alert?

It is this evolution of our sense of ghost terror--ages of it--that
fascinates us.

Can we, with a few generations of modernism behind us, throw it off with
all our science? And, if we did, should we not then succeed only in
abolishing the old-fashioned ghost story and creating a new, scientific
ghost story?

Scientific? Yes. But more,--something that has existed since the
beginnings of intelligence in the human race.

Perhaps, you critic, you say that the true ghost story originated in the
age of shadowy candle light and pine knot with their grotesqueries on
the walls and in the unpenetrated darkness, that the electric bulb and
the radiator have dispelled that very thing on which, for ages, the
ghost story has been built.

What? No ghost stories? Would you take away our supernatural fiction by
your paltry scientific explanation?

Still will we gather about the story teller--then lie awake o' nights,
seeing mocking figures, arms akimbo, defying all your science to crush
the ghost story.

BEST GHOST STORIES

THE APPARITION OF MRS. VEAL

BY DANIEL DE FOE

THE PREFACE

This relation is matter of fact, and attended with such circumstances,
as may induce any reasonable man to believe it. It was sent by a
gentleman, a justice of peace, at Maidstone, in Kent, and a very
intelligent person, to his friend in London, as it is here worded; which
discourse is attested by a very sober and understanding gentlewoman, a
kinswoman of the said gentleman's, who lives in Canterbury, within a few
doors of the house in which the within-named Mrs. Bargrave lives; who
believes his kinswoman to be of so discerning a spirit, as not to be put
upon by any fallacy; and who positively assured him that the whole
matter, as it is related and laid down, is really true; and what she
herself had in the same words, as near as may be, from Mrs. Bargrave's
own mouth, who, she knows, had no reason to invent and publish such a
story, or any design to forge and tell a lie, being a woman of much
honesty and virtue, and her whole life a course, as it were, of piety.
The use which we ought to make of it, is to consider, that there is a
life to come after this, and a just God, who will retribute to every one
according to the deeds done in the body; and therefore to reflect upon
our past course of life we have led in the world; that our time is short
and uncertain; and that if we would escape the punishment of the
ungodly, and