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Ghost story

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Illustration by James McBryde for M. R. James's story "Oh, Whistle, And I'll Come To You, My Lad".
Illustration by James McBryde for M. R. James's story "Oh, Whistle, And I'll Come To You, My Lad".

A ghost story is 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.[1][2] The "ghost" may appear of its own accord or be summoned by magic. Linked to the ghost is the idea of a "haunting", where a supernatural entity is tied to a place, object or person.[1] Ghost stories are commonly examples of ghostlore.

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 scare, 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.[1]

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Fiction

Fiction

Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary, or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history, fact, or plausibility. In a traditional narrow sense, "fiction" refers to written narratives in prose – often referring specifically to novels, novellas, and short stories. More broadly, however, fiction encompasses imaginary narratives expressed in any medium, including not just writings but also live theatrical performances, films, television programs, radio dramas, comics, role-playing games, and video games.

Drama

Drama

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television. Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyrical modes ever since Aristotle's Poetics —the earliest work of dramatic theory.

Ghost

Ghost

A ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that is believed to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely, from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes to realistic, lifelike forms. The deliberate attempt to contact the spirit of a deceased person is known as necromancy, or in spiritism as a séance. Other terms associated with it are apparition, haunt, phantom, poltergeist, shade, specter, spirit, spook, wraith, demon, and ghoul.

Premise

Premise

A premise or premiss is a proposition—a true or false declarative statement—used in an argument to prove the truth of another proposition called the conclusion. Arguments consist of two or more premises that imply some conclusion if the argument is sound.

Ghostlore

Ghostlore

Ghostlore or ghost-lore is a genre of folklore concerning ghosts. Ghostlore occurs throughout recorded history, including contemporary contexts.

Short story

Short story

A short story is a piece of prose fiction that can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest types of literature and has existed in the form of legends, mythic tales, folk tales, fairy tales, tall tales, fables and anecdotes in various ancient communities around the world. The modern short story developed in the early 19th century.

Genre fiction

Genre fiction

Genre fiction, also known as popular fiction, is a term used in the book-trade for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre, in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre.

Supernatural fiction

Supernatural fiction

Supernatural fiction or supernaturalist fiction is a genre of speculative fiction that exploits or is centered on supernatural themes, often contradicting naturalist assumptions of the real world.

Weird fiction

Weird fiction

Weird fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction originating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Weird fiction either eschews or radically reinterprets ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and other traditional antagonists of supernatural horror fiction. Writers on the subject of weird fiction, such as China Miéville, sometimes use "the tentacle" to represent this type of writing. The tentacle is a limb-type absent from most of the monsters of European folklore and gothic fiction, but often attached to the monstrous creatures created by weird fiction writers, such as William Hope Hodgson, M. R. James, Clark Ashton Smith, and H. P. Lovecraft. Weird fiction often attempts to inspire awe as well as fear in response to its fictional creations, causing commentators like Miéville to paraphrase Goethe in saying that weird fiction evokes a sense of the numinous. Although "weird fiction" has been chiefly used as a historical description for works through the 1930s, it experienced a resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s, under the labels of New Weird and Slipstream, which continues into the 21st century.

Prophet

Prophet

In religion, a prophet or prophetess is an individual who is regarded as being in contact with a divine being and is said to speak on behalf of that being, serving as an intermediary with humanity by delivering messages or teachings from the supernatural source to other people. The message that the prophet conveys is called a prophecy.

History

The ghost of a pirate, from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates (1903)
The ghost of a pirate, from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates (1903)

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 pulp magazines in the early 1900s created new avenues for ghost stories to be published, and they also began to appear in publications such as Good Housekeeping and The New Yorker.[8]

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Howard Pyle

Howard Pyle

Howard Pyle was an American illustrator, painter, and author, primarily of books for young people. He was a native of Wilmington, Delaware, and he spent the last year of his life in Florence, Italy.

Anthropology

Anthropology

Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavior, while cultural anthropology studies cultural meaning, including norms and values. A portmanteau term sociocultural anthropology is commonly used today. Linguistic anthropology studies how language influences social life. Biological or physical anthropology studies the biological development of humans.

