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Attribution and publication
Twenty-Five Ghost Stories was compiled and edited by W. Bob Holland and published by J. S. Ogilvie in 1904. Its opening pages identify a collection of different writers rather than one anonymous author. Holland’s preface discusses the appeal of frightening stories and specifically names Edgar Allan Poe and Guy de Maupassant among the contributors. His editorial framing encourages readers to consider how a story produces a supernatural effect, even when its events might admit an ordinary explanation.
A compiler’s collection
Holland’s role is that of compiler and editor. His preface makes pleasurable fright a point of contact between different kinds of story and their audience. The collection should not be treated as one anonymous author’s expression of experience or belief. Editorial selection creates affinities without removing differences, placing unexpected appearances beside ominous objects and familiar places that have become difficult to explain.
From confession to anecdote
Compiled by W. Bob Holland, this collection gathers twenty-five tales of ghosts, ominous objects, strange appearances, and experiences whose meaning unsettles those who encounter them. Poe's 'The Black Cat' opens the volume with a narrator whose account makes ordinary domestic circumstances terrifying. Other pieces move through haunted inns, railway travel, old houses, photographs, and encounters with apparent visitors from beyond the grave. The variety includes different degrees of seriousness and different relationships between explanation and belief, rather than a single consistent supernatural world. Holland's preface presents the appeal as the pleasurable shiver shared by readers of many ages. Taken in that spirit, the anthology offers a sampling of the devices through which popular storytelling turns curiosity into apprehension. English anthology compiled and edited by W. Bob Holland.
How a shiver is made
Ask what a narrator expects you to accept before a disturbing event occurs. A confident report, a confession, and an account repeated from someone else establish different relations of trust. Notice how ordinary objects acquire importance through repetition or delay. After a tale ends, consider whether its explanation resolves the unease or changes its source. Comparing these effects reveals more than assuming every entry follows the same supernatural rules.