The Project Gutenberg eBook, J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4, by
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

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Title: J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4

Author: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Release Date: June 18, 2004 [eBook #12647]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

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J. S. LE FANU'S GHOSTLY TALES, VOLUME 4

Ghost Stories of Chapelizod (1851)
The Drunkard's Dream (1838)
The Ghost and the Bone-setter (1838)
The Mysterious Lodger (1850)

by

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

GHOST STORIES OF CHAPELIZOD

Take my word for it, there is no such thing as an ancient village,
especially if it has seen better days, unillustrated by its legends of
terror. You might as well expect to find a decayed cheese without mites,
or an old house without rats, as an antique and dilapidated town without
an authentic population of goblins. Now, although this class of
inhabitants are in nowise amenable to the police authorities, yet, as
their demeanor directly affects the comforts of her Majesty's subjects, I
cannot but regard it as a grave omission that the public have hitherto
been left without any statistical returns of their numbers, activity,
etc., etc. And I am persuaded that a Commission to inquire into and
report upon the numerical strength, habits, haunts, etc., etc., of
supernatural agents resident in Ireland, would be a great deal more
innocent and entertaining than half the Commissions for which the country
pays, and at least as instructive. This I say, more from a sense of duty,
and to deliver my mind of a grave truth, than with any hope of seeing the
suggestion adopted. But, I am sure, my readers will deplore with me that
the comprehensive powers of belief, and apparently illimitable leisure,
possessed by parliamentary commissions of inquiry, should never have been
applied to the subject I have named, and that the collection of that
species of information should be confided to the gratuitous and desultory