Campfire story

Campfire story

In North America, a campfire story is a form of oral storytelling performed around an open fire at night, typically in the wilderness, largely connected with the telling of stories having supernatural motifs or elements of urban legend. Whereas the activity is not incomparable to, nor mutually exclusive from, indigenous practices they should not be confused with each other in a contemporary context.

Literature

Literature

Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include oral literature, much of which has been transcribed. Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment, and can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role.

English people

English people

The English people are an ethnic group and nation native to England, who speak the English language, a West Germanic language, and share a common history and culture. The English identity began with the Anglo-Saxons, when they were known as the Angelcynn, meaning race or tribe of the Angles. Their ethnonym is derived from the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples who migrated to Great Britain around the 5th century AD.

M. R. James

M. R. James

Montague Rhodes James was an English author, medievalist scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge (1905–1918), and of Eton College (1918–1936). He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge (1913–15).

Good Housekeeping

Good Housekeeping

Good Housekeeping is an American women's magazine featuring articles about women's interests, product testing by The Good Housekeeping Institute, recipes, diet, and health, as well as literary articles. It is well known for the "Good Housekeeping Seal", a limited warranty program that is popularly known as the "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval".

The New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues covering two-week spans. Although its reviews and events listings often focus on the cultural life of New York City, The New Yorker has a wide audience outside New York and is read internationally. It is well known for its illustrated and often topical covers, its commentaries on popular culture and eccentric American culture, its attention to modern fiction by the inclusion of short stories and literary reviews, its rigorous fact checking and copy editing, its journalism on politics and social issues, and its single-panel cartoons sprinkled throughout each issue.

Literature

John Dee and Edward Kelley invoking the spirit of a deceased person (engraving from the Astrology by Ebenezer Sibly, 1806)
John Dee and Edward Kelley invoking the spirit of a deceased person (engraving from the Astrology by Ebenezer Sibly, 1806)

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 Seneca, who would later influence the revival of tragedy on the Renaissance stage, particularly Thomas Kyd and Shakespeare.[12]

The One Thousand and One Nights, sometimes known as Arabian Nights, contains a number of ghost stories, often involving jinn (also spelled as djinn), ghouls and corpses.[13][14] In particular, the tale of "Ali the Cairene and the Haunted House in Baghdad" revolves around a house haunted by jinns.[13] Other medieval Arabic literature, such as the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity, also contain ghost stories.[15]

The 11th century Japanese work The Tale of Genji contains ghost stories, and includes characters being possessed by spirits.[16]

English Renaissance theatre

"Hamlet and his father's ghost" by Henry Fuseli (1780s drawing). The ghost is wearing stylised plate armour in 17th-century style, including a morion type helmet and tassets. Depicting ghosts as wearing armour, to suggest a sense of antiquity, was common in Elizabethan theatre.
"Hamlet and his father's ghost" by Henry Fuseli (1780s drawing). The ghost is wearing stylised plate armour in 17th-century style, including a morion type helmet and tassets. Depicting ghosts as wearing armour, to suggest a sense of antiquity, was common in Elizabethan theatre.

In the mid-16th century, the works of Seneca were rediscovered by Italian humanists, and they became the models for the revival of tragedy. Seneca's influence is particularly evident in Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy and Shakespeare's Hamlet, both of which share a revenge theme, a corpse-strewn climax, and ghosts among the cast. The ghosts in Richard III also resemble the Senecan model, while the ghost in Hamlet plays a more complex role.[1] The shade of Hamlet's murdered father in Hamlet has become one of the more recognizable ghosts in English literature. In another of Shakespeare's works, Macbeth, the murdered Banquo returns as a ghost to the dismay of the title character.[17]

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 “Border Ballads” of the turbulent border country between England and Scotland. Ballads of this type include "The Unquiet Grave", "The Wife of Usher's Well", and "Sweet William's Ghost", which feature the recurring theme of returning dead lovers or children. In the ballad "King Henry", a particularly ravenous ghost devours the king's horse and hounds before forcing the king into bed. The king then awakens to find the ghost transformed into a beautiful woman.[19] The Flying Dutchman was a ghost ship that became the subject of many ghost stories.

