Broken gates and leaky graves : spectral language and Australia's ghost stories

Ghost stories are unusual amongst supernatural literatures in their modelling of a recognisable, mimetic reality interrupted or infiltrated by immaterial forces. In its discussion of Australian ghost stories, this thesis advances a new approach to ghost narratives which seeks to model and articulate the mechanics of ghosts and hauntings as something reliant on and engaged with the material and the mundane.

Haunted Seasons: Television Ghost Stories for Christmas and Horror for Halloween

Why do the English have ghost stories at Christmas? Why does US television have special Halloween episodes? Is this all down to Dickens, or is it a hangover of an ancient, pagan past? Why does it survive? Haunted Seasons explores these and related questions, examining the history and meaning of seasonal horror. It reaches back through archaeological evidence of ancient beliefs, through Shakespeare, and Victorian ghost stories, and the works of M.R.James, and onwards to radio and television. The broader genre of supernatural television is considered in relation to the irruptions of abnormality into the normal, along with the significance of time and the seasons in these narratives and their telling. Particular focus is placed on the BBC Ghost Story for Christmas strand and the Halloween episodes of The Simpsons to help us interpret the continued use of these seasonal horror stories and their place in society, from fireside to television.

Accredited ghost stories.

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The Enlightening Supernatural: Ghost Stories in the Late Eighteenth-Century Germany

This dissertation explores the place of ghosts in late eighteenth-century German texts, where they appear with surprising frequency despite widespread disbelief in their ontological reality. These ghosts could simply be lingering remnants of superstition in an age where they no longer belong, but my project argues that they play a central role in the Enlightenment and its ideal of progress. The key texts analyzed in this context include three versions of the story of the Weiße Frau, as well as works by Immanuel Kant, Karl Philipp Moritz, Friedrich Schiller, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In various ways, these texts demonstrate how the presentation of a ghost creates new possibilities in philosophy and aesthetics, as well as opportunities for critique. For some, the ghostly encounter produces an “Enlightening” suspense, disrupting the normal conditions of one’s understanding and creating a demand for resolution that propels one towards the future. Some recognized a dangerous manipulative potential in such suspense, and they used ghost stories to critique Enlightenment thought or imagine alternative aesthetic models. In all of these works, the ghost does not function simply as a relic of the past that needs to be left behind; it features prominently as a means of considering the present and imagining the future.

The relationship between the Enlightenment and superstitious beliefs has either been oversimplified as a basic opposition, or complicated by the recognition that the commitment to reason works as a new form of superstition. Prior scholarship has recognized the German ghost story as a primarily nineteenth-century phenomenon. This dissertation uncovers the roots of the German ghost story in unlikely texts from the eighteenth century and suggests that the relationship between ghostly apparitions and the Enlightenment was more complementary than oppositional. Ghosts do not only represent the persistence of the past, they also disrupt the normal conditions of the present in a way that enables progress towards new possibilities in aesthetics and thought.

Ghosts I have met and some others /

Mode of access: Internet.

The Best short stories of ... and the yearbook of the American short story.

Published: New York : Dodd, Mead, 1926-1932.

The best short stories of 1915 : and the yearbook of the American short story /

The water-hole / Maxwell Struthers Burt -- The wake / Donn Byrne -- Chautonville / Will Levington Comfort -- La Derniere mobilisation / W. A. Dwiggins -- The citizen / James Francis Dwyer -- Whose dog? / Frances Gregg -- Life / Ben Hecht -- T. B. / Fannie Hurst -- Mr. Eberdeen's house / Arthur Johnson -- Vengeance is mine / Virgil Jordan -- The weaver who clad the summer / Harris Merton Lyon.

The Best short stories of ... and the yearbook of the American short story.

Mode of access: Internet.

Prize stories ... The O. Henry awards ...

Stories for 1919-1927 were "chosen by the Society of Arts and Sciences."

The American authors of the West.

Mode of access: Internet.

The trimmed lamp, and other stories of The four million /

For other editions, see Author Catalog.

The land of pluck; stories and sketches for young folk.

Mode of access: Internet.

O. Henry memorial award prize stories.

Mode of access: Internet.