Robert Aickman Quotes

“While it is true that serious psychic research (as distinct from psychological) and the ghost stories of fiction are far apart, yet the latter would lose much, and become mere playthings, if the former had nothing to investigate. It is my belief and my experience that “paranormal phenomena” do occur; and my opinion that the future well-being of a man might be forwarded by more attention being paid to them. There is evidence that a mystical, clairvoyant faculty of a most practical kind is commonly taken for granted in many “primitive” societies, from pre-communist Tibet to the Hebrides; and is merely bred out and killed off by industrialism, compulsory education, and the belief that every question has an answer [8].”
― Gary William Crawford, ROBERT AICKMAN: AN INTRODUCTION

“As an antidote to daily living in a compulsorily egalitarian society, a good ghost story, against all appearances, can bring real joy. The reader may actually depart from it singing [7].”
― Gary William Crawford, ROBERT AICKMAN: AN INTRODUCTION

“Breton writes: Who am I? If this once I were to rely on a proverb, then perhaps everything would amount to knowing whom I “haunt”. . . . Such a word means much more than it says, makes me, still alive, play a ghostly part, evidently referring to what I must have ceased to be in order to be who I am. Hardly distorted in this sense, the word suggests that what I regard as the objective, more or less deliberate manifestations of my existence are merely the premises, within the limits of this existence, of an activity whose true extent is quite unknown to me. My image of the “ghost”, including everything conventional about its appearance as well as its blind submission to certain contingencies of time and place, is particularly significant for me as the finite representation of a torment that may be eternal”
― Gary William Crawford, ROBERT AICKMAN: AN INTRODUCTION

“In The Second Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, Aickman elaborates further his ideas: The good ghost story gives form and symbol to themes from the enormous areas of our own minds which we cannot directly discern, but which totally govern us; and also to the parallel forces of the external universe, about which we know so little, much less than people tell us [8]. He sees that modern man has spent his time avoiding his true nature, the mystery within himself and in the universe that makes him human.”
― Gary William Crawford, ROBERT AICKMAN: AN INTRODUCTION

“In his last years, he made himself available to counsel people distressed about their supernatural experiences. As he wrote to one of them: it is not a matter of disturbances emanating from outside, but of disturbances emerging unconsciously from within you. . . .”
― Gary William Crawford, ROBERT AICKMAN: AN INTRODUCTION

“He met a number of interesting young women, one of whom invited him back to her flat and showed him a particular “erotic exercise”
― Gary William Crawford, ROBERT AICKMAN: AN INTRODUCTION