Ghost Walks Into A Bar, And He Says. . . . Image: Justin Brown
So this ghost walks into a bar.
No, wait. That’s not right. A store. He walks into a store. And he doesn’t walk; he floats. Because he’s a ghost.
So this ghost floats into a store, drifts up to the counter, and he says to the cashier, he says, “I want to buy a pint of vodka.”
The cashier studies the ghost for a moment, and then he says, the cashier says . . . [continue reading…]
The World Is Full Of Ghost-Ridden Castles. But Even A Humble Trailer Can Be Haunted. Photo: Carolyn Srygley-Moore
Sure, ghosts prefer haunting big, rambling places with a lot of history behind them. But not every disembodied spirit can afford spacious digs. And, come to think of it, it’s certain that a lot more people give up the ghost in cramped apartments, mobile homes, trailers, and hovels than in Victorian mansions.
Photographer Carolyn Srygley-Moore captured this image while waiting for a ride home after working a nightshift job in upstate New York. The trailer is unused, and she’d never before seen a light on inside of it.
She tells us she decided not to investigate further, which probably was a wise choice. . . .
Illustration For The M.R. James Story, “Oh, Whistle, And I’ll Come To You, My Lad.” James McBryde (1904)
The “golden age” of the ghost story ran from the early 1840s to the beginning of World War One—or from the start of Queen Victoria’s reign to just over a dozen years beyond her death. This was a period when there was a great deal of interest in all things ghostly. Ghost stories were extremely popular in both magazines and books—as well as well in front of the fireplaces of upper- and middle-class Victorian homes, where taking turns telling them, especially at Christmastime, had become a tradition.
Such famous writers as Charles Dickens, Robert Luis Stevenson, and Henry James turned out ghost stories along with their more “literary” work. But the genre also spawned a number of supernatural specialists, perhaps the most famous, innovative, and highly regarded of whom was the British author M.R. (Montague Rhodes) James (1862-1936).
James shunned the Gothic settings popular among many earlier authors of paranormal tales, and instead set his fictions in isolated corners of contemporary Britain and continental Europe. His stories tend to take place in remote villages along the coast, or out in the lonely countryside. [continue reading…]
Edith Wharton (1862-1937)
Edith Wharton was a celebrated early 20th century American author with 38 books to her credit. Much of her fiction had to do with New York’s high society and, like the works of her mentor and friend, Henry James, was notable for the psychological complexity of its characters. Her 1920 novel, The Age of Innocence, made her the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, which she received in 1921.
Also like James, Wharton excelled at writing ghost stories, a genre that was extremely popular throughout most of her career. Her ghost-story collection, Tales of Men and Ghosts, was published in 1910 and included The Eyes, one of the finest examples of the psychological ghost story in the short-story form. Another ghost-story collection, Ghosts, appeared in 1937 and contained The Lady’s Maid’s Bell (1902), a well-known conventional ghost story with Gothic overtones. Ghost stories also appeared in several of her other collections. [continue reading…]
Volume II of our print anthology, “21st Century Ghost Stories,” has just been published. It contains all of our Summer 2018 to Summer 2021 winning and honorable mention stories from The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award contest and The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition—30 fine supernatural short stories in all!
