The wraith of the present carries with him more vital energy than his
predecessors, is more athletic in his struggles with the unlucky wights
he visits, and can coerce mortals to do his will by the laying on of
hands as well as by the look or word. He speaks with more emphasis and
authority, as well as with more human naturalness, than the earlier
ghosts. He has not only all the force he possessed in life, but in many
instances has an access of power, which makes man a poor protagonist for
him. Algernon Blackwood's spirits of evil, for example, have a more
awful potentiality than any living person could have, and their will to
harm has been increased immeasurably by the accident of death. If the
facts bear out the fear that such is the case in life as in fiction,
some of our social customs will be reversed. A man will strive by all
means to keep his deadly enemy alive, lest death may endow him with
tenfold power to hurt. Dark discarnate passions, disembodied hates, work
evil where a simple ghost might be helpless and abashed. Algernon
Blackwood has command over the spirits of air and fire and wave, so that
his pages thrill with beauty and terror. He has handled almost all known
aspects of the supernatural, and from his many stories he has selected
for this volume _The Willows_ as the best example of his ghostly art.

Apparitions are more readily recognizable at present than in the past,
for they carry into eternity all the disfigurements or physical
peculiarities that the living bodies possessed--a fact discouraging to
all persons not conspicuous for good looks. Freckles and warts, long
noses and missing limbs distinguish the ghosts and aid in crucial
identification. The thrill of horror in Ambrose Bierce's story, _The
Middle Toe of the Right Foot_, is intensified by the fact that the dead
woman who comes back in revenge to haunt her murderer, has one toe
lacking as in life. And in a recent story a surgeon whose desire to
experiment has caused him needlessly to sacrifice a man's life on the