They Return at Evening

The decomposing ghost of a murdered wife; the spectre of a dog, which answers to the most terrifying of whistles; evil in the tradition of M. R. James's Casting the Runes, as a lawyer seeks to avenge the death of a friend . . . These, and many more, are the ghosts which H. R. Wakefield has set to haunt us in his first book of supernatural stories, a landmark collection, now republished for the first time since 1928."He was one of the master writers of the ghost story of the first half of this century. He was one of the few English writers whose work spanned the period from the heyday of supernatural fiction in the 1920s to its re-emergence in the early 1960s." Pringle (ed. ): St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost & Gothic WritersWording from the dust-wrapper of the first 'The Author of The Ghost Stories of an Antiquary in the preface to one of his books expressed his lively distaste for benevolent ghosts, and ghosts with nice minds. The author profoundly agrees with this sentiment of the master, and, furthermore, he abominates the 'natural' explanation, a poisonous anti-climax. So this much can be said for his tales, that those Who Return therein are animated by undiluted malevolence, and no iconoclastic materialist has been allowed to cast a doubt on their credentials as genuine apparitions.