even ghost stories can be humorous

8/8/2019 Even Ghost Stories Can Be Humorous

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Even Ghost Stories Can Be Humorous

Elika Komrkov

Course: PSP2Teacher: Daniel Paul SampeyDate of Submission: 13th May


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This essay is going to show that not only ghost stories can strike fear in ones heart, cause one

to fear being in the dark, but they can be humorous, light-hearted and they can give one quite

the laugh. But first it will be centred on ghost stories in general and answer the following

questions. Why do the ghost stories even exist? Where did they come from? What led and still

leads people to even come up with such stories? Mostly it will be focused on ghost stories

from authors who lived during the Victorian Period.

It seems that ghosts and ghost stories have been shadowing humans every step since forever.

It is in human nature to wonder what comes after death and if there is such thing as afterlife.

Humans are naturally curious beings and it is no wonder than that they come up with these

questions. Ghosts are apparitions that have come to existence to explain happenings that

otherwise have no explanation. Maybe the existence of ghost can be explained as soul being

unable to rest because it has some unfinished business, matters of life in the world of the

living.

Ghost stories are just one of many genres that exist in the world. Ghost stories could be

considered as a subcategory to short stories. There arises another question, what is a short

story? A short story was formed from another types of stories since the past long gone, as

mentioned inA Handbook to Literature:

Some three hundred years before the birth of Christ, we had such Old Testament storiesas those of Jonah and of Ruth. Christ spoke in parables. The Greeks and Romans left usepisodes and incidents in their early classics. In the Middle Ages the impulse ofstorytelling manifested itself in fables and epics about beasts, and in the medievalromance. [] In the nineteenth century came Sir Walter Scott, Edgar Allan Poe,Mrime and Balzac, Gautier and Musset, Maupassant, Chekhov, and E. T. A. Hoffman.With these writers the short story as a distinct literary genre came into being. (Holman415-416)

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The short story came a long way to be. What is a short story exactly? A short story is a

relatively brief fictional narrative in prose. (Holman 417) Its length may range from 500

words of a short-short story up to the 12,000 to 15,000 words of a long-short story.

Although ghost stories as short stories appeared at the beginning of the 19th century when

short story itself came to be, the first mentions of ghosts can be found back in the Ancient

Greece and Rome.

For instance, there is Lucians tale of the haunted sandal in his satirical sketch of thepathological liar. And in Petronius Satyricon and Apuleius The Golden Ass there are

inset ghost stories which come close to the modern form and idea. Pliny the Younger tellstwo spooky stories involving ghostly apparitions. Different from these (and much moredetailed) is the account in the Grettirsaga of the haunting of Thorwalls farm by a troll, amonster ghost. Different again are Chaucers two inset ghost stories (both originallyrelated by Cicero and Valerius) which are part of Chauntecleers disquisition to Pertelotein The Nuns Priests Tale. Other notable examples are to be found in FroissartsChroniques, which cover the period 1325-1400. (Cuddon 344-345)

Ghost stories from those ancient times were just meant as a part of another genre. There were

times when ghost stories werent as popular as they became in the 19th century during the

Victorian Era. Ghost stories practically disappeared during the 17th century; mostly they

disappeared in written form. Among educated and sophisticated people in the Neoclassical

and the Augustan age ghosts were not a matter much talked of or written about. (Cuddon

345) They were kept in oral form, in ballads and folklore.

The return of ghost stories came with the Graveyard poets. Graveyard poets were a group of

poets who wrote mostly about human mortality, time, the past and struggles through life. The

tone of their poems was sad, gloomy, melancholy yet meditative. Their concern with death

and delightful gloom came about twenty years before similar ideas in the Gothic novel.

(Carter, McRae 92) One of the poets was Thomas Gray and hisElegy in a Country

Churchyard.

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Ghost stories became quite popular during the Victorian period. The Victorian period is

counted from 1837 when Queen Victoria came to the throne till 1901 when the queen died. Or

as mentioned in The Penguin Guide to Literature in English:

Queen Victoria reigned from 1837 until 1901, but the Victorian Age is sometimes said tobegin with the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. In literature the period starts with the death ofSir Walter Scott in 1832, and sometimes goes up to 1914. (Carter, McRae 125)

There are two words that are mostly used when describing the Victorian era and those are

contrast and expansion.

