Good ghost stories arc uncommon, but this collection (Cassell, 8s.
6d.), whose very title suggests a promising theme, contains plenty. There is the brilliant and horrible study of madness closing in like a net in " The Yellow Wall- Paper," a story which makes one wonder how its author could have written it and remained sane. " The Ghost- Ship " is a delightful whimsy about good, sociable, home-loving ghosts who are led away by the spirit, and the spirits, of a sea-captain. " Green Thoughts " is a luxuriant flower of John Collier's sinister and tropic fantasy. The negro magic of " The Half-Pint Flask " pro- duces the authentic shiver, icicles down the neck. Some stories, such- as " The Screaming Skull " and " The Five- Fingered Beast," are too definite, too
explanatory ; a ghost-story should have something impalpable, leave something unexplained. But that can be carried too far, as in " The White People," where one is left wondering vainly what happened and who they were. One wishes that Mr. Laing could have found room for at least one of Mr. H. G. Wells' brilliant ghost-stories. But on the whole it is satisfactorily full of " things that go bump in the night," the extracts from John Aubrey and Sir Thomas Browne were a happy thought, and Lynd Ward's illustrations are suitably creepy.
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