SOME "CHOST STORIES."

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2384, 13 February 1915, Page 5

SOME "CHOST STORIES."

I am afraid Miss Jessie Adelaide Middleton, tho author of "Another Grey Ghost Book" (London, Eveleigh Nash), may object to a review of her book: being placed under the heading of Fiction, for she assures her readera that "not one of these stories is fictitious." i The author has, she says. 1 'taken great trouble to authenticate them all; they are all well-founded," and she can, therefore, "describe them as true." : For, my own part, they may be true, or they may be figments of the author's over-vivid.imagination, or that of her many friends —some of them quit© well-known people—who have supplied the material for their composition; little it : really matters, to my mind, whether a ghost story ho capable or not of substantiation by well ascertained facts. It is the story itself that matters, and truth to tell, these stories of the supernatural, or presumably ' 'supernatural, are amongst the best, of their kind I can remember having met with iii print. Commencing _ with' a series of more or less historical and well or doubtfully authenticated "London ghosts"—even thai .once famous haunt of frivolity and dissipation, the Argyll Booms, had, it appears, its ghost—Miss Middlet-on gives us a long succession, nearly fifty in all, of weird and exciting stories, many of which, if not exactly calculated, in the language of the Fat Boy, to "make your flesh creop," are hardly to be commended for' perusal late at night, after, say, an indiscreetly indigestible supper. Tho author has not confined her researches to tho Old Country's stock of supernatural occurrences, for one of the stories refers to an experience in Barbadoes, and for two others New Zealand provides the background. A useful and interesting feature, of the collection is the. inclusion of several famous ghost stories of the past, such aa that of the "Wicked Latly' Ferrers" and. "The White Bird," to which latter • 'readers of Kmgsley's "Westward Ho" may remember references —made in the chapter headed "How Mr. Oxenham saw the White Bird"—to the bird which was wont to appear before the death of any of the Oxenham family. People who are interested in the occult and tho supernatural will find a rich store of entertainment and matter for discussion in "Another Grey Ghost Book." A second batch of "ghost stories," to employ a conveniently popular term, is to be found in Mr. Algernon Blackwood's "Incredible Adventures" (Mac raillan's Empire Library). The author of "The Centaur," "Jimbo," and that very delightful book, "A.Prisoner in Fairyland," does not, like Miss Middleton, dot his ghostly "i's" and cross [ his supernatural • "t's." He .leaves everything to our imagination. Neither does he succeed in making our hair stand oh end, as he did in certain of his earlier stories. Nowadays he deals less with persons alive or visionary, than with forces. He can make tho very atmospihero of a room, a house, evon a whole village, reek with the suggestion of supernatural ho can invest with living terror tho elemental forces of nature, indeed, ho is so successful in depicting tho weird vagaries of nature—or super-naturo?—that he almost arrives at the perhaps undesired end of forcing I. us to take them for granted, as quite ordinary,happenings. There is, one can- , not help thinking," euoh a thing as be-

ing just' a trifle too clever! But on tho whole, it is with a convincing feeling of the possibility 'of these uncanny happenings—adventures is for the most of the stories a misnomer —that 0110 rises from a perusal of Mr. Blackwood s pages. There is one story, for instance, of a house which is pervaded by the malign influence of a veritable host of lost souls—"Die Damned" is tho cheerful title—which it is impossiblo to read without tho very uncomfortable feeling that, given a certain morbid receptivity of mind, to remain in such an atmosphere would be almost unsufferable torture. "The Regeneration of Lord Ermie" and "A Descent into Egypt' a™ two other quite remarkable stories. No one who is interested in the occult and supernatural can afford to miss a new book by Algernon Blackwood. His books are, I expect, eagerly awaited by the members of tho Psychical and' Research Society. 1 •