Ghost story
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A ghost story is any piece of
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
While ghost stories are often explicitly meant to scare, they have been written to serve all sorts of purposes, from comedy to
History
A widespread belief concerning ghosts is that they are composed of a misty, airy, or subtle material. Anthropologists link this idea to early beliefs that ghosts were the person within the person (the person's spirit), most noticeable in ancient cultures as a person's breath, which upon exhaling in colder climates appears visibly as a white mist.[3] Belief in ghosts is found in all cultures around the world, and thus ghost stories may be passed down orally or in written form.[1]
The campfire story, a form of oral storytelling, often involves recounting ghost stories, or other scary stories.[4] Some of the stories are decades old, with varying versions across multiple cultures.[5] Many schools and educational institutions encourage ghost storytelling as part of literature.[6]
In 1929, five key features of the English ghost story were identified in "Some Remarks on Ghost Stories" by M. R. James. As summarized by Frank Coffman for a course in popular imaginative literature, they were:[7]
- 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"
The introduction of
Literature
Early examples
Ghosts in the classical world often appeared in the form of vapor or smoke, but at other times they were described as being substantial, appearing as they had been at the time of death, complete with the wounds that killed them.[9] Spirits of the dead appear in literature as early as Homer's Odyssey, which features a journey to the underworld and the hero encountering the ghosts of the dead,[1] as well as the Old Testament in which the Witch of Endor calls the spirit of the prophet Samuel.[1]
The play Mostellaria, by the Roman playwright Plautus, is the earliest known work to feature a haunted dwelling, and is sometimes translated as The Haunted House.[10] Another early account of a haunted place comes from an account by Pliny the Younger (c. 50 AD).[11] Pliny describes the haunting of a house in Athens by a ghost bound in chains, an archetype that would become familiar in later literature.[1]
Ghosts often appeared in the tragedies of the Roman writer
The
The 11th century Japanese work The Tale of Genji contains ghost stories, and includes characters being possessed by spirits.[16]
English Renaissance theatre
In the mid-16th century, the works of
In English Renaissance theatre, ghosts were often depicted in the garb of the living and even in armour. Armour, being out-of-date by the time of the Renaissance, gave the stage ghost a sense of antiquity.[18] The sheeted ghost began to gain ground on stage in the 1800s because an armoured ghost had to be moved about by complicated pulley systems or lifts, and eventually became clichéd stage elements and objects of ridicule. Ann Jones and Peter Stallybrass, in Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory, point out, "In fact, it is as laughter increasingly threatens the Ghost that he starts to be staged not in armor but in some form of 'spirit drapery'." An interesting observation by Jones and Stallybrass is that "at the historical point at which ghosts themselves become increasingly implausible, at least to an educated elite, to believe in them at all it seems to be necessary to assert their immateriality, their invisibility. [...] The drapery of ghosts must now, indeed, be as spiritual as the ghosts themselves. This is a striking departure both from the ghosts of the Renaissance stage and from the Greek and Roman theatrical ghosts upon which that stage drew. The most prominent feature of Renaissance ghosts is precisely their gross materiality. They appear to us conspicuously clothed."[18]
Border ballads
Ghosts figured prominently in traditional British ballads of the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly the “
Romantic era
One of the key early appearances by ghosts was
The modern short story emerged in Germany in the early decades of the 19th century. Kleist's "The Beggar Woman of Locarno", published in 1810, and several other works from the period lay claim to being the first ghost short stories of a modern type. E. T. A. Hoffmann's ghost stories include "The Elementary Spirit" and "The Mines of Falun".[21]
The Russian equivalent of the ghost story is the bylichka.[22] Notable examples of the genre from the 1830s include Gogol's "Viy" and Pushkin's "The Queen of Spades", although there were scores of other stories from lesser known writers, produced primarily as Christmas fiction. The Vosges mountain range is the setting for most ghost stories by the French writing team of Erckmann-Chatrian.
One of the earliest writers of ghost stories in English was Sir Walter Scott. His ghost stories, "Wandering Willie's Tale" (1824, first published as part of Redgauntlet) and The Tapestried Chamber (1828) eschewed the "Gothic" style of writing and helped set an example for later writers in the genre.
