Edited by David Marcus
The Irish have a long and impressive tradition of ghost-storytelling reaching back to Gaelic tales of the banshees. David Marcus has gathered together a ghostly cast more inclined to twentieth-century methods of haunting, from the spirit who taps out SOS signals on central-heating pipes to the woman who does her spectral knitting on the screen of an unplugged television set.
The ghost in William Trevor's story has its genesis in adolescent guilt, while in Joyce Cary's tale, it is only through the innocent eyes of an eight-year-old boy that his grandfather's spirit can be seen. A gentle music teacher's hands are taken over by those of a stranger in Lennox Robinson's story, and Elizabeth Bowen introduces a vengeful aunt who haunts her selfish niece through a pair of gloves.
