Ghost Stories Research Articles

Vernon Lee's Anti-Imperial Decadence

Abstract: Vernon Lee wrote an anti-imperial allegory, Satan the Waster , during and after World War I. She also composed a decadent ghost story in the 1880s that took aim at English global hegemony. This tale, "Oke of Okehurst; Or, The Phantom Lover," roots for its heroine Alice, who deviates from elite English norms and seems to welcome imperial decline. Lee traces a common thread from "Oke of Okehurst" to Satan the Waster : from a private, prophetic implosion of the family and its imperialist pretensions in the 1880s to a public, culminating implosion of nationalist progress narratives in the teens of the next century.

Cultural Preservation in the Digital Age: The Future of Indigenous Folktales and Legends

Innovations in second language teaching are essential for sustaining students’ interest and motivation in the classroom. This paper presents an innovative project that integrates the reading of folktales from the Semai, an indigenous people of Malaysia, into ESL learning to enhance both linguistic skills and cultural awareness. The project involved 30 diploma students enrolled in a proficiency class, where reading is a key component of the syllabus. Students were introduced to ghost stories from The Myths of Semai, which they were required to read, comprehend, and respond to personally. As part of the project, students retold these stories by creating animated videos, utilizing storyboards to dramatize the tales and video editing apps to compile the storyboards into completed animations. These videos were then presented in class and uploaded to YouTube, making them accessible to a wider audience of ESL learners. In addition to the video creation, students were asked to write reflective journals detailing their learning experiences with the Semai folktales. The reflections were systematically analysed to identify emerging themes, revealing the profound impact of this innovative approach on students’ engagement and learning outcomes. The findings suggest that incorporating indigenous stories into ESL curricula can significantly enhance cross-cultural awareness and foster acceptance of diverse traditions. This approach not only strengthens language skills but also enriches students’ understanding of cultural diversity. Future research could further explore the application of such methods across various educational contexts and among different learner groups.

Armenians in Modern Turkish Literature: The Ghost Stories of Orhan Pamuk

Abstract: The relative paucity of Armenians in the novels of the Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk is ironic, given Pamuk's own political and very public stance on the Turkish government's silence concerning the twentieth century history of violence towards its Armenian minorities. I examine a possible relationship between this paucity and the influence of theory (deconstruction, new historicism) on Pamuk as an intellectual—whether a conviction regarding the intangibility of history, nationhood, or the self has any part to play in the way Armenians haunt Pamuk's work. If Armenians in Pamuk's fiction effectively amount to ghosts, examining the meaning of their spectral presence will highlight a strategy for lamenting a past one can now no longer articulate.

세계 물귀신설화 연구

Water demons are beings that have an inseparable relationship with water, seducing people through their voices and eventually leading them to death. Water demons are dual beings, both human and ghost, and the mechanism of seduction and death through their voices is emphasized. Even to this day, ''‘Water ghost’ stories'' stands out among ''modern ghost stories'' more than any other story, and is actively handed down. In addition to beings called ''Water ghosts'', there are also monster-like water fairies, feminine beings with ''恨'' who seduce and eat people. It is found all over the world, including Germanic mythology, Slavic mythology, and Indonesian legends. They are people and ghosts, and monsters and fairies. Until now, this linguistic gap could not be resolved because the standards and foundations for storytelling had not been established. Now these Water ghost types need to be sorted out and redefined.
 We have experienced various symbolic dimensions of nature through the presence of water ghosts in the story. The archetype of the Water ghost changes over time, from the Water ghost who tempts people to death with voices from the past to the mermaid princess who sacrifices herself for love. In this paper, I have newly introduced the “Water ghost' stories” and have attempted to establish the types and prototype meanings of new theory of “Water ghost' stories” around the world. In addition to comparing stories from Korea and abroad, focusing on stories in which water ghost appear, we will also consider women's ‘Seizure’ and death through their voices. I would also like to classify the types and clarify the meaning of the original form of the World Water ghost.

Specters of the Mythic South: How Plantation Fiction Fixed Ghost Stories to Black Americans

Abstract: The author challenges the notion of southern ghost stories as inherently subversive. Beginning with the stories in late nineteenth-century plantation fiction, this essay explores how wealthy white southerners used the genre to redeem and remake the region's past and present. White authors' claims of fraternity with largely nameless and faceless Black contacts are central to the story and reveal how these ghost stories helped to suppress reality, in favor of mythic tales. A comparison of the planation ghost stories and ghost stories accurately attributed to Black southerners shows that rather than faithfully recording the stories or making room for the oppressed to speak, white writers of planation ghost stories made a mockery of their Black neighbors and denied their post-emancipation agency. The roots of today's southern ghost stories are vastly more diverse, and significantly less empowering, than the celebrated Southern Gothic tales.

