with letters from Manly Wade Wellman, Virginia Combs, Edward Goodell and Russell E. Nihlean

“ I think that the world don't owe anybody a damn thing but a man has a right to take from the world if he can.
I, like Chester Gunnerson, have loved women and they have laughed at me when my back was turned, as they did him, for a filthy cripple. And it has hurt me as it hurt him. That is why I could not help but to extend to him my fullest sympathy.
In your tale a ghost brings solace to Chester Gunnerson. When I am wounded to the quick, a dream brings rest to me. ”

“ The ghost story per se is not necessarily a horror story, because a great many or nearly all of them can be read without any psychic discomfort. The final desideratum of the horror story is that this feeling should be translated to the hair on the back of the neck—that is, physically experienced. This feat is accomplished about once in a literary coon's age, so that it is not strange that in the following collection only one has this effect on me. I shall not name it; but I think the reader will discover it. ”

“ Ghost stories, weird stories and horror stories, he says, are three differently feathered birds—and while the horror story is almost invariably weird, the ghost and weird tales are seldom horrible.
There are, you will be glad to hear, no stories about Mars or monkeymen. Instead, the book contains horror tales that would reduce the temperature of a smelting plant—and humorous fantasies to balance off the "grims" with "grins" that are really laugh making. ”