SOURCE: Dziemianowicz, Stefan. “Old Man's Beard.” All Hallows 13 (1996): 69-71.

In the following essay, Dziemianowicz reviews Wakefield's second collection of ghost stories, Old Man's Beard, noting specifically the author's use of humor as a narrative device.

Old Man's Beard, H. Russell Wakefield's second collection of ghost stories, was first published in 1929. Its American edition was retitled Others Who Returned, no doubt to echo the title of his first collection, They Return at Evening, which had enjoyed modest success the year before. However, the reader who picked up the second volume on the strength of impressions made by the first would have noticed some fundamental differences between the two besides their contents. For one thing, the stories in Old Man's Beard are mostly shorter, where the shortest selections in They Return at Evening had run to 4,000 to 5,000 words, Wakefield's second collection was filled out with quite a few tales that...