Romantic era

Depiction of a woman telling a ghost story.
Depiction of a woman telling a ghost story.

One of the key early appearances by ghosts was The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole in 1764, considered to be the first gothic novel.[20] However, although the ghost story shares the use of the supernatural with the Gothic novel, the two forms differ. Ghost stories, unlike Gothic fiction, usually take place in a time and location near to the audience of the story.

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 Victorian period are the ghosts of A Christmas Carol, in which Ebenezer Scrooge is helped to see the error of his ways by the ghost of his former colleague Jacob Marley, and the ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet to Come. In a precursor to A Christmas Carol Dickens published "The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton".[27] Dickens also wrote "The Signal-Man", another work featuring a ghost.

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:

  1. 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
  2. a nondescript and rather naïve gentleman-scholar as protagonist (often of a reserved nature)
  3. 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 Edith Wharton, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman[32] and F. Marion Crawford[33] all wrote ghost fiction. Henry James also wrote ghost stories, including "The Jolly Corner" and The Turn of the Screw.[1] The Turn of the Screw, his most famous ghost story, has appeared in a number of adaptations, notably a film, The Innocents, and an opera, Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw.

The introduction of pulp magazines in the early 1900s created new avenues for ghost stories to be published, and they also began to appear in publications such as Good Housekeeping and The New Yorker.[8]

Comedies and operas

Oscar Telgmann's opera Leo, the Royal Cadet (1885) includes "Judge's Song" about a ghost at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario.[34]

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 First World War, folklorists Olive Dame Campbell and Cecil Sharp collected ballads from the people of the Appalachian Mountains, which included ghostly themes such as "The Cruel Ship's Carpenter", "The Suffolk Miracle", "The Unquiet Grave" and "The Wife of Usher's Well". The theme of these ballads was often the return of a dead lover. These songs were variants of traditional British ballads handed down by generations of mountaineers descended from the people of the Anglo-Scottish border region.[35]

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

Print by Katsushika Hokusai. Illustration for a classical Japanese kaidan story Yotsuya from the series One Hundred Tales (Hyaku monogatari). The ghost of Oiwa manifesting herself as a lantern obake.
Print by Katsushika Hokusai. Illustration for a classical Japanese kaidan story Yotsuya from the series One Hundred Tales (Hyaku monogatari). The ghost of Oiwa manifesting herself as a lantern obake.

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.

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John Dee

John Dee

John Dee was an English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, teacher, occultist, and alchemist. He was the court astronomer for, and advisor to, Elizabeth I, and spent much of his time on alchemy, divination, and Hermetic philosophy. As an antiquarian, he had one of the largest libraries in England at the time. As a political advisor, he advocated the foundation of English colonies in the New World to form a "British Empire", a term he is credited with coining.

Edward Kelley

Edward Kelley

Sir Edward Kelley or Kelly, also known as Edward Talbot, was an English Renaissance occultist and scryer. He is best known for working with John Dee in his magical investigations. Besides the professed ability to see spirits or angels in a "shew-stone" or mirror, which John Dee so valued, Kelley also claimed to possess the secret of transmuting base metals into gold, the goal of alchemy, as well as the supposed philosopher's stone itself.

Ebenezer Sibly

Ebenezer Sibly

Ebenezer Sibly was an English physician, astrologer and writer on the occult.

Homer

Homer

Homer was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history.

Odyssey

Odyssey

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the Iliad, the poem is divided into 24 books. It follows the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the Trojan War. After the war, which lasted ten years, his journey lasted for ten additional years, during which time he encountered many perils and all his crewmates were killed. In his absence, Odysseus was assumed dead, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus had to contend with a group of unruly suitors who were competing for Penelope's hand in marriage.

Old Testament

Old Testament

The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Israelites. The second division of Christian Bibles is the New Testament, written in the Koine Greek language.

