The whole subject opens up a virgin field which has after all only begun to be tilled. Within the coming generation we may look for great artists to devote their whole powers to it, as Algernon Blackwood is doing to-day. A simple underlying reason is enough to account for it all--_the new field imposes simply no limit on the imagination_. In addition to all that science has taught us, there is illimitable store of myth and legend to aid, to draw from, to work in, to work over, as Lord Dunsany has shown us. It is the most significant movement in literature at the present hour, and whether it is supported by a special background of interest--as at present in spiritism--or not, the assertion is logical that it is creating a new body of fictional literature of permanent importance for the first time in the history of literature. The human comedy seems to have been exploited to its final limits; as the art of the novel, the art of the stage, but too sadly prove to-day. We have turned outward for new thrills to the supernatural and we are getting them. It only remains to be added that the present great interest in spiritualism and allied phenomena has made necessary the addition of certain material of a "literal" character which we believe will be found quite as interesting by the general reader as the purely literary portion of the book. JOSEPH LEWIS FRENCH CONTENTS PREFACE _Joseph Lewis French_ INTRODUCTION _Dorothy Scarborough_ WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG _Jack London_ THE RETURN _Algernon Blackwood_ THE SECOND GENERATION _Algernon Blackwood_ JOSEPH--A STORY _Katherine Rickford_ THE CLAVECIN--BRUGES _George Wharton Edwards_ LIGEIA _Edgar Allan Poe_ THE SYLPH AND THE FATHER _Elsa Barker_ A GHOST _Lafcadio Hearn_ THE EYES OF THE PANTHER _Ambrose Bierce_ PHOTOGRAPHING INVISIBLE BEINGS _William T. Stead_ THE SIN-EATER _Fiona Macleod_ GHOSTS IN SOLID FORM _Gambier Bolton_ THE PHANTOM ARMIES SEEN IN FRANCE _Hereward Carrington_ THE PORTAL OF THE UNKNOWN _Andrew Jackson Davis_ THE SUPERNORMAL: EXPERIENCES _St. John D. Seymour_ NATURE-SPIRITS, OR ELEMENTALS _Nizida_ A WITCH'S DEN _Helena Blavatsky_ SOME REMARKABLE EXPERIENCES OF FAMOUS PERSONS _Dr. Walter F. Prince_ INTRODUCTION THE PSYCHIC IN LITERATURE