The Supernaturel in Literature

[cacian]

I am looking for books and stories that depicts ghosts and supernatural.
Do you have a favourite?

[ralfyman]

Try the ones mentioned here:

http://www.litgothic.com/

[Lokasenna]

Well, I adore the works of H. P. Lovecraft - and you can't get more supernatural than that. I'm currently slowly working my way through the collected ghost stories of M. R. James, which are also very enjoyable. Henry James's The Turn of the Screw is probably one of the most famous.

[cacian]

Try the ones mentioned here:


http://www.litgothic.com/
ralfyman thank you this is a great link/site. I am now landed on Rudyard Kipling False Dawn. I hope to enjoy it.


Well, I adore the works of H. P. Lovecraft - and you can't get more supernatural than that. I'm currently slowly working my way through the collected ghost stories of M. R. James, which are also very enjoyable. Henry James's The Turn of the Screw is probably one of the most famous.
Lokasenna thank you. I shall steer that way and see what I can find. The Turn of the Screw sounds rather intriguing. I might start with this one.:)

[JBI]

The Turn of the Screw. Though, if you want something with a bit more ethnic flare, you can try Strange Stories from a Make-Do Studio.

[MorpheusSandman]

Byron's Manfred, Goethe's Faust, and Coleridge's Cristabel are good examples of the Romantic supernatural. Hamlet's probably an obvious recommendation.

[Jassy Melson]

Algernon Blackwood's The Willows, and Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan are probably the two best horror/supernatural stories of the twentieth century.

[Scheherazade]

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41/41-h/41-h.htm

[cacian]

Thank you all very much. This impressive collection of stories.:)

[Calidore]

For old-school ghost stories, J.S. LeFanu and M.R. James are hard to beat.

[Chris 73]

The Haunting-Shirley Jackson. Has one of the great opening paragraphs.

[mortalterror]

A Brief History of Horror in Literature

100 Pliny the Younger- Letter to Sura
1200 Marie de France- Bisclavret (The Werewolf)
1764 Horace Walpole- The Castle of Otranto
1766 Pu Songling- Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio
1772 Jacques Cazotte- The Devil in Love
1787 Friedrich Schiller- The Ghost-Seer
1794 Ann Radcliffe- The Mysteries of Udolpho
1796 Matthew Gregory Lewis- The Monk
1798 Samuel Taylor Coleridge- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
1816 E.T.A. Hoffman- The Sandman
1818 Mary Shelley- Frankenstein
1820 Johann Ludwig Tieck- Wake Not the Dead
1820 Charles Maturin- Melmoth the Wanderer
1820 Washington Irving- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
1821 Charles Nodier- Smarra
1825 Tsuruya Nanboku IV- Yotsuya Kaidan
1835 Nikolai Gogol- Viy
1835 Nathaniel Hawthorne- Young Goodman Brown
1836 Theophile Gautier- The Dead Leman
1837 Prosper Mérimée- The Venus of Ille
1846 Edgar Allan Poe- The Cask of Amontillado
1849 Alexander Dumas, pere- One Thousand and One Ghosts
1855 Robert Browning- Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came
1859 George Eliot- The Lifted Veil
1859 Edward Bulwer-Lytton- The House and the Brain
1866 Charles Dickens- The Signal Man
1872 Sheridan Le Fanu- Green Tea
1874 Paul Feval, pere- Vampire City
1876 Erckmann-Chatrian- The Man-Wolf
1885 Robert Louis Stevenson- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
1887 De Maupassant- The Horla
1888 Rudyard Kipling- The Phantom Rickshaw
1890 Arthur Machen- The Great God Pan
1890 Oscar Wilde- The Picture of Dorian Gray
1892 Arthur Conan Doyle- Lot 249
1892 Charlotte Perkins Gilman- The Yellow Wallpaper
1893 Ambrose Bierce- The Death of Halpin Frayser
1895 Robert W. Chambers- The King in Yellow
1896 H.G. Wells- The Island of Dr. Moreau
1897 Bram Stoker- Dracula
1898 Henry James- The Turn of the Screw
1902 W.W. Jacobs- The Monkey's Paw
1904 M.R. James- Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
1904 Lafcadio Hearn- Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things
1907 Algernon Blackwood- The Willows
1907 Horacio Quiroga- The Feather Pillow
1908 William Hope Hodgson- The House on the Borderland
1908 Perceval Landon- Thurnley Abbey
1909 Gaston Leroux- The Phantom of the Opera
1911 Oliver Onions- The Beckoning Fair One
1914 Gustav Meyrink- The Golem
1914 S. Ansky- The Dybbuk
1923 Maurice Level- Those Who Return
1926 H.P. Lovecraft- The Call of Cthulhu
1930 William Faulkner- A Rose For Emily
1934 Isak Dinesen- Monkey
1943 Fritz Leiber- Conjure Wife
1943 Jean Ray- Malpertuis
1946 Ray Bradbury- The Small Assassin
1951 Julio Cortazar- House Taken Over
1954 Richard Matheson- I am Legend
1959 Shirley Jackson- The Haunting of Hill House
1967 Ira Levin- Rosemary's Baby
1971 William Peter Blatty- The Exorcist
1973 Anne Rice- Interview with a Vampire
1977 Stephen King- The Shining
1979 Peter Straub- Ghost Story
1988 Thomas Harris- The Silence of the Lambs
1991 Ramsey Campbell- Alone with the Horrors
1996 Thomas Ligotti- The Nightmare Factory
2006 Max Brooks- World War Z

[PeterL]

Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber

[Lokasenna]

How can I be such a dunderhead? There's lots of ghost and ghoulies in Old Norse saga - have a read of Eyrbyggja saga. It's not long, and it chronicles the most famous haunting in Icelandic history.

[cacian]

Thank you all and Lokasenna I shall do. Eyrbyggia Saga looks rather great.

[aaron stark]

I don't know if there's a good translation out there, but Théophile Gautier's Spirite (originally written in French) is certainly a suitable book in your case. It's about an aristocrat who gets in touch with a woman who has fallen in love with him since her childhood, but appears to be dead for some while. She's decided to express her love by entering the real world in the form of a ghost, hoping to be united with him in the spiritual world. Marvelous book which I highly recommend