Since I started Oldstyle Tales Press in 2013, we have handled a wide range of speculative fiction sub-genres from the 19th and early 20th centuries: science fiction, murder mysteries, body horror, weird tales, cosmic horror, Jamesian ghost stories, premonition narratives, psychological terror, peril thrillers, and eco-horror among many others.
From the beginning, however, our heart has always belonged to classic ghost stories. In this series we will be looking at three periods of ghostly tales followed by a fourth, which will be less formal and less well-researched: short fiction from the Victorian, Edwardian, Modernist, and Postmodern Eras.
Today we will begin with supernatural fiction from the Victorian Era: a sub-genre which served as the feature to our very, very first publication – a book, the idea of which, was the whole purpose of starting this enterprise during the Hallowe’en season of my last, unexpectedly boring semester in grad school.
With little to work on save my thesis on the Scottish Enlightenment’s influence on Early American novels, I began poring over old anthologies of classic ghost stories (one, my favorite, in particular) and wondered if I could sort through the mental Rolodex of my best-loved spook stories to put together my own book. The following October, The Essential Victorian Ghost Stories was live, and I was working on my fourth book.
A quick word on the stories contained in this list: it is hardly exhaustive and I don’t claim it to be canonical – please feel free to type your own favorites down below (I may even shoe-horn them in as “Honorable Mention” in a future re-edit). It will also contain a mixture of time-honored, famous favorites and some niche choices, so neither should you expect it to only consist of the rarest of rare gems, nor the biggest of big names.
To be included, these stories had to fit five criteria:
They were specifically short tales of a supernatural haunting (a spiritual presence, message, or vision) written in English during the reign of Victoria
They are very well-written (not overly purple or meandering) and engaging with quality prose, atmosphere, and characters
They have a memorable, often entirely unique, quality or plot point that makes them stand out from other contemporary stories
They are widely regarded enough by critics, editors, and the reading public to have been anthologized at least ten times (as can be ascertained on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database)
They have a particularly moving climax – either because of profound emotion (“The Open Door”) or intense creepiness (“The Upper Berth”) that makes them linger in the imagination
If someone wanted to get the very best out of Victorian ghost stories, these would be my picks. Now, there are many, many, many unforgettable and irreplaceable tales which did not make this list (particularly those by lesser-known and lesser-anthologized writers) which I hope show up in the comments, but since this article (which is actually rather long as far as listicles go) will be limited to one for each day of an average-sized month (particularly those long nights in October and December), I am limited in how generous I can be to authors who deserve to be looked up.
That being said, don’t limit yourself on which writers and stories you check out: you can find an excellent resource for pursuing the rabbit hole of long-forgotten, brilliant Victorian supernaturalists in these four volumes, which I highly recommend to anyone looking into getting into the genre:
Finally a word on my own prejudices: I have never been particularly engaged by several of the most famous writers in this genre, and could not, with sincerity, find room for them on this list, but let me recommend them to your attention out of respect for popular opinion: Wilkie Collins (“Miss Jeromette and the Clergyman”), Edward Bulwer-Lytton (“The Haunters and the Haunted, or the House and the Brain”), and Charlotte Riddell (“The Open Door” – different from Oliphant’s same-titled story) have long been associated with Victorian ghost stories and are still considered three of the greatest names in the genre. They are well-loved by many, and their stories are certainly worth your consideration.
I will also excuse my ubiquitous old friend, Edgar Allan Poe, from this list but – for the record – he did write a number of excellent ghost stories (of a kind) including “Morella,” “Ligeia,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Oval Portrait,” “William Wilson,” “Metzengerstein,” and more.
So, with no further ado, please come inside and make yourself at home...
1. At Chrighton Abbey by Mary Elizabeth Braddon.
This Christmas ghost story follows the guests of the wealthy Chrightons as they gather for a Yuletide party and fawn over Edward, the strapping heir, and his beautiful-but-cold fiancée. But all is not well: there is a family legend that the appearance of ghostly horsemen presage tragedies for the Crighton men, and the smitten, governess narrator begins to wonder if dashing Edward will actually live happily ever after when they are seen.
