A misanthropic bachelor who treasures his solitude takes on the care of a joyless young girl who begins to play with “imaginary friends” when they move to an old country house.

Burrage’s lesser-known masterpiece, “Playmates,” communing with ghosts also changes the character for the better. Of the glaring, disfigured ghost Brydon tells her, “He has a million a year. When he is found at daybreak by Alice Staverton, the devoted friend from his youth, it finally dawns on him what this woman means to him. When he at last corners the specter of what he might have become, the sight is so hideous that he faints. He’s determined to meet the man he would have become if he had stayed at home. In Henry James’s “The Jolly Corner,” an American returns to New York after 33 years and wonders if he has made a mistake in living abroad so long. From scholars, mystics, theologians, and novelists, she comes to accept that dream and reality aren’t competitors but reciprocal sources of consciousness. She buttresses the validity of these night visits by reading about people like herself who can commute between worlds. The woman clings fast to the weekday visits of a phantom boy who seems to be the same age as the one thrust into her arms that one time.

While she was in the hospital, a nurse mistakenly laid a new baby in her arms and said, “Here is your little boy.” Soon after, I wrote the story “Dream Children,” which combined my friend’s horrific experience with the story of a woman’s deep country life interrupted on weekends by the arrival of her husband with houseguests and city gossip. The other thing that happened during that time was that a friend had a late miscarriage for the seventh time. Once I came upon men working to build something, and one of them gave me a threatening scowl. During some of my float-downs, the house and its environs were in a more primitive state. It became clear that these night figures did not exist on my terms. Sometimes one would slowly turn around and appear to notice me, but usually not. I never knew if they were going to be friendly or unfriendly. When I was on the edge of sleep, I found I could rise from the bed and float down the stairs and through the house, encountering figures who also lived there. During the week days I was by myself and at night, I started to have a strange sort of dream experience. I rented a 200-year-old Dutch stone house, all but empty except for the necessities. In the summer of my 36th year I made a daring change in my life and moved to a farming community in the Hudson Valley.

Ghost stories anime