Ghost Stories and Haunted Houses

Toby Frost

Toby Frost

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I wondered if anyone was interested in discussing ghost stories and stories about haunted houses. They’ve always interested me, partly because they are exciting and sinister when done well, but also because they often seem to closely follow a set form, which makes them strangely comfortable reading (perhaps the horror equivalent of a “cosy” mystery novel). This makes them enjoyable in a familiar way, but can make the horror they depict much weaker and slightly camp.

They also seem to be a genre where the best stories break the apparent rules of the genre or add some new twist. I’m thinking of stories like M.R. James’ “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book” and “Count Magnus”, where the ghost is essentially a demon that latches onto certain people rather than a spirit that haunts a place, and The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons, which deliberately loses all the gothic trappings to strip the haunted house story to its essentials.

Anyone interested? Any recommendations would be welcome, too.
 
Toby Frost said:
I wondered if anyone was interested in discussing ghost stories and stories about haunted houses. They’ve always interested me, partly because they are exciting and sinister when done well, but also because they often seem to closely follow a set form, which makes them strangely comfortable reading (perhaps the horror equivalent of a “cosy” mystery novel). This makes them enjoyable in a familiar way, but can make the horror they depict much weaker and slightly camp.

They also seem to be a genre where the best stories break the apparent rules of the genre or add some new twist. I’m thinking of stories like M.R. James’ “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book” and “Count Magnus”, where the ghost is essentially a demon that latches onto certain people rather than a spirit that haunts a place, and The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons, which deliberately loses all the gothic trappings to strip the haunted house story to its essentials.

Anyone interested? Any recommendations would be welcome, too.
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@Phyrebrat is needed! I don't read a lot of them (although wrote one for Malevolence) but the Haunting of Hill House always, always stays with me. (Whatever walked there, walked alone. A single exquisite, terrifying line.) Stephen King used it as the basis for the Marsden house in Salem's Lot.
 
I posted this a few years ago at another site as suggestions for October/Halloween reading.

Great Ghost Stories

10 by M. R. James
  1. “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”
  2. “Casting the Runes”
  3. “Count Magnus”
  4. “An Episode of Cathedral History”
  5. “The Haunted Doll's House”
  6. “A Warning to the Curious”
  7. “The Mezzotint”
  8. “Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook”
  9. “The Treasure of Abbott Thomas”
  10. “A School Story”

For about a century the best known writer of ghost stories in the English language has been M.R. James. James was a mediaeval scholar, and a provost at both King’s College at Cambridge and, later, Eton College; he was also a life-long bachelor, putting his time and attention to his work and his studies. At Christmas time, those left behind for the holidays would entertain themselves after Christmas dinner, and so James began writing ghost stories to read aloud.

Just to note: Not all ghost stories contain ghosts. Over time, through usage, the term, “ghost story” came to embrace any story of horror, though that seems to be changing, with “ghost story” coming more to mean horror stories with quiet, evocative story-telling, and not a lot of blood and gore. Certainly James’ stories do not all contain ghosts.

I split (re/)reading the Collected Ghost Stories (Wordsworth) over a couple of Decembers and the stories above were among my favorites. James’ work sprang from the Victorian ghost stories of his youth like those by Dickens and, especially, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. In turn his work inspired other writers to try their hand at the ghost story.

20 not by M. R. James
  1. “The Signalman” by Charles Dickens
  2. “Mr. Justice Harbottle” by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
  3. “The Beckoning Fair One” by Oliver Onions
  4. “How Love Came to Professor Gildea” by Robert Hichens
  5. "The Middle Toe of the Right Foot” by Ambrose Bierce
  6. “Amor Dure” by Vernon Lee
  7. “Negotium Perambulans” by E. F. Benson
  8. “Pomegranate Seed” by Edith Wharton
  9. “The Jolly Corner” by Henry James
  10. “Smoke Ghost” by Fritz Leiber
  11. “The Lady on the Gray” by John Collier
  12. “A Visitor From Down Under” by L. P. Hartley
  13. “The Happy Autumn Fields” by Elizabeth Bowen
  14. “The Demon Lover” by Elizabeth Bowen
  15. “A Little Place Off the Edgeware Road” by Graham Greene
  16. “The Portobello Road” by Murial Spark
  17. “Three Miles Up” by Elizabeth Jane Howard
  18. “The Inner Room” by Robert Aickman
  19. “The Two Sams” by Glen Hirshberg
  20. “Among the Tombs” by Reggie Oliver

