detective mystery stories, so in ghost
stories, styles change. Each age, each period has the ghost story
peculiar to itself. To-day, there is a new style of ghost story
gradually evolving.

Once stories were of fairies, fays, trolls, the "little people," of
poltergiest and loup garou. Through various ages we have progressed to
the ghost story of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries until to-day,
in the twentieth, we are seeing a modern style, which the new science is
modifying materially.

High among the stories in this volume, one must recognize the masterful
art of Algernon Blackwood's "The Woman's Ghost Story."

"I was interested in psychic things," says the woman as she starts to
tell her story simply, with a sweep toward the climax that has the ring
of the truth of fiction. Here perhaps we have the modern style of ghost
story at its best.

Times change as well as styles. "The Man Who Went Too Far" is of intense
interest as an attempt to bring into our own times an interpretation of
the symbolism underlying Greek mythology, applied to England of some
years ago.

To see Pan meant death. Hence in this story there is a philosophy of
Pan-theism--no "me," no "you," no "it." It is a mystical story, with a
storm scene in which is painted a picture that reminds one strongly of
"The Fall of the House of Ushur,"--with the frankly added words, "On him
were marks of hoofs of a monstrous goat that had leaped on
him,"--uncompromising mysticism.

Happy is the Kipling selection, "The Phantom 'Rickshaw," if only for
that obiter dictum of ghost-presence as Kipling explains about the rift
in the brain: "--and a little bit of the Dark World came through and
pressed him to death!"

Then there are the racial styles in ghost stories. The volume takes us
from the "Banshees and Other Death Warnings" of Ireland to a strange
example of Jewish mysticism in "The Silent Woman." Mr. French has been
very wide in his choice, giving us these as well as many examples from
the literature of England and France. Finally, he has compiled from the
newspapers, as typically American, many ghost stories of New York and
other parts of the country.

Strange that one should find humor in a subject so weird. Yet we find
it. Take, for instance, De Foe's old narrative, "The Apparition of Mrs.
Veal." It is a hoax, nothing more. Of our own times is Ellis Parker
Butler's "Dey Ain't No Ghosts," showing an example of the modern Negro's
racial heritage.