Ingredients Of A Successful Ghost Story

The Ingredients of a Successful Ghost Story

In this essay I will be writing about the ghost story genre. The ghost story is different to other types of story because it gives you a unique feeling at the end of the story. It can frighten you but on the other hand you might enjoy it. It is your perspective. The stories I will be looking at were written in pre 19th Century and were created originally to scare and build intense atmospheres. I will be looking at three short ghost stories and they are The Red Room, The Signal Man and The Old Nurse’s Story.

The Signalman' was first published in 1865, written by Charles Dickens, The Red Room' by H.G. Wells was published in 1894 and The Old Nurse’s Story

The Signalman was about a train crash. At that time trains were a new invention so everyone had never heard about a train crash before. But for us it seems very old fashioned as we are used to modern trains and it running on electrical power rather than coal.

The Red Room was set in a one room in a massive house. This already seems scary as there is a big house but one room which is very weird and strange. And the only 3 people who live there, does not want anything to do with the red room.

The man in the story is given a long list of directions to reach the red room, which involves going "going down the long corridor", which already gives you a scary feeling. This always happens when someone has to go somewhere dark and they are always alone.

In The Signalman the narrator climbs down to speak with the signalman. The Signalman is set in a "dark black tunnel", this makes it scary as it is dark and black.

The Old Nurse's Story gives the idea to the readers that life after death is real. Hester and Lord Furnival suggests that dead people are waking up and entering into this world and walking the Earth. This would’ve spooked readers quite a bit as it the thought of it

The Red Room creates fear by using words and phrases that explain the weather or their feeling inside like, "the draughty subterranean passage was chilly and dusty" This line is not scaring the reader straight away but making the reader feel as he was in the story feeling cold in the passage.

The Signalman also uses cold to show fear, "so much cold rushed through it that it struck chill to me". It is trying to do the same thing so you can imagine you are feeling cold.

For a good scary story, a lot of things will be described in detail, and they will use words which are connected to fear somehow. In these three stories, they use the description of the light and dark or colour to add tension and fear.

The Signalman for example is set on a railroad next to "a black tunnel". Also it tells us about where the signalman's box is, "So little sunlight ever found its way to this spot". This is trying to make us feel that it is extremely dark