Interest in supernatural phenomena was high during Charles Dickens' lifetime. He had always loved a good ghost story himself, particularly at Christmas time, and was open-minded, willing to accept, and indeed put to the test, the existence of spirits. His natural inclinations toward drama and the macabre made him a brilliant teller of ghost tales, and in the twelve stories presented here, which include his celebrated A Christmas Carol, the full range of his gothic talents can be seen. Chilling as some of these stories are, Dickens has managed to inject characteristically grotesque comedy as he writes of revenge, insanity.pre-cognition and dream visions, he indulges also in some debunking of contemporary credulity.

Charles Dickens always loved a good ghost story. A fascination with the eerie and macabre pervades his work, and his preoccupation with mesmerism, clairvoyance, second sight, spiritualism and all things supernatural is much documented. He writes about his childhood nurse, Mary Weller, who imbued him with a taste for the ghoulish by telling him horror stories. This taste was fed by his teenage passion for’penny dreadfuls', the illustrated horror magazines of the day, whose influence can be traced in the most sensational aspects of his work. A morbid preoccupation with death never left him, and it is hardly surprising that this should entail a curiosity about ghosts. When, during his later life, interest in all forms of psychic phenomena reached unprecedented heights in England, Dickens, whose attitude combined open-mindedness with scepticism on certain issues, was at the forefront of public debate, writing numerous topical articles as well as stories.

The Queer Chair

A Madman's Manuscript

The Goblins who Stole a Sexton

The Ghosts of the Mail

The Baron of Grogzwig

A Christmas Carol

The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain

To be Read at Dusk

The Ghost in the Bride's Chamber

The Haunted House

The Trial for Murder

TO BE TAKEN WITH A GRAIN OF SALT

The Signalman