatment of the supernatural in modern English fiction makes no pretensions to being complete. It is meant to be suggestive rather than exhaustive, and I shall be gratified if it may help to arouse further interest in a significant and vital phase of our literature and lead others to pursue the investigations.

INDEX

A	B	C	D	E
F	G	H	I	J
K	L	M	N	O
P	Q	R	S	T
U	V	W	Y	Z

• A
• Accusing Spirit, The, 21
• Address to the De’il, An, 131
• Æsop, Fables, 231
• Affair of Dishonor, An, 91
• Afterwards, 102, 202
• Afterwards, 302
• Ahasuerus, 176
• Ahrinziman, 88, 183, 213
• Aids to Gothic Effect, 36 et seq.
• Ainsworth, W. H., 181
• Albigenses, The, 9, 11, 94, 168, 288
• Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 63
• —— Miss Mehitabel’s Son, 68, 85, 287
• —— PÈre Antoine’s Date Palm, 63
• —— Queen of Sheba, The, 122
• Amazonian Tortoise Myths, 232
• Amboyna, 41
• Amiel, Friedrich, 144
• Among the Immortals, 217
• Amos Judd, 40, 257
• Amphitryon, 122
• Amycus and Celestine, 63
• Anansi Stories, 232
• Ancient Legends and Superstitions of Ireland, 229
• Ancient Records of the Abbey of St. Oswyth, 9, 21
• Ancient Sorceries, 65, 105, 124, 153, 194
• Andersen, Hans Christian, 155, 176, 233
• —— The Little Mermaid, 155, 176, 233
• Andreyev, Leonidas, 69
• —— King-Hunger,308
• —— Red Laugh, The, 69
• —— Silence, 293
• Angel Island, 294
• Angel Message, An, 207
• Ankerwich Castle, 34
• Another Little Heath Hound, 290
• Anti-Jacobin, The, 51
• Any House, 307
• Apuleius, Lucius, Metamorphoses, 145
• Applier, Arthur, Vendetta of the Jungles, A, 168
• Arabian Nights’ Tales, 252
• Architecture, Gothic, 8 et seq.
• Ariel, or the Invisible Monitor, 24
• Arnim, Achim von, Die Beiden Waldemar, 122
• Arnold, Edwin Lester, Strange Adventures of Phra, the Phoenician, The, 188
• Arnold, Matthew:
• —— Forsaken Merman, The, 155,233
• —— Neckan, The, 155
• Arrest, An, 85
• Arthur and Gorlogon, 30
• Arthur Mervyn, 35
• Artist of the Beautiful, The, 287
• Astral Bridegroom, An, 207
• At the End of the Passage, 120
• At the Gate, 201, 291
• Auerbach, Berthold, 176
• Austen, Jane, 47, 49
• —— Northanger Abbey, 47, 51
• Austin, Alfred, Peter Rugg, the Missing Man, 189
• Austin, M. H., Readjustment, 107
• Avengers, The, 56
• Ayesha, 183, 193

nberg@html@files@47204@47204-h@47204-h-10.htm.html#Page_283" class="pginternal">283

Brown, Alice, 101, 211

—— Here and There, 101, 107

—— Tryst, The, 126, 211

Brown, Charles Brockden, 35

—— Arthur Mervyn, 35

—— Edgar Huntley, 39

—— Wieland, 35, 39

Brownie of Bodbeck, The, 26, 38

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 148

—— Drama of Exile, A, 133

—— Lay of the Brown Rosary, The, 148

Browning, Robert, 69

—— Sludge, the Medium, 69

Brushwood Boy, The, 195

Bubble Well Road, 138

Buchanan, Robert, 177

—— Wandering Jew, a Christmas Carol, The, 177, 180

—— Haunters and the Haunted, The, 60, 78, 188, 299

—— Strange Story, A, 90, 182

Bungay Castle, 20, 45

Bunyan, John, 213

Burger, 56

—— Lenore, 56

Burnett, Frances Hodgson, White People, The, 203, 298

Burns, Robert, 232

—— Address to the De’il, An, 131

—— Tam O’Shanter, 156

Burns, Miss, Shropshire Folk-tales, 291

Butler, Ellis Parker, Dey Ain’t No Ghosts, 128

Butler, Katherine,

—— In No Strange Land, 96, 212

Butler, Samuel, 262

—— Erewhon, 262

By the Waters of Paradise, 83

Byron, Lord:

