Tales about ghosts are as old as human culture itself but the ghost story as a d
istinguished literary form reached its apogee in the late nineteenth and early t
wentieth centuries. As traditional religions declined in the West during those y
ears, people looked for new ways of describing the spiritual realities explained
by religion. The ghost story is a literary expression of this need, its rise co
rresponding to the growing popularity of Spiritualism. Ghost stories balance the
increasingly powerful scientific materialism of the age with intimations that t
here are other orders of experience which we cannot define and only glimpse."The
Everyman" selection of ghost stories includes examples from this period by majo
r writers such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Guy de Maupassant, Henry James and Edi
th Wharton. M. R. James is featured as a specialist in the genre. Later writers
include Elizabeth Bowen, Penelope Lively and Ray Bradbury. One feature of this c
ollection is to show that there is more to the ghost story than the thrill of ho
rror, important though that is. These stories include comedy and tragedy, pathos
, drama and even poetry. Each is a masterpiece in its own right, irrespective of
whether or not we believe in the realm of spectres.
