One feature that distinguishes the uncanny tales of to-day from the Gothic is their greater range of material. The early terror story had its source in popular superstition, classical literature, medieval legends, or the Elizabethan drama, while in the century that has elapsed since the decay of the Gothic novel as such, new fields of thought have been opened up, and new sources for ghostly plots have been discovered which the writers of modern stories are quick to utilize. Present-day science with its wonderful development has provided countless plots for supernatural stories. Comparative study of folk-lore, with the activities of the numerous associations, has brought to light fascinating material. Modern Spiritualism, with its seances, its mediumistic experiments, has inspired many novels and stories. The Psychical Research Society, with branches in various parts of the world and its earnest advocates and serious investigations, has collected suggestive stuff for many ghostly stories. The different sources for plot material and mechanics for awesome effect, added to these from which the terror novel drew its inspiration, have incalculably enriched the supernatural fiction and widened the limits far beyond the restrictions of the conventionalized Gothic. Science has furnished themes for many modern stories of the supernatural. Modern science itself, under normal conditions, seems like necromancer's magic, so its incursion into thrilling fiction is but natural. Every aspect of research and discovery has had its exponent in fictive form, and the skill with which the material is handled constitutes one point of difference between the present ghostly stories and the crude scientific supernaturalism of the early novels. The influence of Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, and other scientists of the last century did much to quicken fiction as well as thought, and the effects can be traced in the work of various authors. The widespread interest in folk-lore in recent years has had an appreciable influence on the stories of the supernatural. While the methods of investigation followed by the serious students of folk-lore are scientific and the results are tabulated in an analytic rather than a literary style, yet the effect is helpful to fiction. Comparative studies in folk-lore, by the bringing together of a mass of material from diverse sources, establishes the fact of the universal acceptance of supernaturalism in some form. Ethnic superstitions vary, yet there is enough similarity between the ideas held by tribes and races so widely separated as to discredit any basis of imitation or conscious influence between them, to be of great interest to scientists. No tribe, however low in the social scale, has been found that has no belief in powers beyond the mortal.