In 'Farewell to all Those', the introduction to his 1961 collection STRAYERS FROM SHEOL, H. R. Wakefield stated 'I've written my last ghost story', continuing with the bleak sentence 'I believe ghost story writing to be a dying art.' However, he concluded his introduction on a more cheerful note, urging readers not to be too sure that 'none of the old magic endures'; and the fourteen stories collected in the original edition of the book show Wakefield to have been still very much at the top of his form. Indeed, STRAYERS FROM SHEOL opens with one of the author's finest and most frightening tales, the classic 'The Triumph of Death'.