Great Ghost Stories
10 by M. R. James
- “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”
- “Casting the Runes”
- “Count Magnus”
- “An Episode of Cathedral History”
- “The Haunted Doll's House”
- “A Warning to the Curious”
- “The Mezzotint”
- “Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook”
- “The Treasure of Abbott Thomas”
- “A School Story”
For about a century the best known writer of ghost stories in the English language has been M.R. James. James was a mediaeval scholar, and a provost at both King’s College at Cambridge and, later, Eton College; he was also a life-long bachelor, putting his time and attention to his work and his studies. At Christmas time, those left behind for the holidays would entertain themselves after Christmas dinner, and so James began writing ghost stories to read aloud.
Just to note: Not all ghost stories contain ghosts. Over time, through usage, the term, “ghost story” came to embrace any story of horror, though that seems to be changing, with “ghost story” coming more to mean horror stories with quiet, evocative story-telling, and not a lot of blood and gore. Certainly James’ stories do not all contain ghosts.
I split (re/)reading the
Collected Ghost Stories (Wordsworth) over a couple of Decembers and the stories above were among my favorites. James’ work sprang from the Victorian ghost stories of his youth like those by Dickens and, especially, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. In turn his work inspired other writers to try their hand at the ghost story.
20 not by M. R. James
- “The Signalman” by Charles Dickens
- “Mr. Justice Harbottle” by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
- “The Beckoning Fair One” by Oliver Onions
- “How Love Came to Professor Gildea” by Robert Hichens
- "The Middle Toe of the Right Foot” by Ambrose Bierce
- “Amor Dure” by Vernon Lee
- “Negotium Perambulans” by E. F. Benson
- “Pomegranate Seed” by Edith Wharton
- “The Jolly Corner” by Henry James
- “Smoke Ghost” by Fritz Leiber
- “The Lady on the Gray” by John Collier
- “A Visitor From Down Under” by L. P. Hartley
- “The Happy Autumn Fields” by Elizabeth Bowen
- “The Demon Lover” by Elizabeth Bowen
- “A Little Place Off the Edgeware Road” by Graham Greene
- “The Portobello Road” by Murial Spark
- “Three Miles Up” by Elizabeth Jane Howard
- “The Inner Room” by Robert Aickman
- “The Two Sams” by Glen Hirshberg
- “Among the Tombs” by Reggie Oliver
Most of these are truly ghost stories, though some might argue with Bowen’s “The Demon Lover” and the Hirshberg; only the Hirshberg and Oliver were first published within the last decade. They are all favorite stories of mine, but if forced to point at a handful I especially recommended and especially for someone who hasn’t read many ghost stories, I’d say, after the James stories, “The Beckoning Fair One,” which is a seductive story of a haunted room, “Amor Dure,” which is a powerful story of possession, “Smoke Ghost,” which I’ve already raved about, “The Demon Lover,” which uses the atmosphere of WWII London to powerful effect, and “The Inner Room,” which is one of those stories that leaves the reader a bit disoriented, wondering what just happened.
Ten novels
- Turn of the Screw by Henry James
- The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
- Hell House by Richard Matheson
- Naomi’s Room by Jonathan Aycliffe
- The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
- The Mist in the Mirror by Susan Hill
- Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Leiber
- The Shining by Stephen King
- Ghost Story by Peter Straub
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
Writing an extended ghost story must be hard. Add to the needs of a novel for a defined setting and believable characters, among other needs, the requirement for a ghostly mood and atmosphere, the sense of foreboding that the success of most ghost stories depends on. These novels are among the few I’ve read that really work as novels and as ghost stories. (I have some at home that I haven't read yet that look promising:
Julian's House by Judith Hawkes;
The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddon;
House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski;
House of Windows by John Langan; and
Audrey's Door by Sarah Langan.)
Readers, even some non-academic readers, still debate whether
Turn of the Screw is really a ghost story or not. What I don’t think anyone would debate is that James – the other ghost story writing James, Henry – was using the atmospherics of the ghost story to further his tale of a children’s nanny who may or may not have seen a ghost. This is the model of a quiet, slow-building tale in which the ghostly and the psychological mingle and merge.
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.” (famous first paragraph of The Haunting of Hill House)
Jackson’s novel is one of the finest, most affecting novels of the supernatural from the 20th century. A short novel by current standards, it tells its story concisely, yet often obliquely, illustrating the search for love and acceptance by Eleanor Vance. Every event in this story stems from the character of Eleanor Vance and her quest and there is a sense of inevitability as the novel progresses to its final, sad scene.
Richard Matheson’s
Hell House is, from what I’ve read, a response to Jackson’s novel. Apparently Matheson did not believe Jackson captured the way a scientific expedition into a known haunted house would proceed and so wrote his own version.
Hell House takes much of its set-up from Jackson’s novel, including having four people with their own emotional and psychological baggage as the main characters, puts them through a similar but sufficiently different plot, but cannot at any point match the lyricism and flow of Jackson’s writing;
Hell House is the pulp version of
The Haunting of Hill House. That said, Matheson is an accomplished writer in his mode and this is one of the more entertaining stories I’ve read by him. Just don’t expect the psychological acuity or the ability to build the story from character that Jackson showed.
Naomi’s Room is about a family in a new house, finding it’s haunted. The father digs into the house’s past, encounters the supernatural in other places in at least one set-piece worthy of M. R. James, and eventually solves the puzzle, sort of, in an ending that I found shocking, yet apt. I did think this first novel ran out of steam a bit past mid-way, but the ending, for all its distastefulness, redeemed the book.
Susan Hill irks many ghost story afficionados. She has a habit of saying things about other ghost stories that are dismissive if not outright insulting to the stories, the writers and the readers. She really shouldn’t do that because her novels
The Woman in Black and
The Mist in the Mirror bring nothing new to the ghost story, following the time worn path of events that many stories before them created. That said, they walk the path well, creating believable settings and characters, providing a few chills along the way, and wall written in impecable prose. I enjoyed each, the latter maybe a bit more during the reading than the former, though the former has a central image, the woman in black, that makes it stay in memory perhaps a bit more powerfully.
I’ve already cheered about
Our Lady of Darkness, so just a couple of words about
The Shining and
Ghost Story: I’ve meant to reread both for the last couple of years but keep getting side-tracked. At the time I read them in the early 1980s, they seemed to me good enough to merit the praise they were getting from the press and readers. As for Peter Straub, my recent (re/)reading of some of his novels and short stories have certainly done nothing to make me think I would change my mind about Ghost Story.
Beloved, based on true events that took place during the time when slavery was legal, is a powerful, Faulknerian novel, slowly peeling away its mysteries to reveal its core story, the motivation of a mother. Some readers don’t care for this novel, apparently finding it difficult and maybe even pretentious reading. I thought it was one of the finest novels I read in the 1980s, its cumulative power finally overwhelming, its revelations heart-breaking.
