There Is a Tide

by Jack Finney

Release: 2 August 1952
Format: Short Story
Genre: Fantasy
Audience: Adults
Content: Debatable Time Travel
Original Language: English

A sleepless man, struggling with a business decision, sees an earlier occupant of his apartment who is struggling with a decision of his own.

— Michael Main

I saw the ghost in my own living room, alone, between three and four in the morning, and I was there, wide awake, for a perfectly sound reason: I was worrying.

DEBUT

“There Is a Tide,” in Collier’s, 2 August 1952.

VARIANTS

1 English variant

TRANSLATIONS

Translations to French, Italian, Japanese

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Time Periods

Circa AD 1940 to 1949: time of Mr. Harris. L. Gruener
Circa AD 1950 to 1959: time of the narrator

Time Travel Methods

Emotional Outcries through Time

Themes

Reconstructing or Re-Emergence of the Past: The ghostlike qualities of the image imply that “. . . under the right conditions [the past] can be evoked again, almost like a recording that is left behind . . .”

Groupings

Collier’s (periodical)
Fiction (France) (periodical): #20, July 1957

TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY (SPOILERS!)

From an apartment on E. 88th Street, New York City, 1940 ⋙ to the same apartment, 1952. Multiple trips. Note: a vision of Mr. Gruener, over a period of three nights.
From an apartment on E. 88th Street, New York City, 1952 ⋙ to the same apartment, 1940. Note: the narrator’s outcry.