High Spirits

World Fantasy Award winner 1984.

Robertson Davies first hit upon the notion of writing ghost stories when he joined the University of Toronto's Massey College as a Master. Wishing to provide entertainment at the College's Gaudy Night, the annual Christmas party, Professor Davies created a "spooky story," which he read aloud to the gathering. That story, "Revelation from a Smoky Fire," is the first in this wonderful, haunting collection. A tradition quickly became established and, for eighteen years, Davies delighted and amused the Gaudy Night guests with his tales of the supernatural. Here, gathered together in one volume, are those eighteen stories, just as Davies first read them.

Contents:

• How the High Spirits Came About: A Chapter of Autobiography (essay) by Robertson Davies
• Revelation from a Smoky Fire
• The Ghost Who Vanished By Degrees
• The Great Queen is Amused
• The Night of the Three Kings
• The Charlottetown Banquet
• When Satan Goes Home for Christmas
• Refuge of Insulted Saints
• Dickens Digested
• The Kiss of Khrushchev
• The Cat That Went to Trinity
• The Ugly Spectre of Sexism
• The Pit Whence Ye Are Digged
• The Perils of the Double Sign
• Conversations with the Little Table
• The King Enjoys His Own Again
• The Xerox in the Lost Room
• Einstein and the Little Lord
• Offer of Immortality