Most of these are truly ghost stories, though some might argue with Bowen’s “The Demon Lover” and the Hirshberg; only the Hirshberg and Oliver were first published within the last decade. They are all favorite stories of mine, but if forced to point at a handful I especially recommended and especially for someone who hasn’t read many ghost stories, I’d say, after the James stories, “The Beckoning Fair One,” which is a seductive story of a haunted room, “Amor Dure,” which is a powerful story of possession, “Smoke Ghost,” which I’ve already raved about, “The Demon Lover,” which uses the atmosphere of WWII London to powerful effect, and “The Inner Room,” which is one of those stories that leaves the reader a bit disoriented, wondering what just happened.


Ten novels
  1. Turn of the Screw by Henry James
  2. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
  3. Hell House by Richard Matheson
  4. Naomi’s Room by Jonathan Aycliffe
  5. The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
  6. The Mist in the Mirror by Susan Hill
  7. Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Leiber
  8. The Shining by Stephen King
  9. Ghost Story by Peter Straub
  10. Beloved by Toni Morrison

Writing an extended ghost story must be hard. Add to the needs of a novel for a defined setting and believable characters, among other needs, the requirement for a ghostly mood and atmosphere, the sense of foreboding that the success of most ghost stories depends on. These novels are among the few I’ve read that really work as novels and as ghost stories. (I have some at home that I haven't read yet that look promising: Julian's House by Judith Hawkes; The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddon; House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski; House of Windows by John Langan; and Audrey's Door by Sarah Langan.)

Readers, even some non-academic readers, still debate whether Turn of the Screw is really a ghost story or not. What I don’t think anyone would debate is that James – the other ghost story writing James, Henry – was using the atmospherics of the ghost story to further his tale of a children’s nanny who may or may not have seen a ghost. This is the model of a quiet, slow-building tale in which the ghostly and the psychological mingle and merge.

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.” (famous first paragraph of The Haunting of Hill House)

Jackson’s novel is one of the finest, most affecting novels of the supernatural from the 20th century. A short novel by current standards, it tells its story concisely, yet often obliquely, illustrating the search for love and acceptance by Eleanor Vance. Every event in this story stems from the character of Eleanor Vance and her quest and there is a sense of inevitability as the novel progresses to its final, sad scene.

Richard Matheson’s Hell House is, from what I’ve read, a response to Jackson’s novel. Apparently Matheson did not believe Jackson captured the way a scientific expedition into a known haunted house would proceed and so wrote his own version. Hell House takes much of its set-up from Jackson’s novel, including having four people with their own emotional and psychological baggage as the main characters, puts them through a similar but sufficiently different plot, but cannot at any point match the lyricism and flow of Jackson’s writing; Hell House is the pulp version of The Haunting of Hill House. That said, Matheson is an accomplished writer in his mode and this is one of the more entertaining stories I’ve read by him. Just don’t expect the psychological acuity or the ability to build the story from character that Jackson showed.

Naomi’s Room is about a family in a new house, finding it’s haunted. The father digs into the house’s past, encounters the supernatural in other places in at least one set-piece worthy of M. R. James, and eventually solves the puzzle, sort of, in an ending that I found shocking, yet apt. I did think this first novel ran out of steam a bit past mid-way, but the ending, for all its distastefulness, redeemed the book.

Susan Hill irks many ghost story aficionados. She has a habit of saying things about other ghost stories that are dismissive if not outright insulting to the stories, the writers and the readers. She really shouldn’t do that because her novels The Woman in Black and The Mist in the Mirror bring nothing new to the ghost story, following the time worn path of events that many stories before them created. That said, they walk the path well, creating believable settings and characters, providing a few chills along the way, and wall written in impecable prose. I enjoyed each, the latter maybe a bit more during the reading than the former, though the former has a central image, the woman in black, that makes it stay in memory perhaps a bit more powerfully.

