Hearn considered himself an American writer, though he was born on an island in the Ionian Sea to Greek and Irish parents, was raised in France and England and died a citizen of Japan. He lived for several years in New Orleans and explored its culture in fiction, journalism and even a cookbook. It is sometimes claimed that he invented New Orleans as a literary subject. This distinction would have to be shared with Cable, King and Chopin, but he did popularize a vision of the Crescent City as beautiful, haunted and exotic. His fascination with the weird and supernatural would continue in his writings about Japan and China.

Among Hearn's writings about New Orleans are several ghost stories, some set against a realistic background, others, like “The Ghostly Kiss,” written in a fantastic style that recalls Poe’s.

Text: Lafcadio Hearn, Fantastics and Other Fancies (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1914).

THE GHOSTLY KISS

The theatre was full. I cannot remember what they were playing. I did not have time to observe the actors. I only remember how vast the building seemed. Looking back, I saw an ocean of faces stretching away almost beyond the eye's power of definition to the far circles where the seats rose tier above tier in lines of illumination. The ceiling was blue, and in the midst a great mellow lamp hung suspended like a moon, at a height so lofty that I could not see the suspending chain. I fancied that the theatre was hung with hangings of black velvet, bordered with a silver trim fringe that glimmered like tears. The audience were all in white.

All in white!—I asked myself whether I was not in some theatre or tropical city—why all in white? I could not guess. I fancied at moments that I could perceive a moonlight landscape through far distant oriel windows, and the crests of palms casting moving shadows like gigantic spiders. The air was sweet with a strange and a new perfume; it was a drowsy air—a poppied air, in which the waving of innumerable white fans made no rustle, no sound.