Bonus Story from this Author: The Shadow in the Corner
2. At the End of the Passage by Rudyard Kipling.
Four Englishmen working in India suffer through miserable heat and harsh labor conditions. One of them, Hummil, is additionally exhausted because he is haunted by sinister dreams. Sent to rest alone in his bungalow, and dosed up with morphine, he witnesses his spectral doppelganger watching him from the shadows, and is convinced of his doom.
Bonus Story from this Author: The Return of Imray
3. Behold, it Was a Dream! by Rhoda Broughton.
In this chilling premonition tale, a single woman visits her newly-married friend in their cute, country home, but abruptly leaves the very next night after having a gruesome and vivid nightmare of the couple slaughtered in their beds by a strange man with a sickle. This ruins the relationship with her insecure, image-conscious friend, but as time shows, it saves her life.
Bonus Story from this Author: Poor Pretty Bobby
4. The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson.
A world-famous ghost story that borders on the weird tale. Fettes, a med-student, realizes that the grave robbers he pays to deliver fresh cadavers to his famous anatomy professor are murdering villagers to cut corners. While Fettes may lack the courage or integrity to come forward, one of their victims is not content to be forgotten. Incidentally, Stevenson was inspired by the historical, murderous body-snatchers Burke and Hare.
Bonus Story from this Author: Thrawn Janet
5. The Captain of the Polestar by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The Ahab-like leader of a polar expedition recklessly steams further into the deadly ice, seemingly motivated by cold ambition. However, when the concerned ship’s crew begins reporting sightings of a female apparition, they start to wonder if the captain is actually being driven by his desire to escape his own mysterious past. Ultimately, the skipper realizes that there is no limit to how far ghosts (or conscience) can travel.
Bonus Story from this Author: The Leather Funnel
6. The Cold Embrace by Mary Elizabeth Braddon.
A cynical artist rejects the loving woman he had seduced, leading her to drown herself. He moves on from the scandal with a stoic shrug but becomes concerned when – no matter how far he roves across Europe – he finds himself hounded by the feeling of two invisible (but sopping-wet) arms wrapping possessively around him.
Bonus Story from this Author: Eveline’s Visitant
7. The Dead Valley by Ralph Adams Cram.
A Swede tells the story of how, as a boy, he and a friend became disoriented while walking home through the woods when he encountered a ghastly, otherworldly sight: a vast, hellish valley filled with bones and covered in sickly fog. It seems supernaturally blighted, as if by hopelessness and dread, and although he can never find it again, its effects on him were just starting.
Bonus Story from this Author: No. 252 Rue M. le Prince
8. The Death of Halpin Frayser by Ambrose Bierce.
A tawdry, Southern Gothic novel condensed into a few pages. Halpin wakes up from a nightmare of a blood-soaked forest to find himself in the woods at night. He tries to compose his thoughts but finds himself in a cemetery where he is assaulted by his mother’s corpse. That is just the first of several wild twists and turns in this complex and rewarding proto-Freudian study of family dysfunction, incest, revenge, guilt, and murder.
Bonus Story from this Author: Some Haunted Houses
9. An Eddy on the Floor by Bernard Capes.
In a reversal of fortunes, a struggling doctor is offered a position as the resident physician at a prison after meeting the warden at a séance. He starts to second-guess his luck, however, when one of the prisoners becomes hysterical, begging to be moved away from the boarded-up cell next to him – a sealed room that the doctor is not allowed to enter.
Bonus Story from this Author: The Black Reaper
10. The Familiar by J. Sheridan Le Fanu.
A retired Navy captain (and avowed skeptic) finds himself inescapably hounded by the specter of a sailor whom he had flogged to death after he seduced the poor man’s daughter. Appearing in a variety of guises – from a limping traveler to a spectral owl – the vengeful spirit furiously pursues his prey from town to town, eager to (literally) crawl into bed with his old captain.
Bonus Story from this Author: Green Tea
11. The Ghostly Rental by Henry James.
While strolling in the countryside, a curious college student eavesdrops on a strange old man he sees briefly entering an abandoned, apparently-haunted house. When he learns that the poor pensioner is paying rent to the ghost of his late, estranged daughter he becomes determined to see her face-to-face. What he uncovers is a sad story of dysfunction and deception with multiple twists and a haunting, ambiguous end typical of Henry James.
