The Third Ghost Story Megapack

The improbable life story of Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) included a peculiarly gothic childhood in Ireland during which he was successively abandoned by his mother, his father and his guardian; two decades in the United States, where he worked as a journalist and was sacked for marrying a former slave; and a long period in Japan, where he married a Japanese woman and wrote about Japanese society and aesthetics for a Western readership. His ghost stories, which were drawn from Japanese folklore and influenced by Buddhist beliefs, appeared in collections throughout the 1890s and 1900s. He is a much celebrated figure in Japan.

Ambrose Bierce was an American writer, critic and war veteran. Bierce fought for the Union Army during the American Civil War, eventually rising to the rank of brevet major before resigning from the Army following an 1866 expedition across the Great Plains. Bierce’s harrowing experiences during the Civil War, particularly those at the Battle of Shiloh, shaped a writing career that included editorials, novels, short stories and poetry. Among his most famous works are “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” “The Boarded Window,” “Chickamauga,” and What I Saw of Shiloh. While on a tour of Civil-War battlefields in 1913, Bierce is believed to have joined Pancho Villa’s army before disappearing in the chaos of the Mexican Revolution.

W.W. Jacobs was a late 19th- early 20th century novelist, short story writer and playwright, best known for his horror classic, the short story "The Monkey's Paw," which was part of a collection of short fiction published in 1902 called "The Lady of the Barge." Jacobs mainly wrote humorous fiction, primarily about dockworkers and seafaring men, but he also had a taste for the macabre, writing a number of spooky and disturbing short stories. After World War I, he shifted from writing for magazines to adapting his stories for the stage. He would wind up writing eighteen plays in all, some on his own and some in collaboration with other writers. A number of his works were also adapted for the screen and Jacobs was occasionally involved in their creation as well. W.W. Jacobs died in London in 1943 at the age of seventy-nine.