It may seem at first illogical that a radical theory of rationalism and consciousness, fit to puncture ahistoricism & the nostrums of both right & Fabian simpering, should be, in inchoate form, outlined in the short introduction to a 1936 collection of horror stories.

‘The writer of the ghost story should be a rational man, otherwise he cannot build up the matter-of-fact framework which is so horrifyingly shattered by the incursion of the Impossible. Any credulity would make his readers sceptical from the start; and he would underestimate the amount of preliminary mining and sapping of their confidence in the rational which it is necessary to undertake before he shows his hand. But though he must be by habit a materialist, he must be one with chinks in his armour. He must be devoid of simple faith and also of completely honest doubt - in other words, he must be a typically modern writer.’

• C. St. John Sprigg, Uncanny Stories 

Christopher St. John Sprigg = a ghost identity of the incomparable Christopher Caudwell.