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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

ANIMAL GHOSTS

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Ghost Cat. Photo: OliBac
Ghost Cat. Photo: OliBac

The Ghosts Of Pets And Other Animals

Acording to scientific surveys of people who have experienced ghosts, more than four fifths of all apparitions are of men, women, and children who have died. However, somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of disembodied spirits reported to British researchers were manifestations of animals.

The ghosts of pets are the non-human spirits that most frequently make themselves known to people. In fact, visits by dead pets to their former owners seem to be a fairly common occurrence. People who responded to two surveys taken by Britain’s Institute of Psychophysical Research reported more apparitions of cats than of any other animal. Ghost dogs were next, followed by the spirits of horses.

Other ghost animals that popped up either in the British survey or in other types of reports including the media include bears, pigs, poultry, hares, deer, and birds. In his 2012 book, Ghosts—A Natural History: 500 Years of Searching for Proof, author Roger Clarke mentions “a couple of phantom bears in London,” a 17th century preacher in Cornwall, England, who supposedly returned in the form of a “demonic black rooster,” and a white bird that purportedly appears to the inhabitants of Arundel Castle in Sussex, England, when one of them is about to die. Clarke adds that headless dogs and horses were a frequent theme of 19th century ghost stories. [Read more…] about ANIMAL GHOSTS

GHOST DANCE

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Arapaho Ghost Dance. Captured By An Unknown Artist Around 1900.
Arapaho Ghost Dance. Illustrated By An Unknown Artist Around 1900 And Based On Photographs Taken By Anthropologist James Mooney.

Marathon Dancing To Bring Back The Dead

The Ghost Dance was a short-lived religious movement that swept through Western Native American cultures during the years that straddled the final two decades of the 1800s. The Movement came along following an extended period of disease, displacement, starvation, and genocide visited on the Indian tribes as a result of the relentless westward expansion of white settlers backed by the deadly force of the U.S. Army. Native American spiritual leaders told their followers that the Ghost Dance would reunite them with the spirits of their dead, bring back the buffalo, which had been slaughtered to the point of near extinction by European Americans, and usher in a new era of prosperity, cooperation among the tribes, and an end to European-American encroachment.

The ritual, which involved ceremonial dances that lasted for five days, originated around 1870 among the Paiute tribe of what is now Nevada. In the late 1880s, preached and promoted by Paiute holy man Wovoka, the Ghost Dance began catching on rapidly among Native groups from Oklahoma to California. The ceremonial movements themselves were based on the circle dances that many groups had performed since prehistoric times. [Read more…] about GHOST DANCE

SEEING AND SENSING GHOSTS

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Hounds Howl At A Ghost. Illustration: Henryk Weyssenhoff 1893
Hounds Howl At A Ghost. Illustration: Henryk Weyssenhoff 1893

People Who Sense Ghosts Don’t Always See Them

Although most people who have had a paranormal experience report visual contact with one or more disembodied spirits, a significant minority say they sensed a ghost with faculties other than their eyes.

Out of 1,800 people who told British researchers they had encountered ghosts, 84 percent said they had seen the ghost or ghosts. However, 34 percent said they had heard a ghost speak or make some other sound—and of these, only 14 percent said they’d seen it at the same time. [Read more…] about SEEING AND SENSING GHOSTS

CAN GHOSTS TOUCH PEOPLE?

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Illustration For Washington Irving's The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow. Artist: Frederick Simpson Coburn (1871-1960.)
Illustration For Washington Irving’s The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow. Artist: Frederick Simpson Coburn (1871-1960.)

Can A Ghost Touch You—And What Does If Feel Like?

Are ghosts able, as in the illustration above, to put a hand on your shoulder and make you feel their icy grip? Or maybe we’re assuming too much, and their grip really isn’t so icy. . . .

Researchers Cecilia Green and Charles McCreery report in their scholarly book, Apparitions, that of 1,800 people surveyed concerning their paranormal experiences, 15 percent said that a ghost had touched them. And while in some of these cases interviewees claimed an apparition had placed cold hands on them, others told investigators that the touch had been warm and comforting. A number said a ghost’s clothes had brushed against them, and that they felt like ordinary clothing. [Read more…] about CAN GHOSTS TOUCH PEOPLE?