"Golden Age of the Ghost Story"
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.[23] Sullivan argues that the work of Edgar Allan Poe and Sheridan Le Fanu inaugurated this "Golden Age".[23]
Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu was one of the most influential writers of ghost stories. 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.[24] Charlotte Riddell, who wrote fiction as Mrs. J. H. Riddell, created ghost stories which were noted for adept use of the haunted house theme.[25]
The "classic" ghost story arose during the Victorian period, and included authors such as M. R. James, Sheridan Le Fanu, Violet Hunt, and Henry James. Classic ghost stories were influenced by the gothic fiction tradition, and contain elements of folklore and psychology. M. R. James summed up the essential elements of a ghost story as, "Malevolence and terror, the glare of evil faces, 'the stony grin of unearthly malice', pursuing forms in darkness, and 'long-drawn, distant screams', are all in place, and so is a modicum of blood, shed with deliberation and carefully husbanded ...".[26]
Famous literary apparitions from the
Jamesian style
David Langford has described British author M. R. James as writing "the 20th century's most influential canon of ghost stories".[28] James perfected a method of story-telling which has since become known as Jamesian, which involved abandoning many of the traditional Gothic elements of his predecessors. The classic Jamesian tale usually includes the following elements:
- a characterful setting in an English village, seaside town or country estate; an ancient town in France, Denmark or Sweden; or a venerable abbey or university
- a nondescript and rather naïve gentleman-scholar as protagonist (often of a reserved nature)
- the discovery of an old book or other antiquarian object that somehow unlocks, calls down the wrath, or at least attracts the unwelcome attention of a supernatural menace, usually from beyond the grave
According to James, the story must "put the reader into the position of saying to himself, 'If I'm not very careful, something of this kind may happen to me!'"[29] He also perfected the technique of narrating supernatural events through implication and suggestion, letting his reader fill in the blanks, and focusing on the mundane details of his settings and characters in order to throw the horrific and bizarre elements into greater relief. He summed up his approach in his foreword to the anthology Ghosts and Marvels (Oxford, 1924): "Two ingredients most valuable in the concocting of a ghost story are, to me, the atmosphere and the nicely managed crescendo. ... Let us, then, be introduced to the actors in a placid way; let us see them going about their ordinary business, undisturbed by forebodings, pleased with their surroundings; and into this calm environment let the ominous thing put out its head, unobtrusively at first, and then more insistently, until it holds the stage."
Another aspect James considered a requisite was "that the ghost should be malevolent or odious: amiable and helpful apparitions are all very well in fairy tales or in local legends, but I have no use for them in a fictitious ghost story."[29]
Despite his suggestion in the essay "Stories I Have Tried to Write" that writers employ reticence in their work, many of James's tales depict scenes and images of savage and often disturbing violence.[30]
19th-century American writers
Influenced by British and German examples, American writers began to produce their own ghost stories. Washington Irving's short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820), based on an earlier German folktale, features a Headless Horseman. It has been adapted for film and television many times, such as Sleepy Hollow, a successful 1999 feature film.[31] Irving also wrote "The Adventure of the German Student"[21] and Edgar Allan Poe wrote some stories which contain ghosts, such as "The Masque of the Red Death" and "Morella".[21]
In the later 19th century, mainstream American writers such as
The introduction of
Comedies and operas
Oscar Wilde's comic short story "The Canterville Ghost" (1887) has been adapted for film and television on several occasions.
In the United States, prior to and during the
Psychological horror
In the Edwardian era, Algernon Blackwood (who combined the ghost story with nature mysticism),[23] Oliver Onions (whose ghost stories drew on psychological horror),[23] and William Hope Hodgson (whose ghost tales also contained elements of the sea story and science fiction) helped move the ghost story in new directions.[23]
Kaidan
Kaidan (怪談), which literally means "supernatural tale"[36] or "weird tale",[37] is a form of Japanese ghost story.[36] Kaidan entered the vernacular when a game called Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai became popular in the Edo period. The popularity of the game, as well as the acquisition of a printing press, led to the creation of a literary genre called Kaidanshu. Kaidan are not always horror stories, they can "be funny, or strange, or just telling about an odd thing that happened one time".[37]
Lafcadio Hearn published Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things in 1904 as a collection of Japanese ghost stories which was also adapted into a film.[38] The book "is seen as the first introduction of Japanese superstition to European and American audiences".[36]
Modern era (1920 onward)
Ghost Stories magazine, which contained almost nothing but ghost stories, was published from 1926 to 1932.
