Though best known for his heartwarming holiday tales and sweeping social novels such as A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations, Charles Dickens was a prolific writer who was always willing to experiment with new styles. The chilling tales collected in Three Ghost Stories are a result of his brief but successful foray into the mystery and detective genres.

Under none of the accredited ghostly circumstances, and environed by none of the conventional ghostly surroundings, did I first make acquaintance with the house which is the subject of this Christmas piece.

I saw it in the daylight, with the sun upon it. There was no wind, no rain, no lightning, no thunder, no awful or unwonted circumstance, of any kind, to heighten its ef-fect. More than that: I had come to it direct from a railway station: it was not more than a mile distant from the railway station; and, as I stood outside the house, looking back upon the way I had come, I could see the goods train running smoothly along the embankment in the valley. I will not say that everything was utterly commonplace, because I doubt if anything can be that, except to utterly commonplace people—and there my vanity steps in.