“Fantasy as Subversion”: Ray, Totalitarianism, and “Dissensus”

Abstract Satyajit Ray’s faith in the integrity of his middle-class protagonists and his philosophical detachment coupled with his aesthetics of contemplation have often been brutally criticized by his Marxist critics. They have accused Ray of being a bourgeois humanist, a political effete without any specific ideology, estranged from tackling pressing contemporary social and political issues. The article attempts to trace Ray’s thoughts on cinema and analyze how his films, even those that seem to be fantasies, are not situated in a rarefied atmosphere but are determined by a number of sociopolitical events that intersect and interact in myriad ways. A ghost story by Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury, provided the filmmaker with the perfect narrative trope to critique what he considered the germs of contemporary social and political conditions, the vantage point from which his allegory could address not only the contemporary scenario but also the distant future. In his fantasy-based musicals Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha, 1969) and Hirak Rajar Deshe (The Kingdom of Diamonds, 1980), Ray decided to be at his subversive best. These films based on magic realism were not simply departures from his neo-realistic narratives but also veiled satires that indicted the establishment.

The Haunted House in Women’s Ghost Stories: Gender, Space, and Modernity, 1850–1945

The Haunted House in Women’s Ghost Stories: Gender, Space, and Modernity, 1850–1945

Typology of Gothic novels by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu is one of the most prominent representatives of the ghost story genre. His works were widely popular not only during the years of their publication, but also many years after. The subject of research in this article is the problem of creating a genre typology. Based on the material of Gothic novels (collections "Purcell Papers", "In a glass darkly", etc.) by the British writer of the XIX century Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, the question of the optimal typological criterion is considered, which would allow creating an objective typology, the application of which would be possible when studying the works of other authors of Gothic minor prose of the second half of the XIX – early XX century. The methodological principles underlying this study take into account the achievements of cultural-historical, comparative, and structural-descriptive approaches. The novelty is associated with the absence of such a typology of Le Fanu's short stories, as well as with the fact that researchers prefer the novel form in the writer's work. However, this typology makes it possible to clarify some aspects of the development of Gothic minor prose both in the works of Le Fanu and in the works of other writers of this period. In addition, the typologization of Le Fanu's Gothic novels allows us to trace in more detail the change in the figurative system of Gothic short prose. Conclusions made as a result of the study: the objective typological criterion can be considered the specifics of the narrator's attitude to the category of the supernatural. Based on this criterion, the classic Gothic novel, the "scientific" Gothic novel, the humorous Gothic novel, the socio-psychological Gothic novel, the folklore-mythological Gothic novel are distinguished in Le Fanu's work.

Horror and Fear in Ghost Stories: A Comparison between Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House Usher”

The Present paper discusses Horror and fear in Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw” and Poe’s “The fall of the House Usher”, which are ghost stories. It compares and contrasts the two stories in accordance with American school. The aim of the compararison is to find out the implications and the underlying identities of both similarities and differences so that even the differences can be given their proper place in a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the artist. The study applies the theory of suspense to analyze the theme of the unknown in the two stories of mystery and suspense. The objective of the study is to find the similarities and differences in the universal theme. The similarities include the supernatural and horror, mystery, suspense and surprise. The differences are in the tragedy and pathetic and sexual relationship.

Ghost hunt: Elliot O’Donnell’s non-fiction

The article deals with the author’s strategies, used by E. O’Donnell in his Twenty Years’ Experience as a Ghost Hunter, and compares this peculiar text with ghost stories – a genre of fiction very popular those days. O’Donnell’s book is a part of a long tradition of occult ‘non-fiction’, but it is positioned as the author’s memoirs, a true story of his own life (his other books are basically collections of ‘real’ ghostly appearances in various regions of England), and begins with his (or his alter ego’s) youth and his first traumatic encounter with a ghost that influenced his career choice, but then this traditional life story turns into a set of cases, not necessarily witnessed by the narrator himself. Some stories are structured exactly like fictional ghost stories but their perception is preconditioned by the ‘rules of reading’ established by the author (the book is supposed to be his memoirs) and by the character of information – what the narrator knows about ghosts from various sources. Thus, the text is very uneven – its aesthetic characteristics are regarded as secondary in comparison with the ‘facts’ retold.

