Some Strange Experience: The Reminiscences of a Ghost-Seer

Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904)
From Lafcadio Hearn: American Writings

Interesting links:
Interview with Christopher Benfrey, editor of Lafcadio Hearn: American Writings (PDF; The Library of America)

Lafcadio Hearn: Collector’s Bibliography, Title Index, and More (Steve Trussel’s Web page devoted to Hearn’s years in Japan)

Buy this book:
Lafcadio Hearn: American Writings (Save 20%)

Also available:
American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to Now (Save $15 on the 2-volume boxed set)

A world traveler who lived in the United States for nearly two decades, Lafcadio Hearn earned a reputation in Cincinnati and New Orleans as a journalist who portrayed colorful local inhabitants and reported on sensational, violent crimes. Shortly after he was fired from the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer for marrying Alathea Foley, a black woman and former slave, he went to work for the Cincinnati Commercial , where he published his articles either anonymously or under the pseudonym Ozias Midwinter (after a character in the Wilkie Collins novel Armadale). The following is one of his early articles for the Commercial, an interview with a reluctant “medium” whose “gift of conversation” brings to life recollections of a lifetime of frightful experiences.

“They do say the dead never come back again,” she observed half dreamingly; “but then I have seen such queer things!”

She was a healthy, well built country girl, whom the most critical must have called good looking; robust and ruddy, despite the toil of life in a boarding-house kitchen, but with a strangely thoughtful expression in her large dark eyes, as though she were ever watching the motions of somebody who cast no shadow, and was invisible to all others. Spiritualists were wont to regard her as a strong “medium,” although she had a peculiar dislike of being so regarded. She had never learned to read or write, but possessed naturally a wonderful wealth of verbal description, a more than ordinarily vivid memory, and a gift of conversation which would have charmed an Italian improvisatore. These things we learned during an idle half hour passed one summer’s evening in her company on the kitchen stairs . . . If you don't see the full story below, click here to download it—free! (PDF)