"[A] classic work. . . . Louis Jones is a master of prose, and while he has certainly come upon additional tales of the restless dead since 1959, the original selection is as fresh and effective as ever. There are over 200 stories in the book, divided into six sections, presented in a smoothly flowing narrative. Some of the stories are from Europe and other parts of the United States, but most are of New York State origin. Jones does not believe in the supernatural; he is concerned about popular beliefs. His bibliography makes clear the scholarly underpinning of the work, and the excellent index is a useful tool for researchers, but most of the book's many thousand readers and re-readers have probably taken it simply as good gruesome fun."—New York History
Description
Hailed as one of the best books of ghost stories in the country when it was first published in 1959, Things That Go Bump in the Night is a timeless record of haunted history and restless spirits. Comprising over two hundred stories, the volume is a comprehensive archive of supernatural legends. Yet despite the wealth of observed psychic phenomena, Louis C. Jones underscores the importance of the transmission of oral traditions that continue to have a vigorous life of their own. The book reveals how the stories of ghosts are kept alive from generation to generation through their telling and retelling from Native American legend, the French and Indian wars, and the Civil War to the early days of the Erie Canal and World War II.
About the Author
Louis C. Jones was an authority on regional folklore and on ghost stories in particular. He was director of the New York State Historical Association in Cooperstown, New York. He is the author of Three Eyes on the Past and the editor of Growing Up in the Cooper Country.
June 1983