Today is Halloween and plenty of festivities taking place across the world in honor of Halloween. Its great seeing people dressed in costumes, especially the kids.
In honor of Halloween, I would like to share and recommend my favorite ghost stories. Here they are:
1. "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allen Poe (1843)
From the master of the morbid imagination, this gem of a story blurs the edges between horror and ghost fiction. A murderer's guilty conscience gets the better of him, driving him to confess his crime. The unnamed narrator murders an old man with a "vulture eye." He plans carefully and hides the body by dismembering it, but his guilt will not let him rest. Is he imagining the beating of the heart beneath the floorboards or is there something there? Gripping and horrifying, the perfect mix of horror and Gothic, the forerunner of the psychological ghost stories that were to come into vogue.
2. "Bewitched" by Edith Wharton (1925)
This story, first published in the Pictorial Review in 1925, has a fabulous sense of place and is a grisly story with a twist. It leaves the reader doubting their interpretation of events. Great stuff.
Last but not least,
3. "The Signalman" by Charles Dickens (1866)
This story preys on both the anxiety provoked by the new technology of railways and deeply held beliefs that a ghost can be the focal point for events to follow. It is creepy, clever and has you looking over your own shoulder.
These stories are sure to set the mood for Halloween!!!
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