Bonus Story from this Author: The Real Right Thing
12. Jerry Bundler by W. W. Jacobs.
On Christmas Eve, a group of men at an English inn share stories about the tavern’s resident, highwayman ghost – Jerry Bundler – and resolve to scare each other by having one in their number dress up as the spook. The results are typical of Jacobs’ tales: shocking, ironic, and tragic.
Bonus Story from this Author: Over the Side
13. John Charrington’s Wedding by Edith Nesbit.
John is obsessed with the village beauty and wears her down through sheer willpower, until she finally accepts his proposal. When he is late to the wedding, everyone is surprised, but it isn’t until after the dusty, disheveled groom finally arrives, weds her, and drives her away, that the true power of his savage, possessive will is fully understood.
Bonus Story from this Author: The Mystery of the Semi-Detached
14. The Judge’s House by Bram Stoker.
Stoker’s Le Fanu-inspired, world-famous ghost story involves an introverted, rationalist, college student’s ill-fated decision to rent the rambling mansion of a sadistic 17th century hanging judge (complete with an antique-noose bellpull) to study for his exams in privacy. But the judge’s snarling portrait – and a horde of weirdly human rats – don’t oblige his need for alone time.
Bonus Story from this Author: The Secret of the Growing Gold
15. Lost Hearts by M. R. James.
An orphan boy comes to live with his elderly cousin, an eccentric scholar of Greco-Roman cults, and learns that he isn’t the first child to give him company, although the other two unceremoniously disappeared. But if his horrifying dreams of corpses in the bathtub and the talon-like nail marks on his door and nightshirt are any indication, they may still – somehow – be lurking around.
Bonus Story from this Author: Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook
16. Man-Size in Marble by Edith Nesbit.
This heartbreaking masterpiece tells of newlyweds who buy a country cottage near a Norman church. A local superstition holds that, on Halloween, the ghosts of two rapacious knights arise in their marble statuary. The husband scoffs when their frightened maid leaves town before Hallowtide, but the wife is unsettled by a premonition of tragedy.
Bonus Story from this Author: From the Dead
17. The Old Nurse’s Story by Elizabeth Gaskell.
One of the first truly great English ghost stories. A nursemaid accompanies her little, orphaned mistress to a distant aunt’s spooky, moorland manor. The family’s violent past returns to haunt them when the ghosts of an unwed mother (the aunt’s sister) and her little girl – who froze to death after being evicted by their late father – return for a playdate with the orphan girl.
Bonus Story from this Author: The Poor Clare
18. The Open Door by Margaret Oliphant.
An empathic little boy sickens and becomes feverish after hearing the mournful wails of a ghostly boy begging to be let back into the crumbling doorway of a Scottish ruin. His father desperately tries to solve the mystery of how to release the ghost from torment before his own child joins him in death. A deeply emotional ghost story driven by pathos and parental love.
Bonus Story from this Author: The Library Window
19. Owen Wingrave by Henry James.
This disciplined, moody ghost story has few jumps but is loaded with emotional weight. Owen is a peace-loving intellectual born into a family of British Army officers and destined for war. When he refuses to follow his ancestors, he returns to his sinister family estate to face down their spirits, while his adoring, older tutor is shaken by how bravely he faces his fate with ironic heroism.
Bonus Story from this Author: The Romance of Certain Old Clothes
20. The Phantom Coach by Amelia B. Edwards.
The archetypal “Victorian ghost story.” A newly-wed hunter is rescued from freezing on the moor by a reclusive alchemist who fascinates him with his metaphysical theories, and with the story of the local mail coach, which crashed on a perilous, long-since disused road. Armed with better directions, he sets out to intercept the current coach, but unknowingly takes the old road. Strangely enough, some coach or other finds him anyway.
Bonus Story from this Author: The Four-Fifteen Express
21. The Phantom 'Rickshaw by Rudyard Kipling.
Jack end his affair with Agnes after becoming engaged. Agnes doesn’t take the rejection lightly, and begins stalking Jack until, to his relief, she dies. Soon after he notices her old rickshaw on the road and assumes it had been bought, but is horrified to watch it pass through a horse. Indeed, Agnes’ ghost has come to court him, and his following erratic behavior makes his new fiancée suspicious that he is having an affair.
