E-text prepared by Robert Cicconetti, Karina Aleksandrova,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1921
Printed in the United States of America
To
ASHLEY HORACE THORNDIKE, Litt. D.
Professor of English, Columbia University
who guided my earlier studies in the supernatural
Ghosts are the true immortals, and the dead grow more alive all the time. Wraiths have a greater vitality to-day than ever before. They are far more numerous than at any time in the past, and people are more interested in them. There are persons that claim to be acquainted with specific spirits, to speak with them, to carry on correspondence with them, and even some who insist that they are private secretaries to the dead. Others of us mortals, more reserved, are content to keep such distance as we may from even the shadow of a shade. But there's no getting away from ghosts nowadays, for even if you shut your eyes to them in actual life, you stumble over them in the boo