I’ve already cheered about Our Lady of Darkness, so just a couple of words about The Shining and Ghost Story: I’ve meant to reread both for the last couple of years but keep getting side-tracked. At the time I read them in the early 1980s, they seemed to me good enough to merit the praise they were getting from the press and readers. As for Peter Straub, my recent (re/)reading of some of his novels and short stories have certainly done nothing to make me think I would change my mind about Ghost Story.

Beloved, based on true events that took place during the time when slavery was legal, is a powerful, Faulknerian novel, slowly peeling away its mysteries to reveal its core story, the motivation of a mother. Some readers don’t care for this novel, apparently finding it difficult and maybe even pretentious reading. I thought it was one of the finest novels I read in the 1980s, its cumulative power finally overwhelming, its revelations heart-breaking.
 
I've greatly enjoyed M. R. James. There's a whole "Jamesian" tradition with stories by A. N. L. Munby, L. T. C. Rolt, and others, and some of those stories are pretty good, too.

Isn't Oliver Onions's The Beckoning Fair One a haunted house story? And one of the genuinely creepiest?

Burrage's "One Who Saw" affected me, a reader who at that time had read dozens of literary ghost stories over the past few years, to an unusual degree. His "Smee" is pretty effective too.

Russell Kirk's "Behind the Stumps"...
 
Extollager said:
I've greatly enjoyed M. R. James. There's a whole "Jamesian" tradition with stories by A. N. L. Munby, L. T. C. Rolt, and others, and some of those stories are pretty good, too.

Isn't Oliver Onions's The Beckoning Fair One a haunted house story? And one of the genuinely creepiest?

Burrage's "One Who Saw" affected me, a reader who at that time had read dozens of literary ghost stories over the past few years, to an unusual degree. His "Smee" is pretty effective too.

Russell Kirk's "Behind the Stumps"...
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The Beckoning Fair One is a haunted house story; and creepy might be an understatement. I wasn't cutting the distinction too fine for this list.

I see I should have reread before sending. The lists might be of interest, the rest was aimed at posters much less well-read in ghost/horror than those here.

Randy M.
 
Toby Frost said:
I wondered if anyone was interested in discussing ghost stories and stories about haunted houses. They’ve always interested me, partly because they are exciting and sinister when done well, but also because they often seem to closely follow a set form, which makes them strangely comfortable reading (perhaps the horror equivalent of a “cosy” mystery novel). This makes them enjoyable in a familiar way, but can make the horror they depict much weaker and slightly camp.
Click to expand...

That's a good point, as is,

They also seem to be a genre where the best stories break the apparent rules of the genre or add some new twist. I’m thinking of stories like M.R. James’ “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book” and “Count Magnus”, where the ghost is essentially a demon that latches onto certain people rather than a spirit that haunts a place, and The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons, which deliberately loses all the gothic trappings to strip the haunted house story to its essentials.
Click to expand...

But I'd cast it somewhat differently: "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman showed early on that the form didn't have to be conservative. The story is an implied critique of how men treated women in that time period and how the medical community of the time treated women.

To be honest, I'm not sure whether or not that was recognized at the time.

Anyway, the list I sent pretty much includes most of my favorite ghost/haunted house stories. I've since read Sarah Waters The Little Stranger which was good, though not, I think, great. It does a good job of depicting place and way of life, and putting those in the context of a time, the late 1940s. Also The Harrowing by Alexandra Sokoloff which was not as fully imagined as the waters, but was entertaining. And I reread, after thirty or so years, Richard Matheson's Hell House which foregrounds some of the sexuality that Shirley Jackson implied in The Haunting of Hill House. Matheson's novel lacks the subtlety, but it does have a visceral impact.

I still have Anne Rivers Siddon's The House Next Door to read, and I've been looking at Robert Marasco's Burnt Offerings, too. I will get to them. I will. Soon.

I hope.

Randy M.
 
The House Next Door is great, I think. It gains a lot from losing the trappings. It's not cosy at all. But you're right that ghost stories can be stark and hard-hitting. L.P. Hartley did once called "The Man In The Lift", which is really quite unpleasant even now. I would count "The Hellbound Heart" by Clive Barker as a ghost story, too, since it's effectively about the haunting of a room.

