There is a contingent of readers and writers trying to bring back the Christmas tradition of telling ghost stories around the fireplace. After all, A Christmas Carol is really a ghost story, and Christmas does fall during the darkest time of the year. And with the Icelandic tradition jolabokaflod taking hold here too, a good stack of ghastly reads is just the thing for the season.
It’s okay if you haven’t heard of Penelope Fitzgerald. I hadn’t either. I’m an English major who loves British literature and I didn’t even recognize the name, let alone seen any of her stuff. I am not a “cut-and-paster” but I think she needs a little introduction. This is from the book’s author bio. Penelope…
Each participant was asked to write 80-100 words to continue a Halloween-themed story. The only catch was that each writer was only given the entry immediately preceding theirs. No context, no idea what had happened before. The result is a sort of tale that has been stitched together like Frankenstein’s monster.
Hill employs the standard elements — vague warning from an older gentleman, unsettling malaise, a crumbling English house, a mysterious ancestry and a naive narrator — to tell the story of James Monmouth. James, our narrator, is English by birth but has no memory of the short time he spent there as a small child.…
It is well known that the old Manton house is haunted. In all the rural district near about, and even in the town of Marshall, a mile away, not one person of unbiased mind entertains a doubt of it; incredulity is confined to those opinionated persons who will be called “cranks” as soon as the…