#selectedstories

Had he actually seen in silhouette the upper part of a head of some sort peering over the parapet? Nonesense, he told himself. And even if he had seen something, there were a thousand explanations which did not involve the supernatural or even true hallucination. Tomorrow he would take a good look and clear up the whole matter. If necessary, he would visit the roof personally, though he hardly knew where to find it and disliked in any case the idea of pampering a whim of fear.

It’s a rotten world, Miss Millick,” said Mr. Wran talking at the window. “Fit for another morbid growth of superstition. It’s time the ghosts, or whatever you call them, took over and began to rule of fear. They’d be no worse than men.

Of course, Mr. Wran was married and had a little child, but that didn’t prevent her from having daydreams.

I don’t mean that traditional kind of ghost. I mean a ghost from the world of today, with the soot of the factories in its face and the pounding of machinary in its soul. The kind that would haunt coal yards and slip around at night through deserted office buildings like this one. A real ghost. Not something out of books.

They might have been giants, but nobody noticed them; they were too odd, too misshapen, too smart.

…we feel that Leiber had spent a lifetime observing, and he was adept at turning the straw of memory into the bricks of imagination and of story.

We rarely get to thank those who shaped us.