The Victorian period is considered a period of contrasts. On one hand Victorians were largely

conservative people who wished for times long gone and on the other hand it was time of

inventions and new theories. The Victorians wished for return to religion and yet it was a time

when Charles Darwin came with his Origin of Species. Origin of Species contains a theory

which completely contradicts the beliefs of the creation of the world as seen by the Christian

Church. There are several other contrasts that can be mentioned the life in the country to life

in cities, the lives of higher society to lives of the poorest living in suburbs.

The Victorian period was a time of new inventions. It was a time when a railway was being

built. The railway was one of the many things that showed great industrial changes in mans

life. At first the railway was built to bring down the cost of transporting the goods.

(McDowall, 138).

The wish to return to times long gone was probably what brought ghost stories popularity.

Victorians usually wished to return to times of a more religious nature, of mythical creatures.

It could be said that Victorians wanted to return to times when science was not what mattered

the most. And ghosts were supernatural and their existence could not be scientifically

explained. Though there are the facts that during Victorian period camera was invented and

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with it came another superstition. Some people believed that being photographed could steal

ones soul and it was usually dissuaded for babies till their sixth month to have their picture

taken because it could cause some damage.

With photograph came another matter, on some of them there appeared to be some light

almost unrecognizable figure that wasnt present when taking the photo. This naturally led to

discussions on a belief whether or not ghosts really exist. Such debates are continuing even in

the 21st century, even though people nowadays have much more developed technology.

Curiosity about the preternatural and speculation about life after death proved beneficialto mediums and photographers. Photographic archives of the Victorian period containmany examples of spirit photographs of, apparently, palpable ghosts. The Victorianswere fascinated by ghosts. (Cuddon 348)

This makes the ghost stories seem quite favourite. So being a writer of ghost stories would be

quite a profitable job. Considering radio or television was not invented ye people spent their

time talking or reading.

From the 1860s the ghost stories proliferated. There were scores of them. Many of themseem poor stuff now, hackwork, but they were read avidly. It is almost as if they were

beginning to fulfil a kind of spiritual need; as if the possibility of ghosts was areassurance of afterlife. Besides, ghosts were a link with the past, with tradition, betweenthe living and the dead. Moreover, writers did not regard their ghost stories (and othertales of supernatural) as mere diversions and entertainment. In writing them they hadserious intentions: exploring states of consciousness, examining aspects of appearanceand reality, investigating the meaning of existence. (Cuddon 348)

The first ghost stories as short stories were found in works of Heinrich von Kleist and E. T. A.

Hoffmann. (Cuddon) Both of them are obviously not English writers as can be seen by the

names. Kleist and Hoffmann were both from Germany. Heinrich von Kleist was author of

remarkable gothic stories at the turn of the century. On the other hand Hoffmann is considered

the towering figure of German (and European) romantic prose, in its Gothic-fantastic and

Mdchen modes. (Punter 32)

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It may seem quite surprising that during 1860s and 1870s the best ghost stories ever written

were actually written by women writers of the time; after all women writers were still

regarded negatively by most of the society. For example Amelia Edwards who is the author of

The Engineerand The Phantom Coach, or Rosa Mulholland or Mrs Oliphant who wrote The

Open door one of the best ghost stories ever. (Cuddon 347)

Two of the most excellent writers of ghost stories were Henry James and Montague Rhodes

James. Henry James was born in America in 1845 yet he had spent most of his life in Europe

and a year before his death he became a British subject.

[] he belongs with character of his writings to the history of American literature. Yethis work of art and theoretical outlook had quite the influence on the development ofEnglish literature. (Stbrn 558; my translation)

His work is a combination of the knowledge of two different countries, Britain and America.

As mentioned in The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature:

[]it is rather that in his work we find a double inheritance, the one stemming fromHawthorne and the Puritan ethos of New England, the other from Jane Austen andGeorge Eliot.[] (Sampson 974)

Henry James was not only an author of short stories but novels as well. The Turn of the Screw

is one of the ghost stories he had written meant as a fiction for children.

During 1890s first ghost stories by Montague Rhodes James came to be. M. R. James has no

family relation to Henry James it is just a concurrence of last names. M. R. James was

considered one of the best ghost story writers in England. His books are published even

nowadays.