—— Cain, 136

—— Giaour, The, 160

—— Heaven and Earth, 221

—— Vision of Judgment, A, 134

• C
• Cable, George W., 226
• Calderon, 27, 133
• —— El Embozado, 119
• —— El Magico Prodigioso, 100, 143
• Camp of the Dog, The, 170
• Campbell-Praed, Mrs., 207
• —— Nyria, 10, 17, 28, 33, 35, 37, 38, 53, 154, 251
• Damned Thing, The, 61, 92
• Danby, Frank, Twilight, 268
• Daniel and the Devil, 141
• D’Annunzio, Gabriel, 66
• —— Daughter of Jorio, The, 67, 149
• —— La CittÀ Morta, 66, 298
• —— Sogno d’un Mattino di Primavera, 67, 300
• —— Sogno d’un Tramonto d’Autunno, 67, 152
• Dante, 27, 130, 133, 144, 209, 215
• Dark Nameless One, The, 155
• Darwin, Charles, 73, 251
• Darwin, Erasmus, 14
• Daughter of Jorio, The, 67, 149
• Daughter of the Moor, The, 304
• Davis, Owen, and Robert, Any House, 307
• Davis, Richard Harding, Vera, the Medium, 200
• Day of My Death, The, 199
• Days of the Comet, The, 264
• Dead Are Singing, The, 282
• Dead City, The, 298
• Dead Ship of Harpswell, The, 187
• Dead Smile, The, 70, 109
• Deakin, Lumley, 146
• —— Red Debts, 146
• Death of Halpin Frazer, The, 110, 192
• Death’s Jest Book, 53, 115, 297
• Defoe, Daniel, 205
• —— Apparition of Mrs. Veal, 205
• —— History of Duncan Campbell, The, 225
• Demi-gods, 242
• Demi-gods, The, 219, 221
• DÆmonic Spirits, 158 et seq.
• DÆmonology, Gothic, 33
• De Morgan, William Frend, 92, 283
• —— Affair of Dishonor, An, 91
• —— Likely Story, A, 152
• Exchange, The, 153, 156, 197
• Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven, An, 217
• Eyes, The, 297
• Eyes of the Panther, The, 170, 271

m.html#Page_150" class="pginternal">150

—— Withered Arm, The, 225

Harper, Olive, Sociable Ghost, The, 111

Harris, Joel Chandler, 74, 226

—— Uncle Remus Tales, 232, 235

Hart, Charles F., Amazonian Tortoise Myths, 232

Hartley, Randolph, Black Patch, The, 255

Haunted Hotel, The, 89, 100

Haunted House, The, 171

Haunted Island, A, 114

Haunted Subalterns, The, 138

Haunters and the Haunted, The, 60, 78, 188, 299

Hauptmann, Carl, 282

—— Dead Are Singing, The, 282

Hauptmann, Gerhardt:

—— Hannele, 218

—— Sunken Bell, The, 158

Hawkesworth, John, 70, 190

—— Transmigration of a Soul, 190

Hawthorne, Julian, 121

—— Lovers in Heaven, 121, 144, 213

Hawthorne, Nathaniel:

