Peter Crowther has assembled a worthy new look at ghosts, real and imagined, through the eyes of some of the best writers now working in the realm of the horrific. These stories challenge the ordinary and the expected while acknowledging the legacies of Charles Dickens and M.R. James; in these pages you will find styles and structures that are traditional and those that are unique, but mostly you will find stories that are not simply about ghosts but that seem unerringly to confront the reader with the issue of their meaning.

Whatever we may believe, or disbelieve, about the existence of the supernatural, we make our own ghosts. If not, then the ghosts -- our past, our parents, our failed potential -- make us.

In the pages of this anthology you will find many well-made ghosts, summoned from the shadows of time -- and places beyond time -- for your entertainment and, perhaps, edification. Tonight the rain is made of words, not water, but it is full of ghosts, that tap and sigh... and listen for reply.