A Guide to Speculative Fiction at Gustavus Library: Ghost Stories

"Based on an enormous body of short fiction, Elegant Nightmares is a study of the ghost story in England from Sheridan Le Fanu to more recent figures such as Algernon Blackwood and L.P. Hartley. Although Elegant Nightmares is a serious exploration of ghost and horror stories as prototypes of modern absurdist fiction, it is written in an entertaining, often witty style. It speaks to the scholar, the addicted horror fan, and the general reader about a genre which is increasingly popular and which (though cluttered with hackwork) has a distinguished tradition. In their vision of an irrational, inexplicably hostile universe and their penchant for irony and black humor, Victorian and Edwardian ghost stories have a peculiarly contemporary ring. Elegant Nightmares offers both a thematic approach to the development of this genre and a reader’s guide to the distinguishing styles of its best writers. The stories are treated in relation to overarching themes, but are also taken seriously on their terms as popular fiction. The assumption of the book is always that the ability of a given writer to chill and horrify is only as good as his prose style. From the insidious cruelty of Sheridan Le Fanu to the gentle spookiness of E. G. Swain, ghostly fiction offers a remarkable variety of conceptions and styles. Elegant Nightmares focuses on late nineteenth and early twentieth century writers who, in strikingly individual ways, pioneered an aesthetic of supernatural horror: Sheridan Le Fanu, the father of the modern supernatural tale; M. R. James, the inventor of the antiquarian ghost story; and Algernon Blackwood, the early conjurer of “cosmic” apparitions from parallel universes. In addition, the book surveys a variety of lesser–known, undeservedly obscure writers such as Arthur Machen, H.R. Wakefield, Arthur Gray, Oliver Onions, Walter de la Mare, and E. F. Benson. These are placed in perspective with the occasional contributions to the genre by major writers such as Hardy, Yeats, and Henry James. Although the emphasis is on Victorian and Edwardian writers, Ramsey Campbell, Robert Aickman, Russell Kirk, and other absurdly neglected contemporary writers are put in their rightful context as heirs to a tradition which is still very much alive." - from the publisher

"This collection of articles looks at ghost stories ranging from the Middle Ages to contemporary movies from different perspectives, both interdisciplinary and international. Spectral phenomena from Antarctic literature to Haitian Voodoo, Russian poetry to Irish novels are discussed in relation to their places in history and the media."

"In Haints, Arthur Redding examines the work of contemporary American authors who draw on the gothic tradition in their fiction, not as frivolous or supernatural entertainments, but to explore and memorialize the ghosts of their heritage. Ghosts, Redding argues, serve as lasting witnesses to the legacies of slaves and indigenous peoples whose stories were lost in the remembrance or mistranslation of history. No matter how much Americans willingly or unwillingly repress the true history of their ancestry, their ghosts remain unburied and restless. Such authors as Toni Morrison and Leslie Marmon Silko deploy the ghost as a means of reconciling their own violently repressed heritage with their identity as modern Americans. And just as our ancestors were haunted by ghosts of the past, today we are haunted by ghosts of contemporary crises: urban violence, racial hatred, and even terrorism. In other cases that Redding studies--such as James Baldwin's The Evidence of Things Not Seen and Toni Cade Bambara's Those Bones Are Not My Child--writers address similar crises to challenge traditional American claims of innocence and justice. Finally, Redding argues that ghosts emphasize a growing worry about a larger impending crisis: the apocalypse. Yet the despair the apocalypse inspires is vital to providing the grounds for new solutions to modern issues. In the end, the armies of the dispossessed enlist the forces of the spirit world to create a better future--by ensuring that mistakes of the past are not repeated, that Americans do not deny their heritage, and that accountability exists for any given crisis." - from the publisher

"Collected from historic sources, such as the volumes of Norse folk legends by Peter Christian Asbornsen and Jogen Moe, these centuries-old stories of sorcery, monsters and demons come from the imaginations of the Scandinavian people. Nineteen stories reflect the fear of evil that haunts and fascinates the human soul." - from the publisher

Librarian's note: Featuring ghost stories by Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Lord Lytton, Daniel Defoe, and James Hogg.