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).[39] Shirley Jackson made an important contribution to ghost fiction with her novel The Haunting of Hill House (1959).[1][40]
A noted modern British writer of ghost fiction is Ramsey Campbell.[41] Susan Hill also produced The Woman in Black (1983), a ghost novel that has been adapted for stage, television and film.[2]
Noël Coward's play Blithe Spirit, later made into a 1945 film, places a more humorous slant on the phenomenon of haunting of individuals and specific locations.
Film
During the late 1890s the depiction of ghost and supernatural events appear in films. With the advent of motion pictures and television, screen depictions of ghosts became common, and spanned a variety of genres. The works of Shakespeare, Dickens and Wilde have all been made into cinematic versions, as well as adaptations of other playwrights and novelists. One of the well known short films was
In 1926 the novel Topper by Thorne Smith was published, which created the modern American ghost. When the novel was adapted into the 1937 movie Topper, it initiated a new film genre and would also influence television.[43] After the second World War, sentimental depictions of ghosts had become more popular in cinema than horror, and include the 1947 film The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, which was later adapted to television with a successful 1968–70 TV series.[20] Genuine psychological horror films from this period include 1944's The Uninvited, and 1945's Dead of Night. The film Blithe Spirit, based on a play by Noël Coward, was also produced in this period.[44] 1963 saw one of the first major adaptations of a ghost novel, The Haunting, based on the well known novel The Haunting of Hill House.[20]
The 1970s saw screen depictions of ghosts diverge into distinct genres of the romantic and horror. A common theme in the romantic genre from this period is the ghost as a benign guide or messenger, often with unfinished business, such as 1989's Field of Dreams, the 1990 film Ghost, and the 1993 comedy Heart and Souls.[45] In the horror genre, 1980's The Fog, and the A Nightmare on Elm Street series of films from the 1980s and 1990s are notable examples of the trend for the merging of ghost stories with scenes of physical violence.[20] The 1990s saw a return to classic "gothic" ghosts, whose dangers were more psychological than physical. Examples of films are comedy and mystery from this period include 1984's Ghostbusters, 1999's The Sixth Sense and The Others. The 1990s also saw a lighthearted adaptation of the children's character Casper the Friendly Ghost, originally popular in cartoon form in the 1950s and early 1960s, in the feature film Casper.
Television
In fictional television programming, ghosts have been explored in series such as
Popularized in part by the 1984 comedy franchise Ghostbusters, ghost hunting has been popularized as a hobby wherein reportedly haunted places are explored. The ghost hunting theme has been featured in paranormal reality television series, such as A Haunting, Ghost Adventures, Ghost Hunters, Ghost Hunters International, Ghost Lab, and Most Haunted. It is also represented in children's television by such programs as The Ghost Hunter based on the book series of the same name and Ghost Trackers.[49]
The Indian television series Aahat featured ghost and supernatural stories written by B. P. Singh. It was first aired on 5 October 1995 and ran for more than a decade, ending on 25 November 2010 with more than 450 episodes.[50]
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Darrell Schweitzer (2005). The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and Wonders. Westport, CT: Greenwood. pp. 338–340.
- ^ ISBN 9780198614531(p. 404-5).
- ISBN 978-0-8103-5487-6.
- ^ Vassler, Bill. "Campfire Stories: The Art Of The Tale". Westside Toastmasters. Retrieved 12 August 2014.
- ^ Gordon, Lauren (16 July 2014). "9 Scary Campfire Stories That'll Make You Drop Your S'mores". ABC News. Retrieved 12 August 2014.
- ^ Carey, Joanna (17 February 2004). "Ghouls for schools". The Guardian. Guardian News and Media. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
- ^ Coffman, Frank. "Excerpts From "Some Remarks on Ghost Stories"". Archived from the original on February 14, 2009. Retrieved 20 July 2012.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ^ a b Carpenter, Lynette; Kolmar, Wendy K. Ghost Stories by British and American Women: A Selected, Annotated Bibliography. Taylor & Francis. pp. xxii.
- ISBN 978-0879752385.
- ISBN 978-0-292-78924-1.
- ^ Jaehnig, K.C. (1999-03-11). "Classical ghost stories". Southern Illinois University. Archived from the original on September 8, 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-19.
- ISBN 9781118316771.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-85043-768-0.
- S2CID 161610007.
- ISBN 978-0-7486-0251-3.
- ^ Smith, Tom (August 6, 2014). "Hyper Japan hails digital-age 'Genji' opera". The Japan Times. Retrieved August 12, 2014.
- ISBN 9781908698124.
- ^ ISBN 978-0521786638. Retrieved August 16, 2014.
