Ghost Stories

Throughout his illustrious writing career, Charles Dickens often turned his hand to fashioning short pieces of ghostly fiction. Even in his first successful work, Pickwick Papers, you will find five ghost stories, all of which are included in this collection. Dickens began the tradition of the "ghost story at Christmas" and many of his tales in this genre are presented here including the brilliant novella, "The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain," which deserves to be as well known as A Christmas Carol. While all his supernatural tales aim to chill the spine, they are not without the usual traits of Dickens' flamboyant style, his subtle wit, biting irony, humorous incidents, and moral observations. It is a mixture which makes these stories fascinating and entertaining as well as unsettling. To paraphrase the Fat Boy in Pickwick Papers: Charles Dickens "wants to make your flesh creep."