Bonus Story from this Author: My Own True Ghost Story
22. The Red Room (or, The Ghost of Fear) by H. G. Wells.
A skeptic accepts a dare to spend the night in an ostensibly haunted room in a country manor with a reputation for killing its occupants. What he encounters in the dark – as his candles are snuffed and his senses assaulted – is an innovative, impressionistic reimagining of cliched Gothic tropes.
Bonus Story from this Author: Pollock and the Porroh Man
23. Schalken the Painter by J. Sheridan Le Fanu.
This (fictitious) episode from the life of the moody, Dutch painter explores a heart-breaking explanation for his obsession with painting suggestive, nighttime portraits of smiling women holding candles. Early in life, his youthful sweetheart is prostituted to a wealthy specter by her remorseful but greedy uncle. After Schalken encounters her debased spirit haunting the crypt which the ghoul calls his home, he forever mourns her loss in his art.
Bonus Story from this Author: Madam Crowl’s Ghost
24. The Signal-Man by Charles Dickens.
Existential and haunting, this world-famous tale explores the moral unease of a railway worker whose premonitions of tragedy – involving a figure standing at the mouth of a tunnel – allow him no means of preventing the accidents. Helpless, dismayed, and hounded by his wasted potential, he becomes a victim of his own visions.
Bonus Story from this Author: The Hanged Man’s Bride
25. Squire Toby’s Will by J. Sheridan Le Fanu.
Abusive Squire Toby dies in an alcoholic fit, unfairly bequeathing all of his estate to his handsome, younger son, Charlie, and disinheriting his disabled heir, Scroope. Soon, however, Toby begins haunting Charlie (most notably as a grotesque, lookalike bulldog) urging him to restore Scroope by locating a hidden will. It serves both as a study in all Seven Deadly Sins and as an allegory for the moral atrocities of Anglo-Irish relations.
Bonus Story from this Author: Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street
26. The Story of the Rippling Train by Mary Louisa Molesworth.
The guests at an English manor decide to share ghost stories. One of them relates the sad tale of a woman he almost married who manifested in his study many years later. He tried to argue away her misty appearance as an optical illusion, but cannot explain the clear sight of her dress’ train rippling behind her. Soon after, he received horrifying news about her.
Bonus Story from this Author: Lady Farquahar’s Old Lady
27. To Be Read at Dusk by Charles Dickens.
An eavesdropper listens to a group of alpine travelers swap ghost stories at sunset, among which are the stories of the bride kidnapped by a man with a face that has haunted her in recurring nightmares since childhood, and the twin brothers who appear to each other before their deaths. And there is a third one – one for the eavesdropper.
Bonus Story from this Author: The Trial for Murder
28. The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth by Rhoda Broughton.
Based on the stories of 50 Berkeley Square, Broughton’s stunning story involves two female friends corresponding about the increasingly creepy activity happening in one’s new rental house. After a maid is driven mad by something she saw in a bedroom, they send a dashing cavalryman friend of theirs to investigate. He fares worse.
Bonus Story from this Author: The Man with the Nose
29. The Upper Berth by F. Marion Crawford.
An extremely visceral, modern-feeling ghost story, Crawford tells of a haunted cabin on an ocean liner where the occupants have a habit of committing suicide – perhaps after seeing something unexpected in the room with them. The climactic, gruesome description of the spectral occupant of the upper berth is unforgettably stomach-churning.
Bonus Story from this Author: The Dead Smile
30. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
In this revered, feminist, one-hit wonder, a woman implied to be suffering from postpartum depression is forced by her husband and doctor to remain secluded in a vaguely sinister room of a manor that seems to be regularly used for this sort of thing. As her sharp mind is slowly scrambled by inactivity, she becomes obsessively entranced by a spectral woman who appears to be caged behind the room’s garish, psychedelic yellow wallpaper.
Bonus Story from a Similar Author: The Story of Clifford House by Anonymous (but very likely Mary Elizabeth Braddon)
31. Was it an Illusion? by Amelia B. Edwards.
The story revolves around a parson who is trying to solve a mystery that has been haunting him for years. The parson is convinced that he witnessed a murder when he was a young man, but no one believes him. As he searches for answers, he is forced to confront his own beliefs and the consequences of his actions.
Bonus Story from this Author: In the Confessional