The Phantom 'Rickshaw and Other Tales, also known as The Phantom 'Rickshaw & other Eerie Tales, is a collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling, first published in 1888.
The Phantom 'Rickshaw
After an affair with a Mrs. Agnes Keith-Wessington in Simla,
the narrator, Jack, repudiates her and eventually becomes engaged to
Miss Kitty Mannering. Yet Mrs. Wessington continually reappears in
Jack's life, begging him to reconsider, insisting that it was all just a
mistake. But Jack wants nothing to do with her and continues to spurn
her. Eventually Mrs. Wessington dies, much to Jack's relief. However,
some time thereafter he sees her old rickshaw
and assumes that someone has bought it. Then, to his astonishment, the
rickshaw and the men pulling it pass through a horse, revealing
themselves to be phantoms, bearing the departed ghost of Mrs.
Wessington. This leads Jack into increasingly erratic behavior which he
tries to cover up by concocting increasingly elaborate lies to assuage
Kitty's suspicions. Eventually a Dr. Heatherlegh takes him in, supposing
the visions to be the result of disease or madness. Despite their
efforts, Kitty and her family become increasingly suspicious and
eventually call off the engagement. Jack loses hope and begins wandering
the city aimlessly, accompanied by the ghost of Mrs. Wessington.
My Own True Ghost Story
The narrator, while staying at a dâk-bungalow in Katmal, India,
hears someone in the next room playing billiards. He assumes that it is
a group of doolie-bearers who've just arrived. The next morning he
complains, only to learn that there were no coolies in the dâk-bungalow
the night before. The owner then tells him that ten years ago it was a
billiard-hall. An engineer who'd been fond of the billiard hall had died
somewhere far from it and they suspected that it was his ghost that
occasionally came to visit it.
The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes
One
evening Morrowbie Jukes, an Englishman, is feeling a bit feverish and
the barking of the dogs outside his tent is upsetting him. So he mounts
his horse in order to pursue them. The horse bolts and they eventually
fall into a sandy ravine on the edge of a river. He awakens the next
morning to find himself in a village of the living dead, where people
who appear to have died of, for instance, cholera, but who revived when
their bodies were about to be burned, are imprisoned. He quickly learns
that it is impossible to climb out because of the sandy slope. And the
river is doubly treacherous with quicksand and a rifleman who will try
to pick them off. He recognizes one man there, a Brahmin named Gunga Dass. Gunga has become ruthless, but he does feed Jukes with dead crow.
Eventually Jukes discovered that another Englishman had been there and
died. On his corpse Jukes finds a note explaining how to safely get
through the quicksand. After Jukes explains it to Gunga, Gunga confesses
to murdering the Englishman for fear of being left behind. They plan
their escape for that evening, when the rifleman will be unable to see
them in the dark. When the time to escape arrives, Gunga knocks Jukes
unconscious and escapes alone. When Jukes awakes he is found by the boy
who kept his dogs and is helped to escape by means of a rope.
The Man Who Would Be King
The narrator, a journalist, meets two colorful characters, Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnahan, while on a train. Later they seek him out at his printing press in Lahore, for books or maps of Kafiristan.
He then plays witness to their vow to each other to become kings of
Kafiristan, a venture which he sees as ill-advised. Two years later
Peachey returns and informs the narrator that they indeed reached
Kafiristan. While there, were seen as gods and eventually Daniel is made
king. They taught the Kafiristanis how to use rifles and military
tactics. Eventually Dravot decides to take a Kafiristani woman to wife.
In her terror she bites him. Upon seeing him bleed, the priests declare
him not to be a god and the Kafiristanis immediately seek their deaths.
One clan chief, whom they call "Billy Fish" helps them to escape but
eventually they are caught and Daniel is thrown into a gorge to his
death. They crucified Peachey but then let him go when he survived. The
narrator puts Peachey in an asylum where he dies soon thereafter.
Joseph Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist.
Kipling's works of fiction include The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901), and many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888). His poems include "Mandalay" (1890), "Gunga Din" (1890), "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" (1919), "The White Man's Burden" (1899), and "If—" (1910). He is regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story; his children's books are classics of children's literature, and one
critic described his work as exhibiting "a versatile and luminous
narrative gift".
Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the United Kingdom, in
both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Henry James
said: "Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of
genius, as distinct from fine intelligence, that I have ever known."In 1907, at the age of 42, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize and its youngest recipient to date. He was also sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on several occasions for a knighthood, both of which he declined.