The Phantom ‘Rickshaw, and Other Ghost Stories

Four stories drawn from Kipling’s years as a young journalist in British India, each shading the everyday world into something stranger. In the title tale a colonial officer is haunted by the ghost of the woman he jilted, her spectral rickshaw trailing him through the hill station of Simla. Another traveler stumbles into a sand-walled pit from which no one escapes, while a third narrator meets, or believes he meets, a ghost in a lonely rest-house. The volume also holds ‘The Man Who Would Be King,’ Kipling’s celebrated story of two British adventurers who set themselves up as rulers in remote Kafiristan. Together the tales blend the supernatural, the uncanny, and the darkly adventurous. Free PDF and EPUB editions are offered here.