—— Artist of the Beautiful, The, 287

—— Birthmark, The, 185, 270

—— Blithedale Romance, The, 188, 199

—— Celestial Railroad, The, 213

—— Dr. Heidigger’s Experiment, 184, 252

—— Dolliver Romance, The, 183, 184

—— Feathertop, 152, 156

—— House of Seven Gables, The, 158

—— Howe’s Masquerade, 122

—— Intelligence Office, The, 265

—— Main Street, 152

—— Marble Faun, The, 57

—— Prophetic Pictures, 121

—— Rappacini’s Daughter, 252, 272

—— Scarlet Letter, The, 152

—— Select Party, A, 178

—— Septimius Felton, 143, 150, 183, 252

—— Virtuoso’s Collection, A, 78

—— Young Goodman Brown, 151

Hearn, Lafcadio, 1, 77

—— Interpretations of Literature, 232

Kater Murr, 58

Keats, John, 148

—— La Belle Dame sans Merci, 148

—— Lamia, 162

Keeping His Promise, 98

Kelpie, The, 155

Kennedy, Charles Rann, Servant in the House, The, 66, 305

Kennedy, Patrick, 243

—— Bardic Stories of Ireland, 243

—— Fiction of the Irish Celts, 243

Kentucky’s Ghost, 199

Kerfol, 290

Khaled, 62, 70, 147

Kinetoscope of Time, The, 256

King, Basil, 203

—— Old Lady Pingree, 203

King Lear, 13

Kingdom Come, 282, 306

Kingemann, 176

King Hunger, 207, 308

Kingsley, Charles, Water Babies, 240

Kipling, Rudyard, 53, 71, 99, 104, 180

—— At the End of the Passage, 120

—— Brushwood Boy, The, 195

—— Bubble Well Road, 138

—— Courting of Dinah Shadd, The, 152

—— Dog Harvey, The, 291

—— Haunted Subalterns, The, 138

—— In the House of Suddoo, 146

—— Jungle Tales, 232

—— Last of the Stories, The, 197,215

—— Mark of the Beast, The, 100, 167

—— Phantom Rickshaw, The, 88, 94

—— Swept and Garnished, 94, 282, 288

—— They, 84, 93, 288

Kittredge, George Lyman, 30, 224

—— Arthur and Gorlogon, 30

Kleist, 59

Klosterheim, 56

Knock! Knock! Knock! 68

Kummer, Frederick Arnold, Second Coming, The, 281

Kundry, 181

• L
• Le Belle Dame sans Merci, 181, 195
• Myths and Legends of Our Land, 187

• N
• Nathan, George Jean, Eternal Mystery, The, 306
• Neckan, The, 155, 233
• Nemesis of Fire, A, 98
• Never Bet the Devil Your Head, 140
• New Accelerator, The, 286
• New Arabian Nights, The, 70
• Night at an Inn, A, 244, 303
• Night Call, The, 83
• Nightingale and the Rose, The, 235, 293
• Nightmare Abbey, 51
• Norris, Frank, Vandover and the Brute, 167
• Northanger Abbey, 47, 51
• Notch on the Axe, The, 89, 188
• Noyes, Alfred, Creation, 277
• Nyria, 207

• O
• O’Brien, Fitz-James, 61
• —— Diamond Lens, The, 274
• —— What Was It? A Mystery, 61, 96
• Occult Magazine, The, 163
• Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, The, 275
• Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands, 74
• O’Donnell, Elliot, 88, 110
• —— Mummy’s Tale, The, 110
• —— Werewolves, 170
• Old Clothes, 124, 194
• Old English Baron, The, 16, 19, 40
• Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts, 154
• Old Lady Mary, 211
• Old Men of the Twilight, The, 234
• Old Wives’ Tale, 110, 145
• Oliphant, Mrs. Margaret:
• —— Beleaguered City, The, 211
• —— Land of Darkness, The, 212
• —— Little Pilgrim in the Unseen, The, 212
• —— Old Lady Mary, 211, 298
• —— Open Door, The, 211
• —— Portrait, The, 211
• On Certain Proceedings of the Psychical Research Society, 221
• On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth, 295
• On the Stairs, 61, 114, 122
• Open Door, The, 211
• Origin of Individual Gothic Tales, 46, 71, 82
• —— Gaston de Blondeville, 19
• —— Italian, The, 48
• —— Mysteries of Udolpho, The, 9, 48
• —— Romance of the Castle, The, 44
• —— Sicilian Romance, A, 45, 50, 301
• Raleigh, Sir Walter, English Novel, The, 46
• Rappacini’s Daughter, 252, 272
• Raven, The, 56
• Raymond, or Life and Death, 75
• Readjustment, 107
• Real Ghost Stories, 282
• Rebellious Heroine, The, 197
• Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut, The, 122
• Red Debts, 146
• Red Hand, The, 247
• Red Ranrahan, 186, 243
• Reeve, Clara, 16
• —— Old English Baron, The, 16, 19, 40
• Regeneration of Lord Ernie, The, 230
• Reinecke Fuchs, 213
• Religion in Recent American Novels, 310
• Remarkable Case of Davidson’s Eyes, The, 256
• Return, The, 123, 198
• Return of Peter Grimm, The, 201, 298
• Return of the Native, The, 150
• Revolt, of the Angels, The, 220
• Reynard the Fox, 231
• Reynard the Fox, in South Africa, 232
• Rhodes, Benrimo and Harrison, Willow Tree, The, 306
• Richter, Jean Paul, Leibgeber Schappe, 122
• Rideout, Henry, Ghost of the White Tiger, The, 291
• Riders to the Sea, 10, 304
• Riding to Lithend, 152
• Rip Van Winkle, 246
• Rival Ghosts, 112
• Roche, Regina Maria, 10, 43, 45, 50
• —— Clermont, 45, 49
• Roger of Wendover’s Chronicles, 175
• Rohmer, Sax, 146
• —— Flower of Silence, The, 273
• —— Fu-Manchu Stories, 253, 268, 270, 185
• Stramm, August, 209, 251, 308
• —— Daughter of the Moor, The, 304
• —— Sancta Susanna, 307
• Strange Adventures of Phra, the Phoenician, The, 188
• Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchion, The, 254, 299
• Strange Story, A, 90, 182
• Stuart, Ruth McEnery, 226
• Styx River Anthology, The, 216
• Subjective Ghosts, 83
• Substitute, The, 88
• Sue, Eugene, 176, 178
• —— Wandering Jew, The, 176, 180
• Suggested by Some of the Proceedings of the Psychical Research Society, 283
• Sunken Bell, The, 158
• Supernatural in Folk-tales, 233 et seq.
• Supernatural in Tragedy, The, 305
• Supernatural Life, 174 et seq.
• Supernatural Science, 251 et seq.
• Sutton, Vida, Kingdom Come, 282, 306
• Swept and Garnished, 94, 282, 288
• Synge, John, 10, 229, 240
• —— Riders to the Sea, 10, 304
• Swanson, Frederick, Ghost Moth, The, 290
• Swift, Dean, 35

