Each volume in the Collector`s Library series has a specially commissioned Afterword, brief biography of the author and a further reading list. The Afterword for this edition of is by David Stuart Dickens` fascination with ghosts and the macabre is traced to his childhood, to the grim and ghoulish stories told him by his nursemaid, Mary Weller, whom he referred to as Mercy, `though she had none on me.` Along with the horrors of the `penny dreadful` magazine, The Terrific Register - a publication which made Dickens `unspeakably miserable and frightened the very wits out of my head` - the stories recounted by Weller were so powerful as to color Dickens` imagination and shape much of the enduring fiction he created. Here are chilling histories of coincidence, insanity and revenge.