title: Classic Ghost Stories
author: Charles Dickens
description: The sensitivity and sentiment of bygone days are evoked with satisfying results. Michael Williams's richly textured British voice perfectly reflects prose crafted by Dickens, Bierce, Stoker, and others. Relive the harrowing and hushed tale of Bierce's "Moonlit Road," the blackly humorous "Judge's House" by Stoker, and the fear and sorrow in "The Mystery of the Semi-Detached" by E. Nesbit. The writing is as engrossing as Williams's close-to-the-mike, sometimes gruff, occasionally strained, sometimes gentle voice. D.J.B.  AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- <i>Copyright  AudioFile, Portland, Maine</i>
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  The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin
  
  
  CHAPTER I—The Gift Bestowed
  
  CHAPTER II—The Gift Diffused
  
  CHAPTER III—The Gift Reversed
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  # The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin
  
  
  ### Charles Dickens
  
  
  This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
  * CHAPTER I—The Gift Bestowed
  
  
  * CHAPTER II—The Gift Diffused
  
  
  * CHAPTER III—The Gift Reversed
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
      
  
  Transcribed from the 1907 J. M. Dent and Co. edition by David Price,
  
  
  email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
  
  
    
  
  
  ### CHAPTER I—The Gift Bestowed
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Everybody said so.
  
  
  Far be it from me to assert that what everybody says must be true.
  
  
  Everybody is, often, as likely to be wrong as right. In the general
  
  
  experience, everybody has been wrong so often, and it has taken, in
  
  
  most instances, such a weary while to find out how wrong, that the
  
  
  authority is proved to be fallible. Everybody may sometimes be right;
  
  
  "but that's no rule