My ghosts are sufficiently traditional, in that they all appear in search of something. This is the usual reason for ghostly appearances; something has been lost, or some revenge or justice is sought, and the spirit cannot rest until this unfinished business is concluded. If that is established, it is obvious that the proper greeting to a ghost is not a shriek of terror but a courteous “What can I do for you?” It was Shelley who wrote—and I echo him—

In my ghost stories I have tried to explore where such high talk might lead.

Anybody who writes ghost stories is sure to be asked: Do you believe in ghosts? And the answer to that must be, I believe in them precisely as Shakespeare believed in them. People who want further discussion may be referred to that model of good sense, Dr. Samuel Johnson, who said:

All belief? The Doctor speaks with his accustomed certainty. Much belief, undoubtedly, for in 1954-55 the popular Swiss fortnightly Schweizerischer Beobachter published a series of articles on prophetic dreams, coincidences, premonitions and ghosts, and then asked readers who had any experience of such things to write to the Editor. The response was overwhelming; more than 1200 readers wrote in, giving more than 1500 cases of personal experience; and these writers were people of education and discretion. It is interesting that most of the letter-writers confided their names to the Editor but asked that they be not made public; few people will admit to all the world that they believe in the supernatural. These letters were confided by the paper to the late Dr. C. G. Jung, whose secretary, Mrs. Aniela Jaffe, published them with psychological comment, and extremely interesting reading they make. So it may be said that if not everybody believes in ghosts, there are a great many people who certainly do not disbelieve in them.

One word remains to be said: I have not edited these stories specifically for the reader; they remain in the form in which they were first spoken aloud, and I beg you—you readers—to grant them the attention of the ear, as well as of the eye. Perhaps, as in my case, your first ghost story was heard.

The names of several living people, associated in one way or another with Massey College, appear in these stories. Never, let me say, are they mentioned in anything except an affectionate and genial spirit, as befits a Gaudy Night, and I hope that the bearers of these names will not feel that I have beenimpudently free with them, or suggested an acceptance of the supernatural which they may disclaim. These are, after all, party-ghosts, emanating from high spirits.

At the outset of a personal ghost story, it is accepted practice to say that one is the least fanciful person in the world, that one has not a nerve in one’s body, doesn’t believe in ghosts, and can’t understand how it happened. I am therefore at a disadvantage, for I am a more than ordinarily fanciful person, I am extremely nervous, I don’t find anything intrinsically improbable in the notion of a ghost, and I have a pretty shrewd idea how it happened. Therefore I am more likely to distress myself than to alarm you by what I am going to recount; I know that in the ghost controversy you are all overwhelmingly of the anti-ghost party. But I can assure you that I found it a disquieting experience.

The fire in my study smokes. It is not merely that the Bursar buys green wood; something is amiss with the chimney. Sometimes it smokes so much that I feel like those Jesuit missionaries who used to fling themselves on the floor in the longhouses of the Canadian Indians, because only within six inches of the floor could one breathe the air without tearing the lungs.

My fire was smoking yesterday afternoon at dusk, as I sat reading the précis of an M.A. thesis. My nerves would have been quieter had I been reading a ghost story; thesis abstracts are, with a very few exceptions, the least credible and most horrifying productions of imaginative literature. Nevertheless you will understand that I was not in the least disposed to see a ghost, though I was rather far advanced in asphyxiation.

At last, reluctantly, like a man approaching a task he knows to be outside human power, I went to the fire and knelt to poke it, thinking perhaps I might alter the quality of the smoke, and thus secure change, if not relief. Of course I simply made it worse. I grew impatient, and, holding my breath, put my head into the worst of the smother, to see if anything—a bird’s nest, or a dead squirrel, or anything of that sort, might have stuck in the chimney.

Nothing. Defeated, and with the disgruntled resignation of one used to such defeats, I crawled backward into the room, and stood up.

There was a man sitting at my desk.

Nothing in the least alarming about that. People quite often come into my study without being heard; when I am busy I often do not notice what is happening around me. I assumed he was a visitor. He looked like a senior faculty member—a tall, rather lean, bald man, with professorial eyebrows. He was wearing his gown, but so was I, for that matter for, though smoky, my study was cold.

“Good afternoon,” I said; “Can I help you?”

“You can help me by doing something about that smoking chimney,” he replied.

He smiled as he spoke, and I assumed that this was some form of donnish humour. Nevertheless, I thought it rather cool of him to complain about what was, after all, my chimney. I decided to take the line of extreme and disarming courtesy, which sometimes works well with impudent people.

“I assure you I am doing the best I can,” said I.

“Not a very good best,” said he; “take another look up the flue.”

I obeyed. Not, you understand, because I was awed by him, but because I wanted time to think. Slowly I knelt, and poked my head into the fireplace again, and thought.

Who the devil is he? There is something familiar about his face, but what is his name? I wish I could either forget both faces and names, or remember both. It is this perpetual dealing with nameless faces that makes my life a muddle of uncertainty. Is he one of those architectural critics who still push their way into the college, and take on airs? How dare he give me orders? I must have met him somewhere. Is he one of those dons who suffers from the delusion that he is Dr. Johnson, and is rude on principle?

By this time I had thought all I could, without drawing in huge breaths of smoke, so I crawled back into the room and stood up again.

“If I were you I’d go up on the roof and put a rod down that chimney,” said the stranger. “Or why don’t you come down it again?”

“Down the chimney?” said I. Aha, this was the clue. Here was a madman.

“Yes,” said he; “you didn’t knock at the door, so I assume you must have come down the chimney. You weren’t here a minute ago.”

One of my cardinal rules in life is always to humour madmen. It is second nature to me. I do it several times every day. “Quite so,” said I. “I came down the chimney.”

He looked at me closely, and I thought somewhat insultingly.