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.Wording from the dust-wrapper of the first edition:'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.