poliphilo | Ghost Stories

BBC 4 gave us a short history of the ghost story last night. They started with The descent of Inanna and wound up with Robert Aickman- and all in half an hour- whee!

But they got it right. At least I thought they did. They paused on Sheridan le Fanu and M.R. James and Aickman- and that's as it should be. These are the masters. And they didn't bother with the Turn of the Screw (which I consider over-rated.) I'd have liked a nod in the direction of Margaret Oliphant, but you can't have everything and there were an awful lot of Victorian and early 20th century writers who knocked out a ghost story or two.

Ooh, and Jackie, you'd have liked this- they fished out a clip of Algernon Blackwood talking to camera in 1951- and he was everything you could have wished- long-nosed and gaunt with an avuncular twinkle in his eye.

I'm crazy for ghost stories. Here's my personal top ten.

An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street- Sheridan le Fanu
The Signalman- Charles Dickens
The Library Window- Margaret Oliphant
Thrawn Janet- Robert Louis Stevenson
Mr Humphreys and his Inheritance- M.R. James
The Room in the Tower- E.F. Benson
The Dog Hervey- Rudyard Kipling
The Wendigo- Algernon Blackwood
Seaton's Aunt- Walter de la Mare
The Houses of the Russians- Robert Aickman

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Crap, LJ ate my (long, very long) comment. Suffice to say: I'm very happy to find that someone else watched this too, and especially that they're reshowing the old 'A Ghost Story for Christmas' dramas. Also, thanks for the reading list, since I'm very poorly read in this area and always on the look out for rec'd texts.

I love ghost stories, too.

Oddly enough, I received the comment that LJ ate as an email.....

I saw Whistle and I'll Come To You quite recently. I think it establishes the benchmark for how to do this kind of thing on TV. Why didn't Jonathan Miller get to make more films?

I agree about slasher movies. I'm only interested if the horror is supernatural and imperils my immortal soul....

Of course, one reason to debate whether to include The Turn of the Screw is the question of whether it actually is a ghost story at all or simply the deranged imagination of an unreliable narrator.

PS

Agree entirely about The Room in the Tower. Quite my favourite ghost story.

I read it first in my early teens and it scared the bejasus out of me.

I think one or two of the stories on my list might be open to that kind of debate. The Library Window and Seaton's Aunt are both open to the charge that the narrator is a little bit overwrought....

I wish I could have seen Blackwood, but I am not surprised he looked like that!

Wish I could have seen the program, too--some cable stations get British television, but ours doesn't.

The BBC are giving us a week's worth of ghost stories. Last night we had a version of The Signalman, filmed in 1974 with Denholm Eliott in the title role.

I'll look for some of these--Benson is a fine writer, and I recently read the creepy Room in the Tower--scary! (most ghost stories AREN'T scary.)

Benson wrote a lot of fine ghost stories. Another favourite of mine is called How Fear Departed From The Long Gallery.

Is The wendigo the one about burning feet?

I read a story with that title in a collection by Dorothy Sayers called Detection, mystery, horror, but my mother tossed it out years ago, and I've never seen it since. The Wendigo was one of my favourites in the collection.

That's the one.

"Oh, oh, my fiery feet- my burning feet of fire!"

I'm glad to know the author, now I can look for it. I'd like to have the whole collection, but that was my favourite story in it, and I reread it many times.

Blackwood was a prolific author- and I think much of his work is in print.

Ghost Stories

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The wendigo

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