Voices of the Ghost II: Mysterious Meetings

"The Vacant Lot" by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
From the time that the editor of Harper's Bazaar overlooked Freeman's cramped handwriting, difficult to read, and published the story "Two Old Lovers", Mary Wilkins Freeman never looked back. Her Vermont and Massachusetts background forms an important part of many of her stories. This story is both a ghost story and a mystery, and the mystery is as interesting as the ghost story. It is, quite literally, a matter of haunted ground, of old wrongs done, of old blood sunk in the earth that will not lie quiet. The listener, indeed, may also have a hard time lying quiet!

"On the Brighton Road" by Richard Middleton
Richard Barham Middleton was once known as a poet, having published two volumes of poetry in the early 1910s, but now is remembered for his ghost stories. His life was cut short by his own hand at the age of 29, before any of his work had been published. Friends, admirers, and family championed his work after his death, and it has continued to appear in anthologies. This story has a very subtle kind of horror to it. One figure is limping beside a lonely road; another, walking the same road, is down on his luck and with few prospects. They form a bond, and it turns out there is a very dark side to that bond - one that may reach past death itself!

"Sister Johanna" by Amelia B. Edwards
A woman looks on as her capricious young sister agrees to marry one man, and then runs away with his handsome younger brother. When the man she jilted returns after a long and mysterious absence, an even more mysterious meeting, in the dead of night, leaves the two women to wonder, and to mourn, for the rest of their lives. More a story of character than a story of terror, Amelia Edwards nevertheless does not fail to leave her listeners with a chill.