ghost-story

Detective-story writers give this thrill by exploiting the resources of the possible; however improbable the happenings in a detective story, they can and must be explained in terms that satisfy the reason. But in a ghost story, where natural laws are dispensed with, the whole point is that the happenings cannot be so explained. A ghost story that is capable of a rational explanation is as much an anomaly as a detective story that isn__. The one is in revolt against a materialistic conception of the universe, whereas the other depends on it.

I walked up the stairs and hesitated at the open door.

There must be something ghostly in the air of Christmas _ something about the close, muggy atmosphere that draws up the ghosts, like the dampness of the summer rains brings out the frogs and snails.

A shade flickered to my left, an eerie shadow balanced even more precariously on the railing than I. Her plimsolls struggled to grip the same rail my fingers now held. I knew her face, just as I knew her death; I__ watched it often enough, those times I__ been unable to avoid crossing here. Nerys was always here, tied to the moment of her death, an echo, forever hurtling down into those waters, only to reappear an instant later, once more wavering on the rails.

We ask our brain to stop worrying, stop obsessing, stop dreaming the same scary dreams again and again. But our brain rarely takes requests.

There is cruelty in the world Eliza, you can see that, can't you?It surrounds us. It breathes on us. We spend our life trying to escape it.

You are not there, Father,_ I cried. __ wake up at Gaudlin Hall, I spend most of my day there, I sleep there at night. And throughout it all there is but one thought running through my mind.___nd that is?___his house is haunted.

No woman will ever take care of my children but me, she said. I will not allow it, do you understand?And after I am gone Madge Toxley, if you try to make them yours, then you will live to regret it.

So you know you're a ghost?"I looked at my hands; they were transparent and glowed faintly. "Can you think of another explanation?

The world of shadows and superstition that was Victorian England, so well depicted in this 1871 tale, was unique. While the foundations of so much of our present knowledge of subjects like medicine, public health, electricity, chemistry and agriculture, were being, if not laid, at least mapped out, people could still believe in the existence of devils and demons. And why not? A good ghost story is pure entertainment. It was not until well into the twentieth century that ghost stories began to have a deeper significance and to become allegorical; in fact, to lose their charm. No mental effort is required to read 'The Weird Woman', no seeking for hidden meanings; there are no complexities of plot, no allegory on the state of the world. And so it should be. At what other point in literary history could a man, standing over the body of his fiancee, say such a line as this: 'Speak, hound! Or, by heaven, this night shall witness two murders instead of one!'Those were the days.(introduction to "The Weird Woman")

His indirect way of approaching a character or an action, striving to realize it by surrounding rather than invading it, is ideally suited to the indefinite and suggestive presentation of a ghost story.(introduction to "Sir Edmund Orme" by Henry James)

I often stood and stared into those tunnels and thought about what happened there; how I was separated from it only by time." - The Procession