Greetings from the Pink Palace: An Architecturally, Paranormally, and Politically Accurate Ghost Story

Greetings from the Pink Palace: An Architecturally, Paranormally, and Politically Accurate Ghost Story

Silent Folks: A Modern Lore Preserving The Indigenous Folktales, Myths And Legends In The Digital Era

Innovations in second language teaching are desirable because such practices will help to maintain students’ interest and motivation in the classroom. Various research has reported the significance of incorporating stimulating reading texts in ESL classrooms. This paper aims to report how innovative ideas on using reading texts which are based on the tales of indigenous people in Malaysia can leave significant impact in an ESL classroom. This innovation project was in the form of a project work given to a group of 30 diploma students undergoing a proficiency class. Reading is one of the main components in the syllabus. One of the sub-components in reading for this subject is to read, understand, and provide personal responses to short stories. The students were asked to read a few ghost stories based on the lives of Semai people from a book entitled The Myths of Semai prior to their folktales project. The project required the students to retell the story in the form of animated videos. They made story boards to help dramatize the tales and then used video editing apps to compile the story boards into videos of the chosen folktales. They played the videos in class and uploaded them to YouTube for other ESL learners. At the end of the project, students were asked to write a reflective journal about their learning experiences with Semai folktales. The responses were analysed based on the emerging themes which occur in the students’ reflections. The findings on this innovative project should contribute to deeper understanding on how animating the folktales can impact ESL students’ learning and how using the stories from indigenous people can enhance cross-cultural awareness and acceptance of different traditions.

Gothic Maternity in Pilar Quintana’s Los abismos (2021)

In this article, I explore and expand upon the concept of gothic maternity in the Colombian context through a close reading of Pilar Quintana’s Los abismos. I argue for a gothic maternity that is produced both by gothic imagery and by a narrative populated by bad mothers and dead mothers who produce fear, instability, and anxiety in the narrative. Quintana’s novel is narrated by Claudia, an eight-year-old whose depressed mother tells her stories of dead women, many of whom were mothers. These ghost stories make mothers into haunting and monstrous figures that provoke a deep fear of abandonment in Claudia.

Vampires: Outside Life, Outside Control

Vampires: Outside Life, Outside Control

일본의 구승문예 연구동향과 전망

This paper was written to share tasks with Korean oral literature researchers by summarizing the genre of old Seung Literature in Japan and introducing the genre that has recently attracted attention in Japan.
 Japanese and Korean oral literature genres do not differ very much. However, some genres are similar and have unique characteristics. Similar to Korean pansori, masquerade, and exorcism, "Katarimono" has been delivered in various and rich ways throughout Japan. However, since the early 20th century, the transmission has been cut off, from a significant number of branches, so it is difficult to assert that "Katarimono" is common literature. In addition, unlike Korean literature, which is rich in Chinese literature written by intellectuals, there is a difference in that oral literature was a major genre of Japanese literature. In other words, it is worth keeping in mind that the existence of oral literature in Japanese literature is significant.
 In recent Japanese oral literature, the genres that have attracted attention are ghost stories and disaster legends. The Japanese have painted strange beings in literature and painting works since ancient times, and even in modern times, rumors and legends of strange beings have been discussed among the population. Recently, the word "Yokai(specter)" has been used as a generic term encompassing all strange beings, and new characters have been born. Japanese people, regardless of age or gender, enjoy the world of monsters through various works such as novels, cartoons, animations, and game software. The ghost story is a genre of oral literature that remains alive in modern society. In addition, the value of disaster legends was re-examined in the wake of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. In Japan, where natural disasters are frequent, legends related to disasters-that is, stories about avoiding disasters-are told in various places. As these stories were discovered, recorded, and published, the need to inherit future disaster legends was raised.
 Among recent trends in Japanese literature, researchers demonstrate interest in nature, which is a notable topic in the field of oral literature. Literary researchers are accumulating achievements in how the Japanese perceive nature and expressed it in literary works a topic that East Asian researchers belonging to the Chinese character culture should share and think about in the era of the climate crisis.

