The Ghost Ship And Other Ghost Stories Richard Middleton TALES OF TERROR "I thought it was queer when I saw a drowned sailor float by in the thin air with his hair and beard all full of bubbles. It was the first time I had seen anything quite like that at Fairfield." Middleton suffered from severe depression, known as melancholia. He spent the last nine months of his life in Brussels, where in December 1911 he took his life by poisoning himself with chloroform, which had been prescribed as a remedy for his condition. His literary reputation was kept alive by Edgar Jepson and Arthur Machen, the latter of whom wrote an introduction to Middleton's collection The Ghost Ship and Other Stories, and later by John Gawsworth. His stories have appeared in several anthologies. An encounter by Middleton with the young Raymond Chandler is said to have influenced the latter to postpone his career as writer. Chandler wrote, "Middleton struck me as having far more talent than I was ever likely to possess; and if he couldn't make a go of it, it wasn't very likely that I could."