ubjective reality, neither explanation prevents the
non-psychic from being intensely interested in the visions of the
psychic.

Thus I am convinced that if we were all quite honest with ourselves,
whether we believe in or do not believe in ghosts, at least we are all
deeply interested in them. There is in this interest something that
makes all the world akin.

Who does not feel a suppressed start at the creaking of furniture in the
dark of night? Who has not felt a shiver of goose flesh, controlled only
by an effort of will? Who, in the dark, has not had the feeling of some
_thing_ behind him--and, in spite of his conscious reasoning, turned to
look?

If there be any who has not, it may be that to him ghost stories have no
fascination. Let him at least, however, be honest.

To every human being mystery appeals, be it that of the crime cases on
which a large part of yellow journalism is founded, or be it in the
cases of Dupin, of Le Coq, of Sherlock Holmes, of Arsene Lupin, of Craig
Kennedy, or a host of others of our fiction mystery characters. The
appeal is in the mystery.

The detective's case is solved at the end, however. But even at the end
of a ghost story, the underlying mystery remains. In the ghost story, we
have the very quintessence of mystery.

Authors, publishers, editors, dramatists, writers of motion pictures
tell us that never before has there been such an intense and wide
interest in mystery stories as there is to-day. That in itself explains
the interest in the super-mystery story of the ghost and ghostly doings.

Another element of mystery lies in such stories. Deeper and further
back, is the supreme mystery of life--after death--what?

"Impossible," scorns the non-psychic as he listens to some ghost story.

To which, doggedly replies the mind of the opposite type, "Not so.
I believe _because_ it is impossible."

The uncanny, the unhealthy--as in the master of such writing,
Poe--fascinates. Whether we will or no, the imp of the perverse lures us
on.

That is why we read with enthralled interest these excursions into the
eerie unknown, perhaps reading on till the mystic hour of midnight
increases the creepy pleasure.

One might write a volume of analysis and appreciation of this aptly
balanced anthology of ghost stories assembled here after years of
reading and study by Mr. J.L. French.

Foremost among the impressions that a casual reader will derive is the
interesting fact, just as in