Michael Sadler described Mr James as the best ghost story writer England has everproduced. Few would dispute this, and certainly he remains the best known and mostwidely read teller of supernatural tales, and among the English language ghost storywriters his only rival for sustained conviction in the genre is the Irish author Sheridan Le

Fanu; many of whose stories were collected by James and published in one volume in1923 as Madam Crowls Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery. (M. R. James, Introduction)

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M. R. James was an exceptional writer of ghost stories that is given considering he previously

read a very large number of them.

M. R. James was a student of the 19th

century ghost story (he read hundreds of them) andhe shows a thoroughly professional approach to the craft of writing them. He workedout his own rules, which appear in brief prefaces to his collections of tales. He is the onlywriter of ghost stories whose collected works remained continuously in print, and he isrightly regarded as a master of the genre. (M. R. James, Introduction)

All these authors wrote traditional ghost stories. They wrote stories where ghosts are either

victims of murder or the murderers themselves who are suffering and need to atone for their

sins so they can finally rest in peace. The victims of murder or victims of injustice that

brought them death are those ghosts who wish to be able to rest in peace. That is usually

connected with the fact that their bodies were never found and buried. These ghosts are trying

to find someone and lead them to a place where their remains are so they could be sanctified

and buried properly.

Some of the ghosts are victims of injustice who are seeking revenge on either their judges or

the people who put the blame on them. These ghosts are causing trouble and usually end up

killing those people with fear or in some other way, far more bloody way.

In one of the ghost stories by M. R. James the victim is torn to pieces by a vengeful ghost. In

Lost Hearts the children, a boy and a girl, who were sacrificed by an old man in a ritual for

achieving immortality, avenge themselves by killing him. Both of the children were orphans

who the old man, Mr. Abney, had taken in as an act of kindness. For the ritual it was needed

to absorb the hearts of not less than tree humans of less than twenty-one years of age. The

reader finds out the truth when Mr. Abneys young cousin Stephen who was recently

orphaned came to live with him. Stephen was to be another sacrifice but on the night when the

ritual was to be gone through Mr. Abney is found dead in his study with open chest for all to

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see his heart. Before Stephen came down to the room he had seen a boy and a girl circling

around the house.

The other type of ghost stories is humorous ones. If one wished to read such then one of the

choices could be The Canterville Ghostby Oscar Wilde orTold after Supperby Jerome

Klapka Jerome.

Oscar Wilde was a writer of novels, poems, short stories, fairy tales and a playwright.

After precocious poems Wilde shone through with short stories and fairy tales. His first

short story, The Canterville Ghost,written in 1887 together withLord Arthur SavilesCrime and Other Stories, still enthrals with vivid humour and lightly prickly quipscentred against superstitions of English aristocrats and their whole already ghastly worldas much as at American illusions that money can buy everything even a ghost. Under thesee-through story-telling are hidden deeper meanings: death is not bad, because it meansforgetting everything, forgiving live, being in peace; stronger than life and death is onlylove. (Stbrn 567, my translation)

In The Canterville Ghost, a poor unhappy ghost has to deal with an American family. The

ghosts attempts in driving the family away with his usual tricks; a pool of blood on a carpet,

with his incessant keening and wailing, rattling chains and so on are thwarted by the boys of

the family. The twins arent afraid of the ghost and usually make fun of him, driving the ghost

insane. The only daughter of the family, Virginia, is also fearless, but holds compassion in her

heart for everyone. When the ghost asks her to help him pass into the afterlife so he can

finally rest in peace she agrees. And leaves with him, as a reward she is given a box full of

jewels.

The whole story is a swift parody of horrific gothic novels, which were wide-spread overEngland in the 18th century it is a closure of romantic cult of supernatural phenomenon.While gothic novels ushered in this cult, The Canterville Ghostmocks it with showingthat even children are not afraid of the most horrid of dread in the repertoire of ghastlystories. (Stbrn 567-568, my translation)

The other author of humorous ghost stories is Jerome Klapka Jerome.

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The origin of his middle name was speculated many times. Some said it was of Moravianorigin, others that of Danish, that the author had chosen it as a souvenir for his visit ofPrague etc. English literary critics indicate that Jerome adopted the name Klapka fromdemocratically thinking Hungarian general living in London exile and often visitingJeromes parents. (Stbrn 563, my translation)

Jerome K. Jerome is mostly known for his humorous story of three young men, bachelors, in

the bookThree Men in a Boatand Three Men on the Bummel.

