Christmas

Warnings to the Curious – The Christmas Ghost Story

The ghost story, properly executed, is one of the finest forms the short story can take. Robert Aickman is famously quoted as saying the best ghost stories are ‘akin to poetry’. Writers of capital-L literature wrote supernatural fiction; Charles Dickens, Daphne du Maurier, Walter de la Mare, Guy de Maupassant, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James and many many more. Why does the ghost story hold such a tight grip on our collective imagination?