Victorian Ghost Stories

Joanne Wotypka is a sessional lecturer in the Religious Studies program
of the Office of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Alberta.

Maybe I’m too jaded after a lifetime of horror films. Having said
that, it must be pointed out that the stories in Campfire Ghost Stories,
Vol. 2 are not meant to be ultimately terrifying. The reading guide at
the beginning is handy—these are tales meant to be told, not read.

Drawing on his own experiences as a novice storyteller, Mott takes the
reader through the basic steps of presenting a tale. Aaron Norell,
though an extremely talented artist, was perhaps not the best
illustrator for this volume; his drawings are technically excellent, but
his style imparts more of a cartoon quality than a sense of terror.

Jo-Anne Christensen’s Victorian Ghost Stories not only presents some
creepy tales, but also outlines the development of our modern foundation
of supernatural beliefs, via such writers as Edgar Allan Poe, Charles
Dickens, and Nathaniel Hawthorne; the spiritualist movement (from the
Fox Sisters to Swedenborg); and Blavatsky. Indeed, some of this book is
devoted to showing how certain spiritualists came under intense
scrutiny, and didn’t respond well. The Fox sisters proclaimed
themselves and all other spiritualists to be frauds, but then recanted.
Spirit photographs were debated and eventually debunked. Florence
Cook’s famous spirit guide, Katie King, was discovered to be Cook
herself. Yet, fascination with the occult persists, as shown by
Christensen’s book, replete with stories of screaming skeletons and
solicitous phantom nurses, among others.