Mostellaria

Mostellaria

Mostellaria is a play by the Roman author Plautus. Its name translates from Latin as "The Ghost (play)". The play is believed to be an adaptation of a lost comedy of the Athenian poet Philemon called Phasma. It is set in a street in the city of Athens.

Plautus

Plautus

Titus Maccius Plautus, commonly known as Plautus, was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus. The word Plautine refers to both Plautus's own works and works similar to or influenced by his.

Pliny the Younger

Pliny the Younger

Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo, better known as Pliny the Younger, was a lawyer, author, and magistrate of Ancient Rome. Pliny's uncle, Pliny the Elder, helped raise and educate him.

Athens

Athens

Athens is a major coastal urban area in the Mediterranean and is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With its surrounding urban area’s population numbering over three million, it is also the seventh largest urban area in the European Union. Athens dominates and is the capital of the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years and its earliest human presence beginning somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennia BCE.

Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas and achievements of classical antiquity. It occurred after the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages and was associated with great social change. In addition to the standard periodization, proponents of a "long Renaissance" may put its beginning in the 14th century and its end in the 17th century.

One Thousand and One Nights

One Thousand and One Nights

One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights, from the first English-language edition, which rendered the title as The Arabian Nights' Entertainment.

Film

The Gray Ghost (1917).
The Gray Ghost (1917).

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 Haunted Castle directed by Georges Méliès in 1896. It is also considered as the first silent short film depicting ghost and supernatural events.[42]

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.

Asian cinema has also produced horror films about ghosts, such as the 1998 Japanese film Ringu (remade in the US as The Ring in 2002), and the Pang brothers' 2002 film The Eye.[46] Indian ghost movies are popular not just in India, but in the Middle East, Africa, South East Asia and other parts of the world. Some Indian ghost movies such as the comedy / horror film Manichitrathazhu have been commercial successes, dubbed into several languages.[47] Generally the films are based on the experiences of modern people who are unexpectedly exposed to ghosts, and usually draw on traditional Indian literature or folklore. In some cases the Indian films are remakes of western films, such as Anjaane, based on Alejandro Amenábar's ghost story The Others.[48]

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List of ghost films

List of ghost films

Ghost movies and shows can fall into a wide range of genres, including romance, comedy, horror, juvenile interest, and drama. Depictions of ghosts are as diverse as Casper the Friendly Ghost, Beetlejuice, Hamlet's father, Jacob Marley, Freddy Krueger, and Moaning Myrtle, as well as the traditional spectral spirits and other bumps in the night.

Georges Méliès

Georges Méliès

Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès was a French illusionist, actor, and film director. He led many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema.

Psychological horror

Psychological horror

Psychological horror is a subgenre of horror and psychological fiction with a particular focus on mental, emotional, and psychological states to frighten, disturb, or unsettle its audience. The subgenre frequently overlaps with the related subgenre of psychological thriller, and often uses mystery elements and characters with unstable, unreliable, or disturbed psychological states to enhance the suspense, drama, action, and paranoia of the setting and plot and to provide an overall creepy, unpleasant, unsettling, or distressing atmosphere.

Dead of Night

Dead of Night

Dead of Night is a 1945 black and white British anthology horror film, made by Ealing Studios. The individual segments were directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden and Robert Hamer. It stars Mervyn Johns, Googie Withers, Sally Ann Howes and Michael Redgrave. The film is best remembered for the concluding story featuring Redgrave and an insane ventriloquist's malevolent dummy.

Blithe Spirit (1945 film)

Blithe Spirit (1945 film)

Blithe Spirit is a 1945 British fantasy-comedy film directed by David Lean. The screenplay by Lean, cinematographer Ronald Neame and associate producer Anthony Havelock-Allan, is based on actor/director/producer and playwright Noël Coward's 1941 play of the same name, the title of which is derived from the line "Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert" in the poem "To a Skylark" by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The song "Always", written by Irving Berlin, is an important plot element in "Blithe Spirit".

