This etext was prepared by Donald Lainson, charlie@idirect.com. Please note: This edition does not contain the second chapter of the first story, "The Haunted House", by Dickens. It can be found in 3ghst10.txt or 3ghst10.zip, 1998, "Three Ghost Stories by Charles Dickens." The Lock and Key Library Classic Mystery and Detective Stories - Old Time English Edited by Julian Hawthorne Table of Contents CHARLES DICKENS (1812-70) The Haunted House No. I Branch Line: The Signal Man BULWER-LYTTON (1803-73) The Haunted and the Haunters; or, The House and the Brain The Incantation THOMAS DE QUINCEY (1785-1859) The Avenger CHARLES ROBERT MATURIN (1782-1824) Melmoth the Wanderer LAURENCE STERNE (1713-68) A Mystery with a Moral WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (1811-63) On Being Found Out The Notch on the Ax ANONYMOUS Bourgonef The Closed Cabinet THE HAUNTED HOUSE IN TWO CHAPTERS THE MORTALS IN THE HOUSE Under none of the accredited ghostly circumstances, and environed by none of the conventional ghostly surroundings, did I first make acquaintance with the house which is the subject of this Christmas piece. I saw it in the daylight, with the sun upon it. There was no wind, no rain, no lightning, no thunder, no awful or unwonted circumstance, of any kind, to heighten its effect. More than that: I had come to it direct from a railway station: it was not more than a mile distant from the railway station; and, as I stood outside the house, looking back upon the way I had come, I could see the goods train running smoothly along the embankment in the valley. I will not say that everything was utterly commonplace, because I doubt if anything can be that, except to utterly commonplace people--and there my vanity steps in; but, I will take it on myself to say that anybody might see the house as I saw it, any fine autumn morning. The manner of my lighting on it was this.