This is a thoroughly contemporary collection of phantoms, shades and spectres from acclaimed modern writers such as Alison Lurie, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Joyce Carol Oates, and William Trevor, and from authors as distinctive of earlier decades as Edith Wharton, Muriel Spark or the incomparable Max Beerbohm. Other classic contributions come from Henry James, Isak Dinesen, Franz Kafka and Rudyard Kipling. The hauntings vary from the mundane and worldly to the intensely spiritual, but all offer an irresistible mixture of genuine chills and the best writing.