One of the problems, to me, is that once you're in Ghost Story Mode, you're on the alert for what's coming. If someone counts his guests, there will be one extra person whom nobody can quite identify. If someone looks at a piece of architecture, it will hint at the backstory of the ghost. There has to be some way of avoiding that neat moment where the old story ties up with the strange events of the present or to drop it on the reader in a surprising way.

The other problem, in some longer stories, is that the last act is disappointing. The character bury the serving-girl's bones, or bless the room, or whatever the secret is, and the ghost is gone. The film "Ring" got around this quite well, likewise "The Hellbound Heart", whose ghost/demon creatures don't obey the rules; they're just malevolent.
 
I'm not sure I agree, Toby, that there's a "problem" there, but never mind -- what I wanted to say was that your remark reminded me of someone's story about time travelers who are gathering just before Abraham Lincoln is to be shot. You don't necessarily realize right away that that is what is going on. I forget the name of the woman who wrote it or the story's title, but no doubt someone will post that before I look it up!
 
Toby Frost said:
[...]The other problem, in some longer stories, is that the last act is disappointing. The character bury the serving-girl's bones, or bless the room, or whatever the secret is, and the ghost is gone. The film "Ring" got around this quite well, likewise "The Hellbound Heart", whose ghost/demon creatures don't obey the rules; they're just malevolent.
Click to expand...

You should find Jonathan Aycliffe's Naomi's Room. At the time I read it, I didn't really like the ending. Since then ... well, I should reread. In retrospect I think he found a way to punch me square in my complacency.


Randy M.
 
Extollager said:
I'm not sure I agree, Toby, that there's a "problem" there, but never mind -- what I wanted to say was that your remark reminded me of someone's story about time travelers who are gathering just before Abraham Lincoln is to be shot. You don't necessarily realize right away that that is what is going on. I forget the name of the woman who wrote it or the story's title, but no doubt someone will post that before I look it up!
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Karen Joy Fowler, "Standing Room Only"
 
Dreams in the Witch House HP Lovecraft. That kept me awake at night when I was 14.
 
"Houses" suggests private residences. I'm not sure how particular Toby wants our suggestions to be.

There's a whiff of such haunting in Dickens's Bleak House, with the Ghost's Walk at Dedlock's mansion.
 
Oh no, i'd definitely interpret it widely. I'd have to include The Shining, and that's set in a hotel. I think it's more the idea of a place, particularly a building, that's somehow intrinsically malevolent that's interesting.

Perhaps for me the problem is where the grand finale of the story is either "And you know what, he was a ghost!" or "And the house really was haunted!" Or it's "So we followed the ghost's instructions and everything went back to normal." A really good writer can make that impressive (the climax to Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book is pretty much "It was real!") but most of the time I want something more than that, some extra element (after all, if I'm reading a ghost story, I'd be shocked if there was no ghost!). For example, the end of "Oh Whistle and I'll Come To You, My Lad" is not just that the ghost is real, but that it is on the attack, and that the professor only escapes by a fluke.

Incidentally, if you can find it, Jonathan Miller's adaptation of "Oh Whistle..." is very good. Some of the old 1970s adaptations of M.R. James weren't bad, either.
 
Toby Frost said:
I should also add that the punch of "Oh Whistle..." also comes from the surprising way that the ghost takes form - ie not just as a puff of wind.
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Usually when asked what my favorite ghost/horror short story is, I waffle between "Oh, Whistle..." and Leiber's "Smoke Ghost." One of the things I enjoy about M. R. James' stories is the frequent undercurrent of glee, as though the writer is having a grand time coming up with this idea and carrying it out and scaring the bejeebers out of you. James' mild disdain for the main character and his preoccupations at the beginning of "Oh, Whistle..." is probably as good an example as I can think of.


Randy M.
 
As I recall, there's a haunted construction site that becomes a house in Charles Williams's Descent into Hell, a novel that's a triumph of imagination but not your book if you're looking for a few lightweight scares.
 
The House on the Borderland 1908 William Hope Hodgson. (y)
 
The Middle Toe Right Foot by Ambrose Bierce

The Judges House by Bram Stoker

Jerusalem's Lot by Steven King

Waxworks by A m Burrage
 
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