Up until recently, Freeman has been known primarily as a "feminist" writer, for her classic stories like "A New England Nun" and "The Revolt of Mother". However, she also wrote many well-crafted supernatural stories which have only recently begun to attract appreciative critical attention. These stories combine pragmatism and supernaturalism and are very much in the tradition of an "Americanized" Gothic.

Freeman also used the ghost story as a means of examining, indirectly, the pressures which often silenced or devalued women and their concerns. This collection contains six significant New England ghost stories which contain buried comments on the life of women at the turn of the century.

The stories included are:

"The Wind in the Rose Bush"

"The Shadows on the Wall"

"Luella Miller"

"The Southwest Chamber"

"The Vacant Lot"

"The Lost Ghost"