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Ghost Stories

From Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Literature: The Encyclopedia of the Gothic
Tales in which the spirits of the dead encounter the living emerge from almost every culture, but it was not until the second half of the eighteenth century that Europeans began to construct ghost stories as they would be categorized today. These fictions were designed to be pleasurably frightening in themselves, rather than using ghosts to warn, to counsel, to instigate vengeance, or to guard or reveal treasure, and placed the encounter with the ghost, and the experience of haunting, at the center of their narratives. Since then, ghost stories have remained enduringly popular, and their writers have often displayed a sophisticated awareness of the genre's conventions, history, and key texts. First-generation Gothic frequently used the specter (see spectrality ) as a discrete episode in a longer narrative rather than as the basis of a novel's plot – the appearance of the Bleeding Nun in Matthew Lewis' The Monk (1796), or the lengthier and more sophisticated "Wandering Willie's Tale" …
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Full text Article ghost stories

From The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature
While conventional ghost stories—that is, scary stories of hauntings by the spirits of the dead—are hardly a new form, there are few examples of what can properly be considered ghost stories for children and teenagers before the middle of the 20th cent. This is not to say that children and teenagers…
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Full text Article James, M. R.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
(Montague Rhodes James), 1862–1936, English scholar, educator, and writer. He attended Eton and King's College, Cambridge, became (1887) a fellow at King's, and held various offices there, becoming became provost (head) of the college in 1905. In 1918 he returned to Eton, where he served as provost…
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Full text Article Classical and Medieval Ghost

From The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters
Ghosts appear as characters in many genres of literature surviving from the classical and medieval worlds, including epic poetry, tragedy, history, early church writings, and medieval chronicles. In the classical period, ghosts illustrated a number of traditional themes related to restless spirits, …
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Full text Article South Asian Ghosts

From The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters
As in East and Southeast Asia, ghosts in India fall into several categories, which are further distinguished by regional (and thus dialectal) differences. They include, among others, bhut/bhoot (Hindi for ghost), poochandi (Tamil for bogeyman), payee and aavi (Tamil for spirit), …
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Full text Article frighten

From The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language
To fill with fear; alarm. To drive or force by arousing fear: The suspect was frightened into confessing. v. intr. To become afraid: told ghost stories to campers who frightened easily. fright'en•er n. fright'en•ing•ly adv. …
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Full text Article United States and Canadan Ghosts

From The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters
Ghosts in literature and cinema of the United States and Canada, though often appearing for familiar reasons such as vengeance or lost love, quite frequently reflect larger thematic concerns unique to their eras. American ghosts tend in particular to mirror the immigrant experience, expressing the…
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Full text Article James, M(ontague) R(hodes) (1862–1936)

From Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained
English writer and scholar. The son of a clergyman, M R James spent much of his adult life at Cambridge – as a fellow, dean, tutor and ultimately Provost of King’s College. Later he became Provost at Eton. James was a distinguished medieval scholar and author of what remains the leading study of the…
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Full text Article Great Britain and Ireland's Ghosts

From The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters
The British tradition of ghostly narratives long predates the familiar Victorian ghost story. In medieval Britain, ghosts populated both religious and folkloric narratives; they requested prayers, terrified their former companions, or merely served as a memento mori for the living. Most such…
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Full text Article James, M[ontague] R[hodes]

From Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature
James was a scholar and writer of ghost stories who, at an early age, developed the passionate interest in medieval books and antiquities that was to remain his most constant companion. James’s life was, in fact, devoted to studying the past: he applied his knowledge and ready command of archaic…
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Full text Article Ghosts of the Broads

From Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained
Tongue-in-cheek book about ghosts allegedly haunting the waterways of Norfolk and Suffolk In 1931, Harley Street doctor and yachting enthusiast Charles Sampson (1881–1941) penned a short book called Ghosts of the Broads . Nearly all of the stories featured in the book purported to be examples of…
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