The 8th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories

INTRODUCTION

So we meet again – for the eighth time. What could be more significant, more full of omen? Promisingly ominous, I trust.

There is a town in the north of England where one sometimes sees a queer-looking dog. At first one only glimpses it occasionally – as one rounds a corner, perhaps – or as it does. Then, shrinking into oneself from the street winds, one begins to observe it more often. In the end, one seems to notice it constantly: and then one knows that one is about to pass from this brief and troubled existence, to which the reading of a good ghost story seems often the only antidote.

Once more no author awaits within whom the reader has encountered before in this series. Once more a firm course has been steered between the merely horrific to the right of us and the merely scientific to the left of us. Throughout we commit ourselves to another world altogether: which none the less exists all around us; of which we are a part at least as much as of the familiar and material world; and which occasionally we see, hear, and even touch – or which touches us. There is no instant or guaranteed pathway through the borderland, and Mrs Christie’s tale will serve to illustrate the dangers which can attend the desperate belief that there is; but it is none the less a completely open question whether this daily world is the dream or that other world we seem to glimpse so seldom. The most confining of all errors is to suppose there is no refuge from the hard facts: for these are primarily time and disappointment. From that lugubrious misconception let our nine authors open an eighth door.

Ibsen observed, in his later days, that the supreme sin was to destroy the love-life in another’s heart. Comparable is the sin of wantonly destroying the sense of wonder. It is this quality which makes Turgenev’s Bezhin Lea such an unqualifiable masterpiece. Each leaf is faintly luminous as we pass in the quiet evening; and round every corner may be for each of us such a microcosm of human destiny as was offered by the group of boys in the light of the fires.

Edward Bulwer Lytton was a great master of the ghost story; precisely because he took the existence of that other world for granted, and so was able to guide us through it in a careful, almost matter-of-fact way. He knew the subject from wide and deep study, comparable to the study which lies behind his famous historical novels; but more important was the fact that the mysteries of the ghostly realm were curiously paralleled by the intricacies of his own complex and elaborate personality. Even as an author, there were at least three Lyttons (and, of course, there were several quite other Lyttons also, notably the political Lytton, who rose to be Disraeli’s Colonial Secretary). First, there is the observant author of Pelham. Joseph Conrad, in The Nigger of the Narcissus, shows us the tough old seaman, Singleton, ‘spelling through Pelham with slow labour, and lost in an absorption profound enough to resemble a trance’; and though Pelham is a very long long book, others who read it may find themselves entranced also. Second, there is the historical Lytton, who wrote The Last Days of Pompeii and Harold and The Last of the Barons; books read by many when I was a schoolboy, now read less often no doubt, though one never quite knows in such cases. Third, there is Lytton the supernaturalist, who incorporates the talents of the other two, including sometimes the comedy, but who wrote far more directly from the soul, strange soul though it was. Lytton’s novel, Zanoni, is one of the few complete successes in its difficult field: the long novel of the supernatural. It may be added that his present story, The Haunted and the Haunters, is believed in its narrative circumstances to be closely based upon an actual case. Lytton was by no means the only cabinet minister to take a particular interest in psychic research. A. J. Balfour was his most important successor in that direction, as is widely known.

Trains are eerie, as motorcoaches can seldom be, and boats have a mystery that rarely attaches to helicopters: so here we have Mr Ellis’s The Haunted Haven, with some really nasty phantoms – and notably apt to be met with on a cold weather holiday; and Midnight Express by the late Alfred Noyes, poet, romantic, and prophet. Mrs Marsh’s The Tree is one of those stories which takes the initiative in capturing and organizing an impression felt by all. Here is the primitive truth about the anachronistic ancient so often found stranded in the careful suburban patch after development has taken place. The Red Lodge details another peril of property ownership: the property this time being of the kind usually found not too far from a good golf club. It was H. R. Wakefield’s intention to make the hair stand on end: an exercise necessary on occasion in such places. Wakefield was what one may term a prolific writer of ghost stories. They are few.

As for my own fable, my object is to illustrate the extremely disturbing, remarkably inexplicable things that go on everywhere and happen to everyone, but are fully discerned only when we look at life with as much detachment and objectivity as we can bring ourselves to muster. Calderon remarked that life is a dream; and those who complain it is boring should cast out the fashionable heresy that everything can be accounted for if only enough cash is made available for research and education.

Gertrude Bacon was a turn of the century professional lady writer who took a plucky shot at every target in sight. In her present story there is one detail which catches the breath and manifests the true cold touch of the supernatural image.

Selecting these stories involves much fireside reading, as I have remarked before; and I should like to thank the small group of men and women who help me with it, and notably my friend, Mr Kirby McCauley of Minneapolis, who over the years has shown the most dependable and penetrating insight into what a ghost story should be and should not be, and who is held in high regard wherever the phantoms meet.

ROBERT AICKMAN.