"Ghosts are resilient creatures. They thrive in an atmosphere of candlelight and decay, in antique manors, graveyards and cloisters and yet, as this anthology triumphantly demonstrates, they are equally at home under the harsh light of the electric bulb. The advent of the motor car and the invention of the telephone have merely tested their ingenuity, and exercised the talents of a host of writers. The fractures and schisms of the twentieth-century are reflected in the current proliferation of literary genres, and in the marvellous variety that a single genre can embrace. Leading exponents of ghost fiction such as M.R. James and Algernon Blackwood are joined by authors such as Scott Fitzgerald, A.S. Byatt, William Trevor, and Alison Lurie; women, in particular, have embraced the form with skill and versatility. As well as the returning dead there are haunted typewriters, malevolent furniture, and urban ghosts, phantoms of smoke an[d] soot. Occasionally with humour, but more often with obliquity and restraint, these stories both entrance and terrify. This collection shows how ghost stories have successfully utilized the landscapes, technologies, and consciousness of contemporary life to adapt to the modern age with imagination and flair. Distinctive and gripping, these stories will linger long in the memory." - from the publisher

"A collection of ghost stories with African American themes, designed to be told during the Dark Thirty--the half hour before sunset--when ghosts seem all too believable. With an extraordinary gift for suspense, McKissack brings us ten original spine-tingling tales inspired by African-American history and the mystery of that eerie half-hour before nightfall--the dark thirty. "The atmosphere of each selection is skillfully developed and sustained to the very end. Pinkney's stark scratchboard illustrations evoke an eerie mood, which heightens the suspense of each tale. This is a stellar collection for both public and school libraries looking for absorbing books to hook young readers. Storytellers will also find it a goldmine." - from the publisher

"Joseph Sheridan LeFanu (1814–1873) is regarded by many critics as the greatest master of the English ghost story. A product of the decaying Anglo-Irish culture of the early and middle nineteenth century, he sums up in his work better than any of his contemporaries the fears and dreads that may haunt the sensitive individual. The reasons for his preeminence are many. He was a remarkable craftsman, whose work has been admired by critics as varied as V. S. Pritchett and H. P. Lovecraft, Henry James and M. R. James. More imaginative and more perceptive than his contemporaries who worked in the same form, he achieved depths and dimensions of terror that still remain otherwise unexplored. And although he was Victorian in his dates, he was in many respects un-Victorian in his writing: his ideas looked both backward to the great supernatural tradition of Romantic fiction and forward to the modern age. LeFanu's work, unfortunately, has not been as well known generally as it should be. A few of his better stories have appeared often enough in anthologies, but much of his very best work has lain hidden, because of its inaccessibility. His contemporaries were more interested in his detective novels (including the unmatchable 'Uncle Silas') and his realistic novels than in his supernatural work, with the result that many of his stories were neither reprinted in England nor ever printed at all in America. The present collection contains such favorites as 'Carmilla,' 'The Familiar,' 'Green Tea,' and 'Schalken the Painter,' as well as much otherwise unobtainable work. There is, for example, the magnificent nouvelle 'The Haunted Baronet,' (reprinted for the first time from the fabulously rare 'Chronicles of Golden Friars,' which survives in perhaps less than a dozen sets), material from 'The Purcell Papers,' the practically unknown essay-story 'An Authentic Narrative of a Haunted House,' and nine other first-rate stories." - from the publisher

"Interest in supernatural phenomena was high during Charles Dickens lifetime. He had always loved a good ghost story himself, particularly at Christmas time, and was open-minded, willing to accept, and indeed put to the test, the existence of spirits. His natural inclinations toward drama and the macabre made him a brilliant teller of ghost tales, and in the twenty stories presented here, which include his celebrated A Christmas Carol, the full range of his gothic talents can be seen. Chilling as some of these stories are, Dickens has managed to inject characteristically grotesque comedy as he writes of revenge, insanity, pre-cognition and dream visions, he indulges also in some debunking of contemporary credulity." - from the publisher

