The Ghost Story Advent Challenge Week 2
Day 7: "The Lost Ghost" (1903 ) by Mary E. Wilkins
Sitting with their sewing and crochet, the two women of the framing story are
wonderful characters. The ghost in this story likes to pull the cat’s tail,
which the cat clearly does not like. Otherwise, it is a sweet and most helpful
little ghost. The ghost is an eerie one, and its back-story is chilling. This
is a sad ghost story, though with lots of charm and a happy ending.
Themes: Ghost Can’t Find Their Way, Ghost-Child, Tragic
Death.
Day 8: “Drive" (2024) by Brian Evenson
As an unwilling would-be ritual sacrifice, you must be
careful when attempting your escape. Killing your captor and allowing their blood to fill
into the lines of the pentagram is poor form. This ghost is mean, smug, and
apparently needs a body.
Themes: Ritual gone wrong, Killer’s Guilt, Drive on a lonely desert road.
Day 9: “
A goofy little ghost story with an ending that I quite like. Some state laws governing nuptials were no doubt violated. It would have been nice to have gotten a bit more perspective from the character of May Forster. On the surface, the story is misogynistic, but I keep reaching for a deeper read of it. I don’t know . . .
Themes: Romantic Love, Persistent Man Always Gets What He Wants, Time of Death Discovered to be BEFORE Person Was Last Seen.
This chapter from Lovecraft Country offers a strange ghost story involving Montrose crossing a charmed threshold into the pastーa place of the dead where a family of ghosts reside who have to “live” through their horrendous hate-fueled murders over and over again. But the poignant, heart-rending account of Jim Crow America and the Tulsa race massacre make this chapter so much more than just a ghost story.
Themes: Portal to Weird Places, Father/Son Relationships, Sorcery, Jim Crow, Ghostly Repetition, Death Experienced as a Loss for the One Who is Dead.
This is certainly will be a candidate for my favorite
ghost story of the month. The weirdness of the Rhodes House itself is a
potential rival to both Hill House and The Castle. The description of the
strange rooms and their decorations give this story an ever-so-subtle
otherworldly flavor of wrongness that permeates the mundane. Jackson has such a
light touch that the eeriness just sneaks up on you. This story pre-dates
Jackson’s novel, but the protagonist, Margaret, will remind you of Eleanor of
The Haunting of Hill House. And like Eleanor, you get the sense that
Margaret too brings some psychological baggage to the house.
Day 12: "
Set in mid-18th century colonial Massachusetts, the story
focuses on a sibling rivalry stemming from a suitor’s choice of which sister to
marry. This ghost is out for revenge, and I have a feeling that, even at the
story's end, it isn’t done yet.
The real lesson: Sisters, please don’t borrow/steal each
other’s clothes.
Day 13: "Proof of Concept" (2024) by Stephen Graham Jones
”Over the course of what would turn out to be my wife Tilda’s last week, she—there’s no other way to say, so I’ll just say it: she started seeing herself out of the corner of her eye, around corners and the like.”
When people see ghosts, they don’t usually see their own, which is only part of what makes this story a twist on standard ghost story fare. Jones, in a short amount of space, sets up interesting questions about the ghost in this story, what is delusion and what is not, and who is losing their mind.
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