Blithe Spirit (play)

Blithe Spirit (play)

Blithe Spirit is a comic play by Noël Coward, described by the author as "an improbable farce in three acts". The play concerns the socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant Madame Arcati to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to gather material for his next book. The scheme backfires when he is haunted by the ghost of his wilful and temperamental first wife, Elvira, after the séance. Elvira makes continual attempts to disrupt Charles's marriage to his second wife, Ruth, who cannot see or hear the ghost.

Noël Coward

Noël Coward

Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".

Field of Dreams

Field of Dreams

Field of Dreams is a 1989 American sports fantasy drama film written and directed by Phil Alden Robinson, based on Canadian novelist W. P. Kinsella's 1982 novel Shoeless Joe. The film stars Kevin Costner as a farmer who builds a baseball field in his cornfield that attracts the ghosts of baseball legends, including Shoeless Joe Jackson and the Chicago Black Sox. Amy Madigan, James Earl Jones, and Burt Lancaster also star. It was theatrically released on May 5, 1989.

Ghost (1990 film)

Ghost (1990 film)

Ghost is a 1990 American romantic fantasy film directed by Jerry Zucker from a screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin, and starring Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, Tony Goldwyn, Vincent Schiavelli, and Rick Aviles. The plot centers on Sam Wheat (Swayze), a murdered banker, whose ghost sets out to save his girlfriend, Molly Jensen (Moore), from the person who killed him – through the help of the psychic Oda Mae Brown (Goldberg).

Heart and Souls

Heart and Souls

Heart and Souls is a 1993 American fantasy comedy-drama film directed by Ron Underwood. The film stars Robert Downey Jr. as Thomas Reilly, a businessman recruited by the souls of four deceased people, his guardian angels from childhood, to help them rectify their unfinished lives, as he is the only one who can communicate with them.

The Fog

The Fog

The Fog is a 1980 American supernatural horror film directed by John Carpenter, who also co-wrote the screenplay and created the music for the film. It stars Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Atkins, Janet Leigh and Hal Holbrook. It tells the story of a strange, glowing fog that sweeps over a small coastal town in Northern California, bringing with it the vengeful ghosts of leprous mariners who were killed in a shipwreck there a century before.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (franchise)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (franchise)

A Nightmare on Elm Street is an American supernatural slasher-horror media franchise consisting of nine films, a television series, novels, comic books, and various other media. The franchise began with the film A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), written and directed by Wes Craven. The overall plot of the franchise centers around the fictional character Fred "Freddy" Krueger, the apparition of a former-child killer who was burned alive by the vengeful parents of his victims, who returns from the grave to terrorize and kill the teenage residents of Springwood, Ohio in their dreams. Craven returned to the franchise to co-script the second sequel, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), and to write/direct New Nightmare (1994). The films collectively grossed $472 million at the box office worldwide.

Television

In fictional television programming, ghosts have been explored in series such as Ghost Whisperer, Medium, Supernatural, the television series adaptation of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). In animated fictional television programming, ghosts have served as the central element in series such as Casper the Friendly Ghost, Danny Phantom, and Scooby-Doo, as well as minor roles in various other television shows.

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]

Discover more about Television related topics

Ghost Whisperer

Ghost Whisperer

Ghost Whisperer is an American supernatural television series, which ran on CBS from September 23, 2005, to May 21, 2010.

Casper the Friendly Ghost

Casper the Friendly Ghost

Casper the Friendly Ghost is the protagonist of the Famous Studios theatrical animated cartoon series of the same name. He is a pleasant, personable and translucent ghost, but often criticized by his three wicked uncles, the Ghostly Trio.

Danny Phantom

Danny Phantom

Danny Phantom is an American animated superhero action adventure television series created by Butch Hartman for Nickelodeon. The series follows Danny Fenton, a teenage boy who, after an accident with an unpredictable portal between the human world and the "Ghost Zone", becomes a human-ghost hybrid and takes on the task of saving his town from subsequent ghost attacks using an evolving variety of supernatural powers. Danny is aided in his quest by his two best friends Sam Manson and Tucker Foley, and later, his older sister Jazz, who for most of the series' run are among the only people who know of his double life.