"I was conscious of a most horrible smell of mould, and of a cold kind of face pressed against my own ... ' Considered by many to be the most terrifying writer in English, M.R. James was an eminent scholar who spent his entire adult life in the academic surroundings of Eton and Cambridge. His classic supernatural tales draw on the terrors of the everyday, in which documents and objects unleash terrible forces, often in closed rooms and night-time settings where imagination runs riot. Lonely country houses, remote inns, ancient churches or the manuscript collections of great libraries provide settings for unbearable menace, from creatures seeking retribution and harm. These stories have lost none of their power to unsettle and disturb. This edition presents all of James's published ghost stories, including the unforgettable 'Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad' and 'Casting the Runes', and an appendix of James's writings on the ghost story. Darryl Jones's introduction and notes provide a fascinating insight into James's background and his mastery of the genre he made his own." - from the publisher

"Out of this kind of family experience, and his own occult dreams and imaginings, came Henry James's ghost stories--out of the novelist's sense that man somehow is in some relation with impenetrable and mysterious forces, outside himself, out of human control--as they had been outside of his father's or of William's. This led James to write not only stories in which there are materialized ghosts, but another kind he described as 'gruesome' and 'quasi-supernatural.'" - from the Introduction

"The novel from the early 20th century that inspired the Lon Chaney film and the hit musical. In the 1880s, in Paris, the Palais Garnier Opera House is believed haunted. One night, a young woman, Christine, is asked to sing in place of the Opera's leading soprano, who is ill; Christine's performance is a success, and she is recognized by the Vicomte Raoul, a childhood playmate and love. Raoul and the Phantom then battle for Christine's heart, as the Phantom demands more and more from her." - from the publisher

"A surreal, devastating story of a homeless ghost who haunts one of Tokyo's busiest train stations. Kazu is dead. Born in Fukushima in 1933, the same year as the Japanese Emperor, his life is tied by a series of coincidences to the Imperial family and has been shaped at every turn by modern Japanese history. But his life story is also marked by bad luck, and now, in death, he is unable to rest, doomed to haunt the park near Ueno Station in Tokyo. Kazu's life in the city began and ended in that park; he arrived there to work as a laborer in the preparations for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and ended his days living in the vast homeless village in the park, traumatized by the destruction of the 2011 tsunami and shattered by the announcement of the 2020 Olympics. Through Kazu's eyes, we see daily life in Tokyo buzz around him and learn the intimate details of his personal story, how loss and society's inequalities and constrictions spiraled towards this ghostly fate, with moments of beauty and grace just out of reach. A powerful masterwork from one of Japan's most brilliant outsider writers, Tokyo Ueno Station is a book for our times and a look into a marginalized existence in a shiny global megapolis." - from the publisher

"Ropa dropped out of school to become a ghost talker, and she now speaks to Edinburgh's dead - carrying messages to the living - but when she learns someone is bewitching children she investigates and discovers an occult library, a taste for hidden magic, and a wealth of Edinburgh's dark secrets." - from the publisher

"Cassandra Khaw's Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a gorgeously creepy haunted house tale, steeped in Japanese folklore and full of devastating twists. A Heian-era mansion stands abandoned, its foundations resting on the bones of a bride and its walls packed with the remains of the girls sacrificed to keep her company. It's the perfect venue for a group of thrill-seeking friends, brought back together to celebrate a wedding. A night of food, drinks, and games quickly spirals into a nightmare as secrets get dragged out and relationships are tested. But the house has secrets too. Lurking in the shadows is the ghost bride with a black smile and a hungry heart. And she gets lonely down there in the dirt. Effortlessly taking the classic haunted house story and turning it on its head, Nothing but Blackened Teeth is a sharp and devastating exploration of grief, the parasitic nature of relationships, and the consequences of our actions." - from the publisher

"The seven houses in these seven stories are empty. Some are devoid of love or life or furniture, of people or the truth or of memories. But in Samanta Schweblin's tense, visionary tales, something always creeps back in: a ghost, a fight, trespassers, a list of things to do before you die, a child's first encounter with a dark choice or the fallibility of parents. This was the collection that established Samanta Schweblin at the forefront of a new generation of Latin American writers. And now in English it will push her cult status to new heights. Seven Empty Houses is an entrypoint into a fiercely original mind, and a slingshot into Schweblin's destablizing, exhilarating literary world. In each story, the twists and turns will unnerve and surprise: Schweblin never takes the expected path and instead digs under the skin and reveals uncomfortable truths about our sense of home, of belonging, and of the fragility of our connections with others. This is a masterwork from one of our most brilliant writers." - from the publisher