A double relation exists between the literature and the records of the Psychical Research Society. Lacy Collison-Morley, in his _Greek and Roman Ghost Stories_, speaks of the similarity between ancient tales of spirits and records of recent instances. "There are in the Fourth Book of _Gregory the Great's Dialogues_ a number of stories of the passing of souls which are curiously like some of those collected by the Psychical Research Society," he says. Possibly human personality is much the same in all lands and all times.
Conversely, some of the best examples of ghostly literature have had their inspiration in the records of the society, Henry James's _The Turn of the Screw_ being a notable example. Algernon Blackwood, that extraordinary adapter of psychic material to fiction, makes frequent mention of the Psychical Research Society, and uses many aspects of the psychical in his fiction. Innumerable stories, novels, plays and poems have been written to show the nearness of the dead to the living, and the thinness of the veil that separates the two worlds. There is deep pathos in the concept of the longing felt by the dead and living alike to speak with each other, to rend the dividing veil, which adds a poignancy to literature, even for readers incredulous of the possibility of such communication. There are many who are unconvinced of the reality of the messages in _Raymond_, for instance,--yet who could fail to be touched by the delicate art with which Barrie suggests the dead son's return in his play, _The Well-Remembered Voice_? While one may be repelled by what he feels is fraud and trickery in some of the psychic records, it is impossible not to be moved by such an impressive piece of symbolism as Granville Barker's _Souls on Fifth_, where the lonely, futile spirits of the dead are represented as hovering near the place they knew the best, seeking piteously to win some recognition from the living. The repulsive aspects of spirit manifestations have been treated many times and with power, as in Joseph Hergesheimer's _The Meeker Ritual_, to give one very recent example. The subject has interested the minds of many writers who have dealt with it satirically or sympathetically, or with a curious mixture of scoffing and respect, as did Browning in _Sludge, the Medium_. Even such pronounced realists as William Dean Howells and Hamlin Garland have written novels dealing with attempts at spirit communication.