Ghostbusters (franchise)

Ghostbusters (franchise)

The Ghostbusters franchise consists of American supernatural horror-comedies, based on an original concept created by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis in 1984. The plot ostensibly centers around a group of eccentric New York City parapsychologists who investigate, encounter, and capture ghosts, paranormal manifestations, demigods and demons. The franchise expanded with licensed action figures, books, comic books, video games, television series, theme park attractions, and other original Ghostbusters-themed products.

Ghost hunting

Ghost hunting

Ghost hunting is the process of investigating locations that are reported to be haunted by ghosts. Typically, a ghost-hunting team will attempt to collect evidence supporting the existence of paranormal activity. Ghost hunters use a variety of electronic devices, including EMF meters, digital thermometers, both handheld and static digital video cameras, including thermographic and night vision cameras, night vision goggles, as well as digital audio recorders. Other more traditional techniques are also used, such as conducting interviews and researching the history of allegedly haunted sites. Ghost hunters may also refer to themselves as paranormal investigators.

Paranormal television

Paranormal television

Paranormal television is a genre of reality television that purports to document factual investigations of the paranormal rather than fictional representations seen in traditional narrative films and TV. Over the years, the genre has grown to be a staple of television and even changed the programing focus of networks like the History Channel and the Travel Channel. By highlighting beliefs in topics ranging from Bigfoot to aliens, paranormal television continues to elevate popular interest in the paranormal.

A Haunting

A Haunting

A Haunting is an American paranormal drama anthology television series that depicts eyewitness accounts of alleged possession, exorcism, and ghostly encounters. The program features narrations, interviews, and dramatic re-enactments based on various accounts of alleged paranormal experiences at reportedly haunted and mostly residential locations.

Ghost Adventures

Ghost Adventures

Ghost Adventures is an American paranormal and reality television series that premiered on October 17, 2008, on the Travel Channel before moving to Discovery+ in 2021. An independent film of the same name originally aired on the Sci-Fi Channel on July 25, 2007. The program follows ghost hunters Zak Bagans, Nick Groff, Aaron Goodwin, Billy Tolley, and Jay Wasley as they investigate locations that are reported to be haunted.

Ghost Hunters (TV series)

Ghost Hunters (TV series)

Ghost Hunters is an American paranormal and reality television series. The original series aired from October 6, 2004 until October 26, 2016 on Syfy. The original program spanned eleven seasons with 230 episodes, not including 10 specials. The series was revived in early 2019 and aired its twelfth and thirteenth seasons from August 21, 2019, to May 27, 2020, on A&E, after which it was cancelled and then revived for its fourteenth season only months later on Discovery+, which started airing on October 31, 2021. Season 15 began October 1, 2022 on Travel Channel.

Ghost Hunters International

Ghost Hunters International

Ghost Hunters International is a spin-off series of Ghost Hunters that aired on Syfy. The series premiered on January 9, 2008, and ended on April 4, 2012. Like its parent series, GHI was a reality series that followed a team of paranormal investigators; whereas the original series primarily covers only locations within the United States, the GHI team traveled around the world and documented some of the world's most legendary haunted locations.

Ghost Lab

Ghost Lab

Ghost Lab is a weekly American paranormal television series that premiered on October 6, 2009, on the Discovery Channel. Produced by Paper Route Productions and Go Go Luckey Entertainment, the program is narrated by Mike Rowe. It follows ghost-hunting brothers Brad and Barry Klinge, who founded Everyday Paranormal (EP) in October 2007.

Most Haunted

Most Haunted

Most Haunted is a British paranormal reality television series. Following complaints, the broadcast regulator, Ofcom, ruled that it was an entertainment show, not a legitimate investigation into the paranormal, and "should not be taken seriously".

Source: "Ghost story", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, February 19th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_story.

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See also
References
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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.
  • Sullivan, Jack. Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story from Le Fanu to Blackwood, Ohio University Press, 1978. 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.
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