Here lie four remarkable ghost stories, carefully culled from a genre that had a great flowering in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They have been chosen because they are skillfully written; the reader--like the protagonists--is drawn slowly and inexorably into a nightmare that seems all the more credible because the world in which it happens is ordinary, filled with realistic detail. In addition, each of the four authors employs consideration psychological insight, so that the tales operate on multiple levels. The length of these stories has prevented them from being frequently anthologized. Aficionados of ghost stories are in for a treat! Included in this collection: "The Beckoning Fair One" by Oliver Onions, "How Love Came to Professor Guildea" by Robert Hichens, "The Old Nurse's Story" by Elizabeth Gaskell, "Couching at the Door" by D.K. Broster