Customer Reviews

Night Visitors: Rise and Fall of the English Ghost Story

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Potential readers should know that this author has a very Freudian view of the ghost story. The Viennese psychoanalyst is more in evidence than many of my favorite English supernatural authors, including E.F. Benson, whose stories she dismisses as "competent examples of the form, although lacking in any depth."

The author also skips lightly over the Victorian ladies whose ghost stories are still in print today, e.g. Mary Elizabeth Braddon, E. Nesbit, and Mrs. Riddell.

"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson is one of the most deeply analyzed stories in this book, and it doesn't even have a ghost. Edgar Allen Poe is also prominently featured, although he didn't write ghost stories (and wasn't English).

M.R. James is given a respectful chapter, and the author classifies his ghost stories into "one of these three basic patterns, 'Bluebeard', 'Faust' or the spirits of revenge." 'Bluebeard' equates with excessive curiosity. 'Faust' refers to devilish pacts and the disastrous consequences for those who make them. 'The Mezzotint' and 'The Haunted Dolls' House' are given as examples of 'the spirits of revenge.'

Rudyard Kipling's supernatural stories get prominent mention, and the author spends a chapter on occult stories involving 'The Scientific Spirit', e.g. mesmerism, drugs, and psychic doctors.

The only chapters I found to be rather dull were those concerning 'psychological ghost stories,' many of which may or may not contain a ghost. Henry James and Vernon Lee are cited as leading examples of this subgenre, along with Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."

"Night Visitors" is quite well written and should appeal to anyone who is interested in the evolution of English ghost story, although I think the author's emphasis on Freudian psychology is a bit misplaced, and many of the stories she analyzes are not really ghost stories.

I also disagree with her thesis that the ghost story has been in decline since World War I. This ignores the very chilling work of authors such as Ramsey Campbell and Robert Aickman, among others.

Try "Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story from Le Fanu to Blackwood by Jack Sullivan if your interest is more focused on literature that is entirely devoted to ghosts.