Victorian Ghost Stories

Ghost House Books

by Jo-Anne Christensen

England's Victorian era is often termed the "golden age of ghost stories." This collection recounts tales of body-snatchers, vampires and strange reanimation experiments that comlement legends of sophisticated, terrifying ghosts. this period was notorious for weird trends and colorful personalities, reflecting a society on the brink of madness.

Genres: Ghosts

240 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2004

Reviews

[Catalina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a bit of a surprise. Though I was expecting a collection of anecdotes about ghostly visitors, I had not thought to find such a rich variety of information about Victorian oddities including short biographies of mediums, assorted anomalous happenings, and peculiar personages. The geography is also wider than I expected as it ranges from the British Isles to North America. All in all, this book was very intriguing it whetted my appetite for more, especially for more details on some of the aforementioned mediums and spiritualists.

I will have to say that my personal view on the supernatural was not altered by this book. I am a skeptic, but what I was intrigued by was the reasons why some of these people did what they did. Yes monetary gain was a part of it, but not with all of them. There was quite a few, especially women who used the spiritualist movement as an opportunity to empower themselves and their gender as well as humanity by ‘channeling’ personages of ancient wisdom who then imparted said knowledge via trance lectures. What a scam! And what a way to get around the limitations imposed on the fairer sex in those days.

Then there were the bizarre news stories about scientific anomalies, uncanny inventions and the just plain inexplicable occurrences that volunteers from such groups like the Society of Psychical Research would go and investigate (eat your heart out Mulder). The Victorian times were a golden age of human imagination, because science was just beginning to make its discoveries, but there were still a lot of dark corners to be lit up so anything was possible.

For a fun introductory ride to those times I do recommend this book , you might even want to read it by candle light with a pot of tea by your side.

[Kevin Candela · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent and inspirational compilation of macabre realities from the Victorian Era. I most definitely would read any of the other books in this series based on this one. The storytelling is sharp and concise and the stories are uniformly compelling. I particularly liked a couple that weren't ghost stories so much as monster tales, and especially thought the vampire story was - if the facts presented are valid - one amazing testimonial to the existence of things beyond what we understand as nature. No doubt it informed almost the entirety of Bram Stoker's Dracula. The tales vary from as short as one page to perhaps six or seven, making this a great stop and go read for those such as myself that can't get enough of the supernatural.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun! Just might need to keep the lamp on throughout the night! Seriously though there are a lot of interesting stories included in this book. I would recommend to anyone I know that enjoys tales of shadows in the night. :-)

[Kelli · Rating 1 out of 5]

I liked some of the stories within this book, but did not enjoy the way they were told. Each story seemed contrived, which is not what I was hoping for.