Wilkie Collins' short
story, _The Yellow Mask_, included in the series called _After
Dark_, is another experiment in the same kind. A jealous woman
appears among the dancers at a ball, wearing a waxen cast of the
face of the man's dead wife. The short story, in which the author
deliberately shakes our nerves and then soothes away our fears by
accounting naturally for startling phenomena, is an amazingly
popular type. It reappears continually in different guises.
Occasionally it merges into pleasant buffoonery. _Die
Geistertodtenglocke_, for instance, a story in the _Dublin
University Magazine_ (1862), is a burlesque, in which the
mysterious tolling of a bell is explained by the discovery that a
cow strolled into the ruin to eat the hay with which the rope was
mended. But, judiciously handled, this type of story makes a
strong appeal to human beings who like to know how much of the
terrible and painful they can endure, and who yet must ultimately
be reassured.
Another group of short tales of terror consists of those which
purport to be faithful renderings of the beliefs of simple
people. To this category belong Allan Cunningham's _Traditional
Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry_, which first
appeared, with one exception, in the _London Magazine_ (1821-23).
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