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Robert Louis Stevenson, O. Henry, Wilkie Collins, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thomas Hardy, Arthur Conan Doyle, Saki, G.K. Chesterton, M.R. James, Catherine Crowe, William Douglas O'Connor, Charles Dickens, John Kendrick Bangs, Louisa M. Alcott, Emmuska Orczy, Grant Allen, Leonard Kip
MERRY SPOOKY CHRISTMAS
(25 Weird & Supernatural Tales in One Edition)
Published by
Advanced Digital Solutions & High-Quality eBook Formatting
[email protected] 2017 OK Publishing ISBN 978-80-272-2242-1
Table of Contents
The Christmas Banquet (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
What the Shepherd Saw: A Tale of Four Moonlight Nights (Thomas Hardy)
The Wolves of Cernogratz (Saki)
Markheim (Robert Louis Stevenson)
A Chaparral Christmas Gift (O. Henry)
The Flying Stars (G.K. Chesterton)
The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance (M.R. James)
Ghosts and Family Legends (Catherine Crowe)
The Ghost: A Christmas Story (William Douglas O’Connor)
Doctor Marigold’s Prescriptions (Charles Dickens)
The Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens)
The Haunted Man (Charles Dickens)
Thurlow’s Christmas Story (John Kendrick Bangs)
The Mystery of My Grandmother’s Hair Sofa (John Kendrick Bangs)
The Abbot’s Ghost, or Maurice Treherne’s Temptation (Louisa M. Alcott)
A Christmas Tragedy (Emmuska Orczy)
The Thieves who couldn’t Stop Sneezing (Thomas Hardy)
Mr Wray’s Cash Box or, the Mask and the Mystery (Wilkie Collins)
The Ghosts at Grantley (Leonard Kip)
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle (Arthur Conan Doyle)
An Exciting Christmas Eve or, My Lecture On Dynamite (Arthur Conan Doyle)
Mustapha (Sabine Baring-Gould)
Told After Supper (Jerome K. Jerome)
The Christmas Banquet
(Nathaniel Hawthorne)
"I have here attempted," said Roderick, unfolding a few sheets of manuscript, as he sat with Rosina and the sculptor in the summer- house,--"I have attempted to seize hold of a personage who glides past me, occasionally, in my walk through life. My former sad experience, as you know, has gifted me with some degree of insight into the gloomy mysteries of the human heart, through which I have wandered like one astray in a dark cavern, with his torch fast flickering to extinction. But this man, this class of men, is a hopeless puzzle."
"Well, but propound him," said the sculptor. "Let us have an idea of hint, to begin with."
"Why, indeed," replied Roderick, "he is such a being as I could conceive you to carve out of marble, and some yet unrealized perfection of human science to endow with an exquisite mockery of intellect; but still there lacks the last inestimable touch of a divine Creator. He looks like a man; and, perchance, like a better specimen of man than you ordinarily meet. You might esteem him wise; he is capable of cultivation and refinement, and has at least an external conscience; but the demands that spirit makes upon spirit are precisely those to which he cannot respond. When at last you come close to him you find him chill and unsubstantial,--a mere vapor."
"I believe," said Rosina, "I have a glimmering idea of what you mean."
"Then be thankful," answered her husband, smiling; "but do not anticipate any further illumination from what I am about to read. I have here imagined such a man to be--what, probably, he never is-- conscious of the deficiency in his spiritual organization. Methinks the result would be a sense of cold unreality wherewith he would go shivering through the world, longing to exchange his load of ice for any burden of real grief that fate could fling upon a human being."
Contenting himself with this preface, Roderick began to read.
In a certain old gentleman's last will and testament there appeared a bequest, which, as his final thought and deed, was singularly in
