“‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ is the pointless question often addressed by those who are incapable of feeling ghostly influences to—I will not say the ghost-seer, always a rare bird, but—the ghost-feeler, the person sensible of invisible currents of being certain places and at certain hours.
“The celebrated reply (I forget whose): ‘No, I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’m afraid of them.’”
So begins Wharton’s preface to her final collection of stories, one that collected many of her previously published ghost stories as well as her final completed work, “All Souls,’” the only new story in the collection. Ghost stories were a life-long preoccupation for Wharton and it’s only fitting that this was published two months after she died on August 11, 1937.
Published in October 1937