A PLAGUE OF GHOSTS

Ghosts, dear reader, may frighten you, brighten you, tickle you or pickle you. Oh pilgrim into the afterlife, the spirits that shiver in your cellars and go bump in your attic may cause your teeth to chatter with terror -- and laughter.

However, may we suggest that they might also amuse you? Certainly John Kendrick Bangs hoped so In his day, the famous humorist put the grin back into Death's skull. In these droll stories and witty essays, there are as many winks and rib-pokes as goosebumps and horrors.

In the Mystery of My Grandmother's Hair Sofa we find a frosty Christmas Eve haunt bent on mischief.

Cigar-stealing ghosts romp in The Mystery of Barney O'Rourke.

Can you stand the most utterly obnoxious ghost in The Exorcism That Failed?

A man meets his own ghost in Thurlow's Christmas Story.