Green Tea and Other Ghost Stories, by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (collection pub. 1993)
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Caution: spoilers.

First I should say that the link I provide here to Wikipedia is actually about an earlier story collection with the same title as the book I have. The earlier collection includes fifteen stories, but the one I have only has four (three of which are in the earlier collection, and one which is not). I also want to say that I don't actually recall when or where I first got this book. It could have been in the 1990s or the early 2000s. I think I tried reading it soon after I got it, but I don't remember whether I finished it or not (and it's possible I didn't actually read it at all, in spite of intending to). Anyway, I finally decided to make a point of definitely reading it in October 2015. I read one story each Friday of the month, leading up to Halloween (which was on Saturday). And now that I've completed it, I must say, I was a bit underwhelmed. In fact I feel I'm being slightly generous in rating it even with a single smiley ("kind of liked"). I actually think the writing style is pretty good, but I'm afraid I wasn't all that entertained by any of the stories, though they weren't actually bad....

Green Tea (pub. 1869)
The story is presented as... something the author (or an unnamed narrator) found in the papers of a former employer of his, named Dr. Martin Hesselius. It's sort of constructed from a series of letters Hesselius had written to a friend of his (a Professor Van Loo), so in a way, Hesselius becomes the narrator. And Hesselius writes of how he met a man named Reverend Jennings. And Jennings told Hesselius about a sort of demon or spirit or something, a red-eyed monkey that only Jennings could see. This monkey had haunted him off and on for some time, before he met Hesselius. Dr. Hesselius planned on treating what he saw as a mental illness Jennings had, but before he could begin, Jennings died. Apparently, Jennings cut his own throat. The story concludes with a rather stuffy medical rumination on the case (and cases like it). I'm left wondering if there really was a demon tormenting Jennings, or if Hesselius was correct in his belief that it was merely an affliction of his mind. I got the impression that the author intended the latter (and might be dismayed that I see any ambiguity in the story at all), but I suppose it doesn't matter much. Either way, the man died, so it's still a scary story, but if it was mental illness, then I don't know that it really counts as a ghost story. And either way, I really only see it as sort of academically scary for the reader (though it was undoubtedly and understandably terrifying to Jennings himself). I don't know, maybe it would seem scarier to someone reading it when it was published, in the nineteenth century. Speaking of which, the story is, naturally, written in a style of voice one might expect from people in that century. Which is to say, from a modern perspective, overly circuitous in both dialogue and narration. (I suppose it's up to the reader whether this becomes a distraction that makes the story less frightening or even dry and boring, or whether it adds to the creepiness of the tale. Personally, I lean towards the former, in this case; though it's quite possible for me to find the latter to be the case, in other stories from the period.) But I will say the story is not without a bit of humor. Oh, and I should mention that the title is derived from Dr. Hesselius's belief that Jennings's mental affliction was induced by drinking too much green tea. (This makes the story seem patently absurd, to me, but then... I guess the doctor's theory sort of involved an intersection of natural and spiritual causes, though that didn't make much sense to me, either.)

Squire Toby's Will (pub. 1868)
An old squire named Toby Marston dies and leaves his estate, Gylingden Hall, to his younger son, Charles. This leads to court battles between Charles and his older brother, Scroope, who contests the will. Charles ultimately wins, and there'll be bad blood between the brothers ever after. Meanwhile, Charles lives in Gylingden Hall with some servants, mainly a butler named Tom Cooper, who had served Squire Toby for many years, and now continued to serve Squire Charles. One day, the two of them meet a stray dog, whom Cooper dislikes, but Charles takes a liking to him, and sort of adopts him. Sometime after that, Charles starts having nightmares of his late father talking to him, sort of in the form of the dog. And... well, lots of other strange things happen, especially after Charles discovers a hidden will that would have left the estate to Scroope, after all. And he isn't sure what to do about it, but his greed gets the better of his conscience, so he ultimately destroys the will. And... yeah, like I said, more strange things happen. His sleep continues to be haunted, and the servants hear strange things, and... I dunno what else to say. This story definitely seems more than the first story to probably involve actual ghosts, though it's still left somewhat ambiguous. I guess it was rather spooky, particularly with the detailed descriptions of the whole atmosphere of the place, and everything. But I really got to feeling like it dragged on too long. There were any number of places where I felt like the story could have been wrapped up, but it just kept going. I mean, of course it eventually ended. I won't say how it ended, but the point is... I felt like that exact ending could have come sooner than it did. Still, it wasn't a bad story. I probably liked it a bit more than the first one.

The Fortunes of Sir Robert Ardagh (pub. 1838)
This has the subtitle "Being a Second Extract from the Papers of the Late Father Purcell." (It's the second of twelve stories written between 1838 and 1840, though this is the only one I've read, of course.) It consists of two different accounts of something that supposedly happened in the eighteenth century. It begins with a description of a stretch of countryside in Ireland, where there's a castle owned by a family called Ardagh. The last heir of the family was Sir Robert, who went abroad and sometime later returned home. Both accounts say he left and later returned, and both stories end with his eventual mysterious death. But aside from that, both accounts are entirely different, including his personality in the time between his return and his death, and the nature of the death itself. Also, in the first account, Robert was single all his life, but in the second account, he married a woman named Emily. And both stories involve a strange person... who doesn't appear until immediately before Robert's death in the first account, and is presumably somehow responsible for his death. In the second account, this person has a name (Jacque), and acts as a servant of Robert's for some time... but disappears awhile before Robert's death. In both stories, there is never any clear understanding of who this person really is or how he became acquainted with Robert. And in both stories, it's not understood by those who knew Robert how or why he died. The reader might perhaps think he'd made some kind deal with the Devil (and Jacque might have been an agent of the Devil), but the author never makes this clear at all. In fact, he ends the story saying it is a matter of fact. (Presumably the second account more closely resembles reality than the first.) Though... I really don't know what to think. Nor can I quite manage to care.

Sir Dominick's Bargain (pub. 1872)
The narrator relates a story of a time he was traveling in Ireland in 1838. Near a small village, he saw the ruins of a grand old mansion, and became curious. So he went to look around in the house, and after a bit of exploration, he was surprised to be joined by a hunchbacked old man. The man told him a story he'd heard from his grandfather, who was a butler there a hundred years ago, when the last master of the mansion, Sir Dominick Sarsfield, was killed. The story is of how Sir Dominick gambled his fortune away, then left for a time. And when he returned a few years later, he was planning on killing himself. He took a walk out in the woods, but met the Devil (or possibly a servant of the Devil, I wasn't sure about that, but we'll say it was the Devil). He offered Sir Dominick a bargain, which worked out pretty much as deals with the Devil are wont to do. I reckon I needn't say anything specific about it. But I will say that there is a mildly amusing twist of timing that briefly let Sir Dominick think he'd gotten out of the bargain, in the end.

And... I guess there's nothing else I can say about the final story, or the book as a whole. I'm glad to have finally read it, and I might consider reading something else by Le Fanu, someday, such as "Uncle Silas" or "Carmilla" (the latter of which was adapted into a webseries in 2014, of which I watched the first several episodes, earlier this month, entirely by coincidence).