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WHAT DO GHOSTS EAT?

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White Asphodel: What Ghosts Ate In The Ancient Greek Underworld—At Least, If They Were Lucky. Photo: Isidre Blanc
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. [Read more…] about WHAT DO GHOSTS EAT?

HOW TO WRITE A GHOST STORY

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Advice From The Masters On How To Write A Chilling Supernatural Story
Words From The Masters On Writing A Chilling Supernatural Story. Image: Curtis MacNewton

Advice On Crafting A Scary Supernatural Tale

In the early 1800s, when Ivanhoe author Sir Walter Scott was writing, the short story was a fairly new fictional form, with novels having comprised most of the fiction published up to then. However, the rapid proliferation of newspapers and magazines throughout the 19th century made the short story both a practical and a highly popular commodity to produce.

Scott found this new form to be superior to the novel for telling his ghostly tales because he thought it was far too difficult to keep a reader sufficiently frightened over the course of several hundred pages. In his opinion, it was far easier and more effective to maintain that icy grip on the spine of his audience throughout a read that lasted only an hour. In his essay, On the Supernatural in Fictitious Composition, he wrote: [Read more…] about HOW TO WRITE A GHOST STORY

GHOST JOKE

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Ghost Walks Into A Bar, And He Says. . . . Image: Justin Brown
Ghost Walks Into A Bar, And He Says. . . . Image: Justin Brown

Did You Hear The One About The Ghost?

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 . . . [Read more…] about GHOST JOKE

HAUNTED TRAILER

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The World Is Full Of Ghost-Ridden Castles And Mansions. But Even A Humble Trailer Can Be Haunted. Photo: Carolyn Srygley-Moore
The World Is Full Of Ghost-Ridden Castles. But Even A Humble Trailer Can Be Haunted. Photo: Carolyn Srygley-Moore

Ghost Light

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. . . .

M.R. JAMES

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Illustration For The M.R. James Story, "Oh, Whistle, And I'll Come To You, My Lad." James McBryde (1904)
Illustration For The M.R. James Story, “Oh, Whistle, And I’ll Come To You, My Lad.” James McBryde (1904)

James: Master Of The Ghost Story’s Golden Age

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. [Read more…] about M.R. JAMES

TELLING TALES OF MEN AND GHOSTS

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Pulitzer-Prize Winning Author Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton (1862-1937)

Edith Wharton: Ghost Stories And A Pulitzer Prize

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. [Read more…] about TELLING TALES OF MEN AND GHOSTS

GHOST SHIPS

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A Phantom Ship Ghosts Its Way Through A Storm. Illustration: Ian Burt
A Phantom Ship Ghosts Its Way Through A Storm. Illustration: Ian Burt

Do Phantom Ships Have Skeleton Crews?

Ghost ships have been the subject of mythology and fiction, but they are also a factual phenomenon. The term refers to a ship that has no living crew, and no expectation of receiving one. Most real ghost ships are vessels that have been mothballed or abandoned because they are no longer seaworthy. Such derelict boats usually are old, weatherbeaten, and dark, and like abandoned buildings they inspire feelings of eeriness in people who see them.

However, over the past several hundred years there have been a number of strange reports of abandoned ships found floating on the ocean, purportedly with no clear explanation for the absence of their crews. One of the most famous such cases is that of the merchant ship SV Sea Bird, said to have run aground on the Rhode Island coast in the mid 1700s. According to some accounts, although there was no one aboard and the SV Sea Bird‘s life boat was missing, the sails were set and there was water boiling on a stove in the galley, indications that the vessel’s mysterious abandonment had occurred recently, and within sight of shore. A dog and a cat reportedly were on the ship. [Read more…] about GHOST SHIPS

EXPERIENCING GHOSTS

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Ghost Train. Photo: Jesse Draper
Ghost Train. Photo: Jesse Draper

What Is It Like To Meet A Ghost?

If you’ve seen, heard, or felt a ghost, you are far from alone. Plenty of people in our own time as well as throughout centuries past have reported some sort of contact with a disembodied spirit. For just one example, around 80 percent of elderly people who have lost a spouse say they’ve seen their dead partner at least once since she or he passed away.

In addition, scientific research tells us that most people’s haunted experiences share many similarities with those of others. The research, conducted in the form of surveys taken by Britain’s Institute of Psychophysical Research in the late 1960s and early 1970s, reveals broad consensus concerning what it’s like to see a ghost, hear a ghost, or be touched by a ghost. [Read more…] about EXPERIENCING GHOSTS

CLASSIC MOVIE GHOSTS TAKE EIGHT

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The Legend Of Hell House (1973)

This classic British haunted-house-and-horror movie has a lot in common with The Haunting, which preceded it by a decade. Both movies feature groups of paranormal investigators who take up quarters in an old mansion where disturbing deaths have occurred, and ghosts are reputed to roam. In addition, both feature protagonists who are haunted at least as much by sexual frustration as they are by the spirits of the dead.

However, in Hell House, many of the the supernatural manifestations are more theatrical than in the earlier movie, which largely avoided explicitness in favor of reproducing the dark psychological ambiguities of the Shirley Jackson novel (The Haunting Of Hill House) on which it was based. For instance, in the Hell House scene excerpted here, poltergeists completely trash a dining room after two of the ghost hunters get into an argument. [Read more…] about CLASSIC MOVIE GHOSTS TAKE EIGHT

GHOST TOWNS

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Turkey's Kayakoy, A Thriving Town For Thousands Of Years, Now Stands Abandoned. Photo: Nicodem Nijaki
Turkey’s Kayakoy, A Thriving Town For Thousands Of Years, Now Stands Abandoned. Photo: Nicodem Nijaki

Ghost Towns: Sometimes Deserted Even By Ghosts

As with individual abandoned houses and other vacant buildings, deserted villages, towns, and cities sometimes gain a reputation for being haunted. However, ghost towns are so named more for the absence of living people than they are for the presence of the spirits of dead ones.

In the U.S., when people think of ghost towns they tend to imagine the often picturesque ruins of old mining towns in the American West, complete with ghostly tumbleweeds bowling down otherwise empty streets. However, there are ghost towns on every continent, if not in every country. [Read more…] about GHOST TOWNS