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’sHamlet—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…]
Anne Boleyn, The Headless Horseman, And Roland: A Long Tradition Of Decapitated Phantoms
In 1978, when the late singer-songwriter, Warren Zevon, penned the lyrics to his haunting (and haunted) musical ballad, “Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner,” he was adding the most recent strand to a braid of literature and folklore that Western storytellers first began weaving hundreds of years ago.
The Roland character in Zevon’s song is a Norwegian mercenary soldier fighting in Africa who, at the behest of the CIA, is betrayed and murdered by his comrades. Post-death he returns as a revenant—a headless one, due to his having been decapitated by a burst of automatic gunfire—and he wanders the earth seeking revenge.
Of course, the most well-known headless ghost—also a revenant—is Washington Irving’s Headless Horseman, who appears in the 1820 story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by American author Washington Irving. [continue reading…]
This World War I Submarine Is The Same Type Of U-Boat As The Ghost Sub
We All Live In A Haunted Submarine
Legends about ghost ships have circulated for hundreds of years. Many haunted vessels have been warships supposedly observed to be underway without any crew aboard. So, with the advent of widespread submarine warfare in World War I, it was probably inevitable that people would begin to hear reports of underwater maritime hauntings.
The most well-known legend of a haunted submarine is that of the German U-boat, U65. According to stories that circulated after the war, U65 seemed cursed from the start. Even before her launch in 1915, four men died in two separate accidents that occurred while the boat was being built. Then, on the U-boat’s maiden voyage, a man was swept overboard, and two others were killed by a leak of toxic fumes from the ship’s batteries.
While the ship was being outfitted prior to her second cruise, a torpedo accidentally exploded, killing the first officer and injuring nine others. It was shortly thereafter, when crew members claimed to have seen the dead officer walk back aboard the sub and disappear inside, that U65 first received her reputation for being haunted. [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!
![Image: Shannon Wise[/caption]](http://www.theghoststory.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Turn_of_the_Screw.jpg)
Image: Shannon Wise