It is no wonder that in official English history of literature is Jerome usually assessedwith contempt as a show humorist not exceeding the level of a London pencil pusherfrom a periphery. On the other hand in the Czech Republic where thanks to Haek, Karelapek, Polek and Hrabal was developed strong democratic tradition of humour, KlapkaJerome is accepted by a large base of readers of different ages with sympatheticacceptance. [] Different understanding and assessment of Jeromes humoristic books in

England and Czech Republic is a vivid example of how different countries adoptliterature in the sense of specific historical, social and artistic traditions. (Stbrn564, mytranslation)

Told after Supperis a collection of ghost stories, very short ones that take place on Christmas

Eve. Why on Christmas Eve? Ghost stories were usually told on this night because the whole

family and some family friends were present. And Christmas Eve is a mystical time of its own

right probably as much as the All Hallows Eve, nowadays known as Halloween.

In the prologue the author creates a world of ghosts where they spend the day and are usually

preparing themselves for when their time comes, especially Christmas Eve.

Some of the stories are just written in the way that they were told but the story-teller was

mumbling so much due to alcohol consumption that no one understood and the point of the

story was lost upon the author.

Other stories are well written, for example the story about The Haunted Millwhere Mr.

Parkins lived. The mill was haunted by the ghost of a miser who died there and who had

hidden away all his fortune. The story goes about how the ghost appeared almost every other

night waking up the new master of the house. The master knowing the story followed after the

ghost. Each place the ghost disappeared at he dug at hoping to find the money. Mr. Parkins

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was quite unlucky because no matter where he dug at there was no money to be found. With

his obsession of finding the money he destroyed the whole mill. After some time the

apparitions of the ghost ceased and Mr. Parkins was left with the mill in ruins and he had

nothing left to do but to rebuild the house at his own leisure and with his own money. Not

very good being money-hungry so much that you would destroy your own housing.

The last story in Told after Supperis the personal experience of the author with a ghost who

lived in the house of Klapka Jeromes uncle. The ghost taking residence in the Blue chamber

was a previous master of the house, who had murdered several musicians that visited the

town. He murdered seven of them with no remorse. When the author asked why he is unafraid

that they will come and haunt him, the ghost replied that they all have done so already but

they were quite unsuccessful. At the end of the story the author walks the ghost out to where

he would leave once the sun comes up. The author is wearing only his opera-hat, nightshirt

and a pair of boots which is pointed at by a policeman.

Told after Supperis a collection of ghost stories that makes most of the ghosts look good.

Told after Supperis obviously a parody of the classical ghost stories that were popular so very

much in previous times.

At this point I pose a question: Does one have to be a believer in ghosts to be a good ghost

story writer? My personal opinion is that one has to be a believer in ghosts if one does wish towrite traditional ghost stories, otherwise the ghost stories would become the humorous ones,

the mockery of a well-written ghost story. Arent humorous ghost stories just that? Some of

them are and some have just some humorous streak in them that does not insult the horrifying

reality of ghost stories.

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Bibliography

1. Carter, Ronald, and John McRae. The Penguin Guide to Literature in English.

Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 19962. Cuddon, J. A.Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. London:Penguin Books Ltd, 1999

3. Holman, C. Hugh.A Handbook to Literature. Indianapolis: The Bob-MerrillCompany, Inc., 1980

4. Inge, William R. The Victorian Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19225. James, Montague Rhodes. Collected Ghost Stories. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth

Editions Limited, 19926. James, Montague Rhodes.Introduction. Ghosts and Marvels. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 19247. Jerome, Jerome Klapka. Told After Supper.New York: Holt, 1891

8. McDowall, David.An Illustrated History of Britain. Harlow: Pearson EducationLimited, 2001

9. Punter, David.A Companion to the Gothic. Malden: Blackewell Publishing Ltd., 200110. Sampson, George. The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature. London:

Cambridge University Press, 196111. Stbrn, Zdenk.Djiny anglick literatury 2. Praha: Academia, 198712. Wilde, Oscar. The Canterville Ghost. Boston: Rolland Classics, 2009

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even ghost stories can be humorous

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