Stopping the Boats, Changing the Narrative: How the Migrant Refugee Bildungsroman Became a Ghost Story

What literary conventions best help us understand the migrant refugee’s claim for protection, and the terms on which law claims to offer it? One contender to have attracted attention recently is “bildungsroman” (“formation novel”), since the narrative of the refugee escaping danger and oppression to find safety and stability within a host state arguably maps onto bilgungsroman’s themes of a protagonist’s difficult personal journey from margins to social acceptance and flourishing. However, this view is now seriously undermined by legislative initiatives in the UK aimed at ensuring migrant refugees who cross the English Channel in small boats should have no cause to hope for such a happy ending. By way of a close reading of the narrative implications of these initiatives, this article proposes a thorough rethink of our approach to figuring the irregular migrant refugee. Rejecting bildungsroman as now implausibly optimistic, the article suggests we look instead to the ghost, whose “presence” is typically the chief problem for those to whom it appears, whose “shape” is uncertain, and whose complaints and demands inspire dread and strenuous efforts to make it disappear. The article employs these conventions to draw a new relationship between refugee migration law and the arts, and argues that if the UK’s policies for “stopping the boats” may be characterized as an attempt to effect such a disappearance, then the migrant refugee’s reappearance in visual art offers a ghostly figuration of resistance and of admonishment at injustice unredressed and obligations unfulfilled. The article traces these qualities and explores their critical potential through two recent works of visual art, namely “The Walk” (2021–22) and Gideon Mendel’s “Dzhangal” [“Jungle”] (2016–17). Both of these works admit of multiple readings, but both also crucially resist the punitive and reductive framing of migrants in law in some surprising ways.

Fact of Feeling: Memory in the Victorian Ghost Story

ABSTRACT: This paper examines how the Victorian ghost-story genre troubles realist visions of memory as a store of immutable past experiences. Analyses of ghost stories by Ellen Wood, Amelia B. Edwards, Dinah Mulock, and George MacDonald reveal that they portray memory as constructed, biased, and fallible. Through first-person and frame narratives, these stories illustrate how the act of recollection falsifies memories by reshaping them to better fit affective narrative arcs, thus depicting a form of nostalgic memory that foregrounds feeling at the cost of accuracy. Yet, even as these ghost stories highlight the impossibility of truly accurate recollection, their focus on traumatic events emphasizes the felt imperative to accurately recall and communicate emotional experiences.

Introduction: Black women dancing through time and space

The Journal of American CultureEarly View ORIGINAL ARTICLE Introduction: Black women dancing through time and space Katrina Thompson Moore, Corresponding Author Katrina Thompson Moore [email protected] Correspondence Katrina Thompson Moore Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorKwakiutl L. Dreher, Kwakiutl L. DreherSearch for more papers by this author Katrina Thompson Moore, Corresponding Author Katrina Thompson Moore [email protected] Correspondence Katrina Thompson Moore Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorKwakiutl L. Dreher, Kwakiutl L. DreherSearch for more papers by this author First published: 12 June 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/jacc.13466Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL References Allen, Zita. “ What is Black Dance?” The Black Tradition in Modern Dance American Dance Festival Booklet 1988, pp. 22– 23. Aston, Elaine. An Introduction to Feminism and Theater. Routledge, 1994. Bobo, Jacqueline. Back Feminist Cultural Criticism. Wiley-Blackwell, 2001. Brown, Jayna. Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern. Duke University Press, 2008. Caris, Clifton, and Pamela Scully. Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography. Princeton University Press, 2008 Craighead, Clare. “‘Black dance’: Navigating the politics of ‘black’ in relation to ‘the dance object’ and the body as discourse.” Critical Arts, Vol. 20, No. 2, November 2007, pp. 16– 33, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02560040608540452. Duquesne, Abraham. A New Voyage to the East-Indies in the Years 1690 and 1691. Dring, 1696. Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or, Gustavus Vassa, the African. Broadview Press, 2001. Harris, Hunter. "How Did Megan Thee Stallion Become the Next Hottest Rapper Out of Texas". Vulture, 25 April , 2019. https://www.vulture.com/2019/04/megan-thee-stallion-profile-big-ole-freak.html Henderson, Carol E. “Introduction: On First Ladies, Duchesses, and Bawses—Black Womanhood Rebooted.” The Journal of American Culture, vol. 42. no. 1, pp. 3– 9. https://doi.org/10.1111/jacc.12969 Ira, Petiri. “Have you Assessed Your Misogynoir?: Society's Evident Hatred towards Black Women.” Age of Awareness, 7 Jan. 2021, https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/have-you-assessed-your-misogynoir-9873060fcd42 Lizzo “The Black history of twerking—and how it taught me self love.” TED Talk, September 2021, www.ted.com/talks/lizzo_the_black_history_of_twerking_and_how_it_taught_me_self_love. Accessed 22 April 2023. Megan Thee Stallion. “Body.” Good News. 300 Entertainment. 2020. Moclassified. “Source Exclusive: Megan Thee Stallion Talks ‘Tina Snow’ EP & Her Alter Ego Being the Female Pimp C.” The Source, 10 July 2018, https://thesource.com/2018/07/10/megan-thee-stallion-ep/. Modan, Naaz. “The Story Behind Megan Thee Stallion's Name.” Nicki Swift, 14 Apr. 2020, https://www.nickiswift.com/201016/the-story-behind-megan-thee-stallions-name/. Outram, Dorinda. The Enlightenment. Cambridge University Press, 2019. Smith, Christopher J. Dancing Revolution: Bodies, Space, & Sound in American Cultural History. University of Illinois Press, 2019. Takiyah Nur Amin, “A Terminology of Difference: Making the Case for Black Dance in the 21st Century and Beyond.” The Journal of Pan African Studies, Vol. 4, No. 6, Sept 2011, pp. 7– 15. Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A306357796/LitRC?u=anon~fc0e36c9&sid=bookmark-LitRC&xid=c649be2f. Accessed 23 April 2023. Thorpe, Edward. Black Dance. Overlook TP, 1994. Welsh-Ashante, Kariamu. African Dance: An Artistic, Historical, and Philosophical Inquiry. Africa World Press, 1995. Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issue ReferencesRelatedInformation

