Another point of contrast between the modern and the older ghosts is in the greater freedom enjoyed by those of to-day. The ghosts of our ancestors were weak and helpless creatures in the main and the Gothic specter was tyrannized over to such an extent that he hardly dared call his shade his own. The spook of to-day has acquired a latchkey and asserted his independence. He may have a local habitation but he isn't obliged to stay there. Now-a-days even the spectral women are setting up to be feminists and have privileges that would have caused the Gothic wraiths to swoon with horror. Ghosts are not so sensitive to the barometer now as they used to be, nor do they have such an active influence over the weather as did the Gothic phantoms. They do not need a tempest for their materialization nor a supernatural play of lightning for their wild threats, and comparatively few storms occur in later fiction. Yet there is certainly no lessening of the ghostly thrill in consequence. Neither are the spirits of to-day limited to any set hours as was the rule in Gothicism. The tyranny of the dark, the autocratic rule of twelve or one o'clock as the arbitrary hour for apparitions, has been removed. Katherine Fullerton Gerould shows an interesting collection of ghosts that come at eleven o'clock in the morning, Georgia Wood Pangborn brings one out on the seashore in mid-afternoon, and Kipling has various ghosts that appear in daylight and in the open air. Ghosts in modern fiction are not dependent upon a setting of sullen scenery as in Gothicism, but may choose any surroundings they like. Since modern household arrangements do not include family vaults as a general thing, and since cemeteries are inconveniently located, there is a tendency on the part of haunters to desert such quarters. Mary Wilkins Freeman and Charles Egbert Craddock each has one ghost story located in a graveyard, and _The Last Ghost in Harmony_[114] is set in a burying-ground, but the specter complains loudly of the unsentimental mind of the town which has lost interest in ghosts, and leaves in disgust. Likewise the domination of the Gothic castles, those "ghaist-alluring edifices," has passed away and modern spooks are not confined to any one locality as in the past. They appear where they will, in the most prosaic places, in cheap lodging-houses, in hall bedrooms, in bungalows, in the staterooms of steamers, on tramp ships, and so forth. Algernon Blackwood has set a number of thrilling ghost stories out in the open, in the woods, in the desert sand wastes, and similar places. One effect of such realistic and unspectral setting is to give a greater verisimilitude to the events described, and the modern tale bears out Leigh Hunt's suggestion that "a ghost story, to be a good one, should unite, as much as possible, objects as they are in life, with a preternatural spirit." Yet here are ghosts that do haunt certain rooms as relentlessly as ever Gothic specter did.