Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) The Best Psychic Stories _Edited with a Preface by_ Joseph Lewis French _Editor "Great Ghost Stories," "Masterpieces of Mystery," etc._ _Introduction by_ Dorothy Scarborough, Ph.D. _Lecturer in English, Columbia University Author of "The Supernatural in English Literature," "From a Southern Porch," etc._ BONI & LIVERIGHT NEW YORK Copyright, 1920, by Boni & Liveright, Inc. Printed in the Unites States of America PREFACE The case for the "psychic" element in literature rests on a very old foundation; it reaches back to the ancient masters,--the men who wrote the Greek tragedies. Remorse will ever seem commonplace alongside the furies. Ever and always the shadow of the supernatural invites, pursues us. As the art of literature has progressed it has grown along with it. To-day there is a whole new school of writers of Ghost-Stories, and the domain of the invisible is being invaded by explorers in many paths. We do not believe so much more, perhaps, that is, we do not so openly express a belief, but art has finally and frankly claimed the supernatural for its own. One discerning authority even goes so far as to assert that the borders of its domain will be greatly enlarged in the wonderful new field of the screen. There is no motive in a story, no image in poetry, that can give us quite the thrill of a supernatural idea. If we were formally charged with this we might resent the imputation, but the evidence has persisted from the beginning, lives on every hand, and multiplies daily. What we have been in the habit of calling the "machinery" of the old Greek drama--its supernatural effects--has come finally to be an art cultivated with care at the present hour, and has given us some wonderful new writers. In fact, few of the best masters for a generation now have been able to resist its persistent and abiding charm. Every writer of true imagination, almost without exception, including even certain realists, has given us at least one story, long or short, in which the central motive is purely psychical in the Greek sense of the word.