He told talked of the supernatural as an integral part of the engine that drove his storytelling. In fact, Charles Dickens grew up with ghost stories and he told them everywhere. I have endeavored, in this Ghostly little book, to raise the ghost of an idea my readers… may it haunt their houses pleasantly.Ĭhristmas Carol is not Dickens’s only eerie tale. Dickens told us this fact in his little preface: We think of A Christmas Carol as the preeminent story of the holidays, but at heart, it’s a ghost story. These Hindu children didn’t celebrate Christmas, yet they knew the story well – it was “their favorite ghost story.” One evening, after a circus performance, he was surprised to see children entranced by a televised version of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. In John Irving’s book of personal essays, Saving Piggy Sneed, he describes living with the Great Royal Circus in northwest India. 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.The holiday season sees a million variations on Charles Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol, yet this marvelous supernatural tale all too often overshadows the ghostly echoes that permeate Dickens’s entire oeuvre. His natural inclinations toward drama and the macabre made him a brilliant teller of ghost tales, and in the twenty stories presented here, which include his celebrated A Christmas Carol, the full range of his gothic talents can be seen.

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 twenty stories Interest in supernatural phenomena was high during Charles Dickens lifetime. Interest in supernatural phenomena was high during Charles Dickens lifetime.

Complete ghost stories charles dickens