Most people like a good "ghost story." Even the loudest of scoffers does so really; and he is generally the…
- Date of account
- Published 1911
- Source
- Stranger Than Fiction: Being Tales from the Byways of Ghosts and Folk-lore
- Reference
- Stranger Than Fiction: Being Tales from the Byways of Ghosts and Folk-lore · selected passage 6
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
Most people like a good "ghost story." Even the loudest of scoffers does so really; and he is generally the person who draws his chair nearest to that of the story-teller, and who, after asserting that the tale is "all rubbish," will nevertheless proceed to say what he would have done at that particular point in the na…
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyMost people like a good "ghost story." Even the loudest of scoffers does so really; and he is generally the person who draws his chair nearest to that of the story-teller, and who, after asserting that the tale is "all rubbish," will nevertheless proceed to say what he would have done at that particular point in the narrative when "the candle burnt blue, and a faint rattling of chains was heard," &c. &c. But, as a fact, there are few real old-fashioned scoffers left. We have passed through the phase of extreme incredulity regarding occult happenings which was inevitable, and was merely the swing of the pendulum from the rank superstition and ignorance of the Middle Ages. Few people now venture to declare that "there are no such things as ghosts"; for the mass of evidence collected and weighed by savants, such as Gurney, Myers, Hodgson, T. H. Hudson, and Sir Oliver Lodge, is overwhelming as regards the truth that things _have_ happened, and do still happen, quite outside the limit of human explanation.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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