Ghost Hour. Illustration: Alice Popkorn

Submissions Closed!

The contest is now closed to submissions. Thanks to everyone who participated. We’ll be announcing (and publishing) our winner and honorable mention on Midsummer’s Eve, in June. Visit our contest page for information about the next Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award competition.

If you’re a writer of paranormal, supernatural, fantasy, horror, or magic realist fiction, beware the witching hour as April 30th draws to a close. That’s when we’ll stop accepting entries to the short fiction competition in which we will award $1,000 to the writer of the best supernatural story, and $100 for an honorable mention. Of course, we’ll also publish both stories here on TGS.

If you’ve already submitted your tale, we’ll be in touch with you about the results by the end of May. And if you’re still working on your piece, keep at it; the more polished your prose, the better your chances, and you’ve still got a few days left. But don’t let the sand run out of the hour glass; that midnight bell inevitably will toll.

And if you’re still thinking about it, you might want to have a look at our complete contest guidelines.

Good luck!

Image: Shannon Wise

Henry James And The Psychology Of Ghosts

The Turn of the Screw, Henry James’ 1898 novella about a naive young governess and her desperate but misguided efforts to shield two children from a pair of predatory wraiths at a lonely country estate, may well be the most important ghost story written in the English language. Of course, some critics would claim that honor belongs to Shakespeare’s Hamlet—and they might have a point if only Hamlet’s single ghostly element—the demanding, vengeful shade of the eponymous protagonist’s father—were more central to the play. However, the spectral elder Hamlet has his final scene in Act III of the five act play, thereby making Hamlet—one of our most powerful literary works in so many other ways—something less than a full-fledged tale of the paranormal.

Another obvious contender is Charles Dickens’ classic novella, A Christmas Carol (1848). The story of Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Cratchit, and Tiny Tim certainly is the world’s most popular and well-loved ghost story, by far. However, A Christmas Carol, with it’s pervasive sentimentality and shadowless moralism, contrasts as much more of a lighthearted (though, of course, still thought-provoking) entertainment and much less of a serious literary accomplishment when matched against the subtleties, ambiguities, and superb character complexities of James’ story.

Both books have had profound and long-lasting effects that extend even into our current popular culture. While Dickens’ book appealed to the conscience of Victorian society, permanently changed attitudes toward the working poor, and reshaped the spirit in which Christmas is celebrated, James’ work exerted a powerful influence on the literature and cinema of the 20th century—particularly on fictions that combined uncanny or fantastic elements with psychological ones.

The relative importance of the two books therefore depends on the lens one chooses to view them through. [continue reading…]

White Asphodel: What Ghosts Ate In The Ancient Greek Underworld—At Least, If They Were Lucky. Photo: Isidre Blanc

Ghost Food

What do ghosts eat? It depends on where in the world you are, and what millennium you’re in.

The ancient Greeks believed that the spirits of the dead descended to Hades, a very dark and bleak underworld, with some neighborhoods darker and bleaker than others. While military heroes and people who were especially virtuous ended up in the relatively penthouse-like Elysian Fields, the vast run of ordinary Greek ghosts found themselves wandering the sunless Meadows of Asphodel. Asphodel, a flower whose gray-white color represented death to the Greeks, was often planted on graves. In addition, poorer Greeks in the ancient world ate parts of the asphodel plant because it grew abundantly in the wild and they didn’t have to cultivate it or pay for it. So the Greeks believed that unless a person did something particularly heroic or otherwise notable in life, his or her spirit was destined to wander through, and dine on, white asphodel for the remainder of eternity. But this was at least a better fate than that of the spirits of criminals and cowards; post-death, bad or disreputable people found themselves in the deep, dark precinct of Hades known as Tartarus, where there was nothing to eat at all.

In contrast to ancient Greeks ghosts, spirits in the Buddhist and Taoist parts of Asia have usually been offered decent table fare. At least since medieval times—if not much earlier—many Asian peoples have made a periodic practice of setting out favorite foods and drinks for the spirits of their departed ancestors. And in some areas, this generosity sometimes extends to ghosts who are not even part of the family. For instance, in China, Thailand, and other countries, the midsummer month is called Ghost Month, and people make a special point of feeding wandering hungry ghosts during this period. On the 15th night of Ghost Month, people celebrate a special Ghost Festival. [continue reading…]