• T
• Tale of Negative Gravity, A, 274, 286
• Tale of the Ragged Mountains, A, 58, 190
• Tales of the Alhambra, 226
• Tales of Mystery, 48
• Talisman, The, 134, 146, 147, 225
• Tam O’Shanter, 156
• Tchekhoff:
• —— Black Monk, The, 69
• —— Sleepyhead, 69
• —— Ward No. 6, 69
• Temperament, Gothic, 46
• Tempest, The, 64
• Temptation of the Clay, The, 231
• Terror of Blue John Gap, The, 272
• Terror of the Twins, The, 122, 192
• Tess of the D’ Urbervilles, 143
• Thackeray, W. M., 55, 210
• —— Gates Between, The, 210
• —— Gates Beyond, The, 210
• —— Kentucky’s Ghost, 199
• Ward No. 6, 69
• Warning, The, 276
• Water Babies, The, 240
• Water Ghost and Others, The, 112
• Water of the Wondrous Isle, The, 236
• Waters of Death, The, 62
• Wave, The, 194
• Webster, John, Duchess of Malfi, The, 8, 166
• Wedmore, Frederick, Dream of Provence, A, 293
• Well at the World’s End, The, 236
• Wells, Carolyn, Styx River Anthology, The, 216
• Wells, H. G.:
• —— Crystal Egg, The, 263
• —— Days of the Comet, The, 264
• —— Door in the Wall, The, 258
• —— Dream of Armageddon, A, 196, 262
• —— First Men in the Moon, The, 264
• —— Flowering of the Strange Orchid, 62, 164, 273
• —— In the Days of the Comet, 264
• —— Invisible Man, The, 95, 269
• —— Island of Dr. Moreau, The, 271
• —— Man Who Had Been in Fairyland, The, 241
• —— New Accelerator, The, 286
• —— Plattner Case, The, 260
• —— Remarkable Case of Davidson’s Eyes, The, 256
• —— Sea Lady, The, 234
• —— Star, The, 264
• —— Story of Days to Come, A, 262
• —— Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham, The, 122, 185
• —— Time Machine, The, 189, 260
• —— Vision of Judgment, A, 214
• —— War of the Worlds, The, 263
• —— When the Sleeper Wakes, 262
• —— Wonderful Visit, The, 218, 221, 302
• Wentz, W. Y. E., 239
• —— Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, 239
• Werewolf, The, 166 et seq.
• Werewolf, The, 169, 172
• Werewolves, 170
• Weston, Jessie Adelaide, 146
• —— Black Magic, 146
• —— Mummy’s Foot, The, 62
• Wetmore, Elizabeth Bisland, DoppelgÄnger, The, [1] The word ghostly is used here in its earlier sense signifying spiritual.