- ^ Helen Child Sargent; George Lyman Kittredge (1904). English and Scottish Popular Ballads edited from the Collection by Francis James Child. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
- ^ ISBN 978-0304332168.
- ^ ISBN 1-933747-33-1, (pp. 7-12)
- ISBN 9781571817587. Page 59.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-670-80902-8.
- ISBN 978-0-684-17808-0.
- ^ J. L. Campbell Sr., "Mrs. J. H. Riddell", in Bleiler, ed., Supernatural Fiction Writers.
- ^ James, M. R. (December 1929). Some Remarks on Ghost Stories. The Bookman. pp. 55–56.
- ISBN 978-1-933747-53-8.
- ISBN 1-55862-206-3
- ^ a b James, M.R., "Preface to More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary". In Joshi, S.T., ed. (2005). Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories: The Complete Ghost Stories of M.R. James, Volume 1, pt. 217. Penguin Books.
- ISBN 978-0582290556.
Although James conjures up strange beasts and supernatural manifestations, the shock effect of his stories is usually strongest when he is dealing in physical mutilation and abnormality
- ^ Sleepy Hollow at Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 29 January 2009.
- ISBN 0-8153-1735-2
- ISBN 0-8153-1735-2
- ISBN 9780665065514.
- ^ Campbell, Olive Dame; Sharp, Cecil James (1917). English Folk Songs From The Southern Appalachians. New York: G. Putnam's Sons.
- ^ a b c Foutz, Scott. "Kaidan: Traditional Japanese Ghost Tales and Japanese Horror Film". Archived from the original on 3 October 2014. Retrieved 14 August 2014.
- ^ a b "What are Kaidan". Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai. 2010-08-18. Retrieved 14 August 2014.
- ISBN 0-89356-450-8(pp. 859-860).
- ISBN 978-0-89356-450-6.
- ^ Sullivan, Jack. "Shirley Jackson". In Bleiler (ed.). Supernatural Fiction Writers. pp. 1031–1036.
- ISBN 978-0-85323-765-5.
- ^ Babbis, Maurice. "The True Origin of the Horror Film". Emerson.edu. Emerson College. Archived from the original on 18 April 2013. Retrieved 11 August 2014.
- ^ FILM; A Fanciful, Haunting Tale of Influence - The New York Times
- ^ "Blithe Spirit". British film institute. Archived from the original on 12 July 2012. Retrieved 11 August 2014.
- ^ Chanko, Kenneth M. (August 8, 1993). "FILM; When It Comes to the Hereafter, Romance and Sentiment Rule". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-01-29.
- ^ Rafferty, Terence (June 8, 2003). "Why Asian Ghost Stories Are the Best". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-01-29.
- ^ Mohamed, Shoaib (September 24, 2007). "The Bus Conductor Turned Superstar Who Took the Right Bus to Demi". Behindwoods. Retrieved 2010-03-17.
- ^ "Anjaane – The Unknown". Indiafm.com. December 30, 2005. Archived from the original on March 8, 2008. Retrieved 2010-03-17.
- ISBN 9781441163691.
- ^ "Hello darkness, my old friend..." Indian Express. Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd. 3 November 1997. Archived from the original on 12 January 2014. Retrieved 17 March 2010.
Further reading
- Bailey, Dale. American Nightmares: The Haunted House Formula in American Popular Fiction. Bowling Green, OH: Popular Press, 1999. ISBN 0-87972-789-6.
- Felton, D. (1999). Haunted Greece and Rome: Ghost Stories from Classical Antiquity. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-72508-9.
- Ashley, Mike, ed. Phantom Perfumes and Other Shades: Memories of Ghost Stories Magazine. Ash-Tree Press, 2000.
- Joynes, Andrew, ed. Medieval Ghost Stories: An Anthology of Miracles, Marvels and Prodigies. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003.
- Locke, John, ed. Ghost Stories: The Magazine and Its Makers, Volumes 1 & 2. Off-Trail Publications, 2010.
- ISBN 0-8214-0569-1.
- Brewster, Scott, and Luke Thurston, ed. The Routledge Handbook to the Ghost Story. New York: Routledge, 2018.
- O'Brian, Helen Conrad, and Julie Anne Stevens, ed. The Ghost Story from the Middle Ages to the 20th Century: A Ghostly Genre. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010.
- Briggs, Julia, Night Visitors: The Rise and Fall of the English Ghost Story. London: Faber, 1977.