A ghost story
may be any piece of fiction or drama, that includes a ghost, or simply takes as
a premise the possibility of ghosts or characters' belief in them. The
"ghost" may appear of its own accord or be summoned by magic. Linked to the ghost is the idea of
"hauntings", where a supernatural entity is tied to a place, object
or person. Colloquially, the term
"ghost story" can refer to any kind of scary story. In a narrower
sense, the ghost story has been developed as a short story format, within genre
fiction. It is a form of supernatural fiction and specifically of weird fiction,
and is often a horror story. While ghost
stories are often explicitly meant to be scary, they have been written to serve
all sorts of purposes, from comedy to morality tales. Ghosts often appear in the narrative as
sentinels or prophets of things to come. Belief in ghosts is found in all
cultures around the world, and thus ghost stories may be passed down orally or
in written form.
Spirits of the dead appear in fiction as early as Homer’s Odyssey, which features a journey to the underworld and the hero encountering the ghosts of the dead. The Old Testament features the Witch of Endor calling the spirit of the prophet Samuel. Pliny the Younger in his letters describes a ghost which would become familiar in later literature: a bearded spirit rattling chains. The play Mostellaria, by the Roman playwright Plautus, is the earlier known work to featured a haunted dwelling, and is sometimes translated as The Haunted House. Ghosts often appeared in the tragedies of the Roman writer Seneca, which in turn influenced William Shakespeare’s plays. The ghosts in Richard III resemble the Senecan model, while the ghost in Hamlet plays a more complex role.
Interest in ghosts was revived by the Gothic novel; ghosts appear in the first such novel, Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto.
Historian of the ghost story Jack Sullivan has noted that many literary critics argue a "Golden Age of the Ghost Story" existed between the decline of the Gothic novel in the 1830s and the start of the First World War. Sullivan argues that the work of Edgar Allan Poe and Sheridan Le Fanu inaugurated this "Golden Age".
Britain and Ireland
One of the most influential writers of ghost stories was the Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu. Le Fanu's collections, such as In a Glass Darkly (1872) and The Purcell Papers (1880), helped popularise the short story as a medium for ghost fiction. Charlotte Riddell, who wrote fiction as Mrs. J. H. Riddell, created ghost stories which were noted for adept use of the haunted house theme.
A key British writer of ghost fiction was M.R. James, whom David Langford has described as writing "the 20th century's most influential canon of ghost stories". In "Some Remarks on Ghost Stories" (1929), James identified five key features of the English ghost story, as summarized by Prof. Frank Coffman for a course in popular imaginative literature:
In the Edwardian era, Algernon Blackwood (who combined the ghost story with nature mysticism), Oliver Onions(whose ghost stories drew on psychological horror), and William Hoper Hodgson (whose ghost tales also contained elements of the sea story and science fiction) helped move the ghost story in new directions.
A noted modern British writer of ghost fiction is Ramsey Campbell.
Germany
United States
In the later 19th century, mainstream American writers such as Edith Wharton, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and F. Marion Crawford all wrote ghost fiction. Henry James also wrote ghost stories, including the famous The Turn of the Screw.
Beginning in the 1940s, Fritz Leiber wrote ghost tales set in modern industrial settings, such as "Smoke Ghost" (1941) and "A Bit of the Dark World" (1962). Shirley Jackson made an important contribution to ghost fiction with her novel The Haunting of Hill House [as well as her earlier short story work The Lottery].
Japan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ghost_films
History
Spirits of the dead appear in fiction as early as Homer’s Odyssey, which features a journey to the underworld and the hero encountering the ghosts of the dead. The Old Testament features the Witch of Endor calling the spirit of the prophet Samuel. Pliny the Younger in his letters describes a ghost which would become familiar in later literature: a bearded spirit rattling chains. The play Mostellaria, by the Roman playwright Plautus, is the earlier known work to featured a haunted dwelling, and is sometimes translated as The Haunted House. Ghosts often appeared in the tragedies of the Roman writer Seneca, which in turn influenced William Shakespeare’s plays. The ghosts in Richard III resemble the Senecan model, while the ghost in Hamlet plays a more complex role.
Interest in ghosts was revived by the Gothic novel; ghosts appear in the first such novel, Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto.
Historian of the ghost story Jack Sullivan has noted that many literary critics argue a "Golden Age of the Ghost Story" existed between the decline of the Gothic novel in the 1830s and the start of the First World War. Sullivan argues that the work of Edgar Allan Poe and Sheridan Le Fanu inaugurated this "Golden Age".
One of the most influential writers of ghost stories was the Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu. Le Fanu's collections, such as In a Glass Darkly (1872) and The Purcell Papers (1880), helped popularise the short story as a medium for ghost fiction. Charlotte Riddell, who wrote fiction as Mrs. J. H. Riddell, created ghost stories which were noted for adept use of the haunted house theme.
A key British writer of ghost fiction was M.R. James, whom David Langford has described as writing "the 20th century's most influential canon of ghost stories". In "Some Remarks on Ghost Stories" (1929), James identified five key features of the English ghost story, as summarized by Prof. Frank Coffman for a course in popular imaginative literature:
- The pretense of truth
- "A pleasing terror"
- No gratuitous bloodshed or sex
- No "explanation of the machinery"
- Setting: "those of the writer's (and
reader's) own day"
In the Edwardian era, Algernon Blackwood (who combined the ghost story with nature mysticism), Oliver Onions(whose ghost stories drew on psychological horror), and William Hoper Hodgson (whose ghost tales also contained elements of the sea story and science fiction) helped move the ghost story in new directions.
A noted modern British writer of ghost fiction is Ramsey Campbell.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
produced several ghost stories, including "The Elementary Spirit" and
"The Mines of Falun".
[See also Goethe’s poem Erlkonig,
later put to music by Schubert and Liszt].
Influenced by
British and German examples, American writers began to produce their own ghost
stories. Washington Irving wrote "The Adventure of the German
Student" and Edgar Allan Poe wrote some stories which contain ghosts, such
as "The Masque of the Red Death" and "Morella".
In the later 19th century, mainstream American writers such as Edith Wharton, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and F. Marion Crawford all wrote ghost fiction. Henry James also wrote ghost stories, including the famous The Turn of the Screw.
Beginning in the 1940s, Fritz Leiber wrote ghost tales set in modern industrial settings, such as "Smoke Ghost" (1941) and "A Bit of the Dark World" (1962). Shirley Jackson made an important contribution to ghost fiction with her novel The Haunting of Hill House [as well as her earlier short story work The Lottery].
The Tale of
Genji contains ghost
stories. In English Victorian society, Lafcadio Hearn published his collection
of Japanese folktales, Kwaidan: Stories
and Studies of Strange Things.
The Middle
East
The Arabian Nights contains a number of ghost stories, often
involving jinn, ghouls and corpses. Other
medieval Arabic literature, such as the Encyclopedia
of the Brethren of Purity, also contain ghost stories
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_story
There is also a long and thorough list of ghost movies at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ghost_films
The very best of these films may be The Uninvited (1944) and The
Haunting (1963).
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