This volume was published in 1890 and contains seven
selected and translated works from Guy de Maupassant,
Pedro Antonio de Alarcon, Alexander L. Kielland, Leopold Kompert, Gustavo Adolfo Becquer and Giovannia Magherini-Graziani.

Excerpts from the Introduction:
The literature of ghosts is very ancient.
In visions of the night, and in the lurid va-
pors of mystic incantations, figures rise and
smile, or frown and disappear. The Witch
of Endor murmurs her spell, and "an old
man cometh up, and he is covered with a
mantle." Macbeth takes a bond of fate,
and from Hecate's caldron, after the appa-
rition of an armed head and that of a bloody
child, " an apparition of a child crowned,
with a tree in his hand, rises." The wiz-
ard recounts to Lochiel his warning vision,
and Lochiel departs to his doom. There
are stories of the Castle of Otranto and
of the Three Spaniards, and the infinite
detail of " singular experiences," which
make our conscious daily life the frontier
and border-land of an impinging world of
mystery.

But these stories have no conscious law.
They are like fantastic or horrible dreams.
Did the writer suffer from nightmare? Or
are they but fairy tales reversed ? For airy
Titania has some evil fate given us the Tall
Woman, and tricksy Ariel have we exchanged
for Caliban ? There is indeed a record of
similar recurring phenomena that may seem
to imply some law. There is the persistent
story of the friend who suddenly appears in
the room or at the door, or whom, awaking,
you see by your bedside, only to learn after-
wards that at the same moment in a distant
land he died. There is the family spectre,
whose appearance foretells death to the
luckless member of the family who sees it.
Does some sudden physical pang, some mor-
tal premonition, recall the legend, and in-
stantly he believes that he sees the messen-
ger of doom ?

The fascination of this realm of experi-
ence, which is traditional from age to age,
yet always elusive, is undeniable. Few men
have seen ghosts, or will confess that they
have seen them. But almost everybody
knows some one of the few. Haunted houses
are familiar in all neighborhoods, with the
same story of the roistering sceptic who will
gladly pass the night alone in the haunted
chamber, and give monsieur the ghost a
warm welcome, but who, if not found dead
in the morning, emerges pale and haggard,
with a settled terror in his look, and his lips
sealed forever upon the awful story of the
night...
The tales that compose this volume show
how universally the old spell of " the super-
natural " still lingers. The fair Lady Rosa-
mond, vanishing in the summer moonlight
on the balcony of a New England country-
house, she or some loathlier denizen of the
same uncomprehended sphere, appears on a
river in France or in a street in Spain. The
old man covered with a mantle still cometh
up. The child crowned, with a tree in his
hand, still rises. And still we gaze entranced,
and like the child shuddering through weird-
ly peopled shadows to his solitary chamber,
we are conscious of the uncanny spell, and
of the spectral realm in which we move.

These little tales, like instant photographs,
bring us nearer to the life of other lands,
and apprise us that, in an unexpected sense,
we are all of one blood a blood which is
chilled by an influence that we cannot com-
prehend, and at a contact of which we are
conscious by an apprehension beyond that
of the senses.

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.
September, 1890.

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• Publication Date: September 14, 2010
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 194 Pages
• File Size: 463 KB