The Upper Shelf

Nothing says spooky scary like ghost stories.  The idea of ghosts and spirits haunting or living among us is universally fascinating. Close upon the heels of Halloween is All Souls Day, the Christian celebration of departed souls which coincides with Dia de los Muertos in the Latin world (Day of the Dead). So it’s a perfect time of year to grab some ghost novels and/or collections of ghost stories and let the scares begin…

From Life magazine archive

The Victorian Era is especially rife with ghost stories and tales of hauntings. Here are some of the classics from that era.

• Turn of the screw by Henry James
• Collected ghost stories of M.R. James
• A Christmas carol by Charles Dickens (obviously a Christmas classic, but involves not one but three ghosts! After all Christmas is just around the corner…)

Here are some more modern ghost stories for a “lighter” read

• The haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
• Bag of bones by Stephen King
• The shining by Stephen King

We also have a large number of ghost story collections. Here are a few.

• The Penguin book of ghost stories edited by J.A. Cuddon
• Victorian ghost stories: an Oxford anthology selected and introduced by Michael Cox and R.A. Gilbert
• Nightshade: 20th century ghost stories edited by Robert Phillips

Here are a few regional collections of ghostly tales.

• Chinese ghost and love stories a selection from the Liao chai stories by P?u Sung-ling translated by Rose Quong
• The dark thirty: Southern tales of the supernatural by Patricia C. McKissack
• Lost souls: a collection of English ghost stories edited by Jack Sullivan
• Spooky barns: farmstead tales of the unknown and unseen by Stan Perkins
• The telltale lilac bush and other West Virginia ghost tales by Ruth Ann Musick

Finally if reality is your thing and you want to find books about ghosts in the real world here are a few suggestions.

• Ghosts by the editors of Time-Life Books
• Haunted: a social history of ghosts by Owen Davies
• The complete idiot’s guide to ghosts and hauntings by Tom Ogden (available online)
• An experience of phantasms by D. Scott Rogo