Приемы нарушения литературно-культурного кода Рождества викторианской Англии в малой прозе Дж. К. Джерома (на материале произведения «Пирушка с привидениями»)

The study aims to identify the techniques of violating the literary and cultural code of Christmas in Victorian England in J. K. Jerome’s short prose. The work ‘Told After Supper’ was chosen as the research material. The study is novel in that it is the first to consider the chosen work through the lens of parodying traditional Christmas genres, as well as the cultural tradition associated with the celebration of Christmas. The paper identifies the key features of the genres of the Christmas story and ghost stories and analyses in detail how Jerome modifies them in his work. Considerable attention is paid to the kind of peculiarities of everyday life and personality traits of representatives of Victorian England that are parodied, as well as the way the comic effect is achieved in the text under consideration. As a result, it has been found that the main parodying techniques in ‘Told After Supper’ are the rationalisation of the miraculous, which destroys the atmosphere characteristic of Christmas genres, the absurdity arising from the multiple repetitions of plot devices, the hyperbolisation of the “narrator’s unreliability”, the projection of the conduct of the living on the world of ghosts and the explication of the social underside of British respectability.

Contemporary Women’s Ghost Stories: Spectres, Revenants, Ghostly Returns

Contemporary Women’s Ghost Stories continues the work Gina Wisker has previously published on women’s gothic and the ghost story. It offers a critical view of works from Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca (1938) to Sarah Moss’s Ghost Wall (2018). Although largely Anglocentric, works from Singapore and Malaysia are analysed at length, alongside brief discussion of other global literatures. Wisker makes reference to Emma Liggins’s The Haunted House in Women’s Ghost Stories: Gender, Space and Modernity, 1850–1945 in the introduction and throughout, and this monograph feels like a natural progression from that work, bringing the research deeper into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and extending the discussion of ghosts beyond the haunted house. Wisker highlights how the ghost stories of women are often overlooked, although they “peel away the deadly cladding or torn wallpaper revealing abjection, dismissal to silence, and the liminal spaces of traumatic, oppressive histories and stories” (30). Wisker’s first theme is the women’s ghost story as warning against the dangers of traditional romantic values, whether imposed by patriarchal society or sustained by the hopes of women dreaming of escape, as in Rebecca and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Wisker reminds us that although these ideals originate in a pre-war way of life, they persist in romanticised contemporary desire for domestic bliss as expressed in romantic fiction, and in reimagined fairy tales, a range of which are covered in the chapter “True Love As Possession.” As Wisker’s attention moves forward in time, she addresses novels that depict an old “romanticised England” (163) that refuses to move on and similarly holds back its characters with hauntings, such as The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. Besides romantic ideals of lifestyle, Wisker examines romantic ideals of Empire and toxic nostalgia for an earlier age of comfort, and suggests that ghost stories provide a voice for those for whom the past is not a source of nostalgic comfort.