From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A ghost story may be any piece of fiction, or drama, or an account of an experience, that
includes a ghost, or simply
takes as a premise the
possibility of ghosts or characters' belief in them. Colloquially,
the term can refer to any kind of scary story. In a narrower sense,
the ghost story has been developed as a short story format, within genre fiction. It
is a form of supernatural fiction, and is often
a horror story. While ghost stories are often
explicitly meant to be scary, they have been written to serve all
sorts of purposes, from comedy to morality tales.
Ghosts often appear in the narrative as sentinels or prophets of things to come.
Whatever their uses, the ghost story is in some format present in
all cultures around the world, and may be passed down orally or in
written form.
Types
Jack Sullivan's 1978 book Elegant Nightmares: The
English Ghost Story from Le Fanu to Blackwood presented
several sub-classifications of English-language ghost stories:[1]
- The traditional ghost story has its roots in
folklore, but its prose style is characteristic of the romanticised
writers of the gothic tradition that preceded it. Authors include
Charles
Dickens, Sheridan Le Fanu, Mary
Elizabeth Braddon, Mrs. Henry Wood, F. Marion Crawford, Charlotte
Riddell, Margaret Oliphant, Sarah Orne
Jewett, Rhoda Broughton, Amelia Edwards,
and Elizabeth Gaskell. Sheridan Le
Fanu's Green Tea is an example from his collection
In a
Glass Darkly, which also includes the vampire story Carmilla. Another example is Mary
Elizabeth Braddon's At Crighton Abbey.
- In the psychological ghost story, the emphasis
is on the perceiving consciousness of the victim, instead of the
actions of the ghost. These tales frequently call into question the
reliability and mental stability of the protagonist, and may
investigate social issues. Authors include Henry James, Oliver Onions, Walter De La Mare, Edith Wharton, L.P. Hartley, Vernon Lee, Violet Hunt, and Robert Aickman.
Examples include Henry
James' The Turn of the Screw, Oliver Onions'
The Beckoning Fair One, and Vernon Lee's Amour Dure. Charles
Dickens' The Signalman is notable for
exploiting the fear of new technology in the form of the railways,
and the likelihood of an accident. Dickens' central character
experiences foreknowledge of an impending accident three times from
a spectre, the last ending with his own demise.
- The antiquarian ghost story was born from more
folkloric origins and in this sense is more closely tied to the
traditional ghost story. Many of its practitioners were scholars or
clergymen, and they discarded the romanticised prose of the
traditional school, favoring realism and gentle escalation of the
supernatural within the narrative, typically after some ancient
medieval relic has been disturbed in some way. Authors include M.R.
James, Arthur Gray, A.N.L. Munby, E.G. Swain, Christopher Woodforde, Cynthia
Asquith and R.H. Malden. The genre influenced on writers such
as Russell Kirk,
E.F.
Benson, H. Russell Wakefield and Ramsey
Campbell. An example is M.R. James' Oh, whistle and
I'll come to you, my lad from his book Ghost Stories of an
Antiquary.
Around the
world
England
In "Some Remarks on Ghost Stories"[2] (1929), M. R. James identifies five key features of
the English
ghost story, as summarized by Prof. Frank Coffman for a course in
popular imaginative literature:
- The pretense of truth
- "A pleasing terror"
- No gratuitous bloodshed or sex
- No "explanation of the machinery"
- Setting: "those of the writer's (and reader's) own day"
Japan
The
Tale of Genji contains ghost stories. In English Victorian
society, Lafcadio Hearn published his collection of Japanese folktales, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies
of Strange Things.
Arabia
The Arabian Nights
contains a number of ghost stories,
often involving jinns, ghouls and corpses. Other medieval Arabic
literature such as the Encyclopedia of the
Brethren of Purity also contain ghost stories.
See also
Texts
- Felton, D. Haunted Greece and Rome: Ghost Stories from
Classical Antiquity, University of Texas Press, 1999.
- Medieval ghost stories : an anthology of miracles, marvels
and prodigies / comp. and ed. by Andrew Joynes, Woodbridge: Boydell
press, 2003.
References
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