This etext was prepared , email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
from the 1891 Leadenhall Press edition.
by Jerome K. Jerome
Contents:
Introductory
How the Stories came to be told
Teddy Biffles' Story—Johnson and Emily; or, the Faithful Ghost
Interlude—The Doctor's Story
Mr. Coombe's Story—The Haunted Mill; or, the Ruined Home
Interlude
My Uncle's Story—The Ghost of the Blue Chamber
A Personal Explanation
My Own Story
It was Christmas Eve.
I begin this way because it is the proper, orthodox, respectableway to begin, and I have been brought up in a proper, orthodox,respectable way, and taught to always do the proper, orthodox,respectable thing; and the habit clings to me.
Of course, as a mere matter of information it is quite unnecessaryto mention the date at all. The experienced reader knows it wasChristmas Eve, without my telling him. It always is Christmas Eve,in a ghost story,
Christmas Eve is the ghosts' great gala night. On Christmas Evethey hold their annual fete. On Christmas Eve everybody inGhostland who IS anybody—or rather, speaking of ghosts, one shouldsay, I suppose, every nobody who IS any nobody—comes out to showhimself or herself, to see and to be seen, to promenade about anddisplay their winding-sheets and grave-clothes to each other, tocriticise one another's style, and sneer at one another'scomplexion.
"Christmas Eve parade," as I expect they themselves term it, is afunction, doubtless, eagerly prepared for and looked forward tothroughout Ghostland, especially the swagger set, such as themurdered Barons, the crime-stained Countesses, and the Earls whocame over with the Conqueror, and assassinated their relatives, anddied raving mad.
Hollow moans and fiendish grins are, one may be sure, energeticallypractised up. Blood-curdling shrieks and marrow-freezing gesturesare probably rehearsed for weeks beforehand. Rusty chains and gorydaggers are over-hauled, and put into good working order; andsheets and shrouds, laid carefully by from the previous year'sshow, are taken down and shaken out, and mended, and aired.
Oh, it is a stirring night in Ghostland, the night of December thetwenty-fourth!
Ghosts never come out on Christmas night itself, you may havenoticed. Christmas Eve, we suspect, has been too much for them;they are not used to excitement. For about a week after ChristmasEve, the gentlemen ghosts, no doubt, feel as if they were all head,and go about making solemn resolutions to themselves that they willstop in next Christmas Eve; while lady spectres are contradictoryand snappish, and liable to burst into tears and leave the roomhurriedly on being spoken to, for no perceptible cause whatever.
Ghosts with no position to maintain—mere middle-class ghosts—occasionally, I believe, do a little haunting on off-nights: onAll-hallows Eve, and at Midsummer; and some will even run up for amere local event—to celebrate, for instance, the anniversary ofthe hanging of somebody's grandfather, or to prophesy a misfortune.
He does love prophesying a misfortune, does the average Britishghost. Send him out to prognosticate trouble to somebody, and heis happy. Let him force his way into a peaceful home, and turn thewhole house upside down by foretelling a funeral, or predicting abankruptcy, or hinting at a coming disgrace, or some other terribledisaster, about