Other Worlds

Tag: ghost stories

  • The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Washington Irving, 1820)

    I was jotting a list of ghost stories to read in October — or revisit, if a favorite — and for that purpose I also found a short history of the genre. It seems that Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is a landmark in the early development of the ghost story. (That’s not…

  • Season of Mists and Hauntings

    When the days are getting chilly and the nights long, I start turning to ghost stories. The time has to be right: it must be dark outside, and fairly late, and I in bed, with one bedside light. And then, in the quiet, I open an M. R. James volume, or Le Fanu, or Blackwood……