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INTRODUCTION

THE FASCINATION OF THE GHOST STORY

ARTHUR B. REEVE

What is the fascination we feel for the mystery of the ghost story?

Is it of the same nature as the fascination which we feel for the
mystery of the detective story?

Of the latter fascination, the late Paul Armstrong used to say that it
was because we are all as full of crime as Sing Sing--only we don't
dare.

Thus, may I ask, are we not fascinated by the ghost story because, no
matter what may be the scientific or skeptical bent of our minds, in our
inmost souls, secretly perhaps, we are as full of superstition as an
obeah man--only we don't let it loose?

Who shall say that he is able to fling off lightly the inheritance of
countless ages of superstition? Is there not a streak of superstition in
us all? We laugh at the voodoo worshiper--then create our own hoodooes,
our pet obsessions.

It has been said that man is incurably religious, that if all religions
were blotted out, man would create a new religion.

Man is incurably fascinated by the mysterious. If all the ghost stories
of the ages were blotted out, man would invent new ones.

For, do we not all stand in awe of that which we cannot explain, of that
which, if it be not in our own experience, is certainly recorded in the
experience of others, of that of which we know and can know nothing?

Skeptical though one may be of the occult, he must needs be interested
in things that others believe to be objective--that certainly are
subjectively very real to them.

The ghost story is not born of science, nor even of super-science,
whatever that may be. It is not of science at all. It is of another
sphere, despite all that the psychic researchers have tried to
demonstrate.

There are in life two sorts of people who, for want of a better
classification, I may call the psychic and the non-psychic. If I ask the
psychic to close his eyes and I say to him, "Horse," he immediately
visualizes a horse. The other, non-psychic, does not. I rather incline
to believe that it is the former class who see ghosts, or rather some of
them. The latter do not--though they share interest in them.

The artists are of the visualizing class and, in our more modern times,
it is the psychic who think in motion pictures, or at least in a
succession of still pictures.

However we explain the ghostly and supernatural, whether we give it
objective or merely s