Casting the Runes and Other Ghost Stories (World's Classics)

When we think of ghost stories, we tend to think of cub scouts cringing by a fire, s'mores at the ready, as some aging camp counselor tries to scare them witless with yet another tale from the crypt. But as Michael Chabon's marvelous introduction reminds us, the ghost story was once integral to the genre of the short story. Indeed, as he points out, it can be argued that the ghost story was the genre. Dickens's "A Christmas Carol," Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw"--most of the early short story writers wrote ghost stories as a matter of course. And the best writer of ghost stories, the acknowledged master, was M.R. James.