Saki The Open WindowĪnother comedy, a very typical and brilliant vignette by Saki in which the ghosts are imaginary.The shortest ghost story I know: a miniature masterpiece of wit and narrative structure. Honeysuckle Cottage has one of Wodehouse's most inspired final plot twists. When James Rodman, thriller writer, goes to live in the house left him by his aunt, a very different sort of novelist, he finds himself haunted, against his will, by the spirit of the place and start turning out romantic slush. Sometimes it is gruesome here the touch is light. PG Wodehouse Honeysuckle CottageĬomedy is more frequent in ghost stories than you might expect. Gogol's crazy comedy has a logic of its own which has never been bettered. These two stories are as far as one could get from the standard ghost story – not at all frightening but very, very disturbing: wild surreal satires of 19th century Russian bureaucracy in which a nose and an overcoat take on lives of their own and wreak havoc. A powerful study in female sexual frustration and repression. She also alludes slyly to The Turn of the Screw (see below). Disturbing, touching, and hard to forget, it tells the story of a governess - or is that two governesses? Taylor plays with time and character shifts so cleverly that the joins are hard to spot. Elisabeth Taylor Poor GirlĪn exquisite vignette by one of the underrated writers of our time, Poor Girl explores the erotic possibilities of haunting. You will never look at an unmade bed in the same way again. As here, James often draws on the familiar childhood nightmare of pursuit by a faceless creature. Many of his pieces take place in the flatlands of East Anglia and this is a particularly effective example, set on a haunted - and haunting - beach at night. MR James - not to be confused with Henry - was the greatest practitioner of traditional ghost stories, spine-chilling tales designed to be read by a dying fire in a darkened room after dinner.

MR James O Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad The moral is: Be careful what you wish for - and don't open the door at night.

If it's terror you want, this well-known story of a magical talisman is hard to beat – not to be read when alone at night. A ferocious study in greed and ambition, it has the most chilling denouement of any ghost story. RL Stevenson The Body-SnatcherĪs beautifully written and atmospheric as you would expect from Stevenson, this tale set in mid-19th century Scotland is about the grave robbers who provided the gruesome materials for medical schools. The stories in my list all send chills down the spine: at the same time they combine entertainment value with high literary quality. Haunting is a complex phenomenon which can involve many different causes: not only spirits but also memories, things, ideas and places.

Henry james ghost stories collection