A VERY HAUNTED CHRISTMAS

Ghost Stories for Christmas Vol 1 (BFI Blu Ray Box set - 3 discs)

I first picked up an M.R.James story when I was thirteen. But I didn’t finish reading it. Casting the Runes proved too disturbing. So I pulled the duvet over my head and tried to sleep. Aged sixteen I bought a complete M. R. James collection, still found them scary but they no longer kept me awake. I thought my boyish anxiety of the supernatural had gone. 

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WESTWARD HO!

Robert Bard. Paranormal Berkshire. Amberley, 2021.

Since a large portion of it was sliced off and handed over to Oxfordshire, Berkshire has sometimes been slightingly referred to as "the hard-shoulder of the M4". This book reveals that there is far more to the county than Welcome Break service stations and business parks.

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WOODLAND WEIRDNESS

Peter A. McCue. Britain's Paranormal Forests: Encounters in the Woods. The History Press, 2019.

This informative and often entertaining work mostly covers, as the title indicates, unusual and bizarre encounters in Britain's woods. In particular McCue covers strange incidents occurring in the woodlands of Kent, Cannock Chase, Rendlesham Forest and Dechmont Woods in Scotland amongst others.
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TRICK AND TREAT

S. D. Tucker. Blithe Spirits, an Imaginative History of the Poltergeist. Amberley, 2020.

The author lays out his stall in an introductory caveat lector, ‘How True Are These Tales?’: “I take the vast majority of accounts presented throughout at face value. I have made zero attempts to interview witnesses or hunt down any polts myself”. 

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A UNIVERSE OF GHOSTS

Paul Eno, Dancing Past the Graveyard: Poltergeists, Parasites, Parallel Worlds and God. Schiffer Books 2019.

Paul Eno is a former seminary student turned paranormal investigator. He trained for the Roman Catholic priesthood at seminaries in Bloomfield, Connecticut, and Ogdensburg, New York. Converting to Eastern Orthodoxy, he began studying at an Orthodox Seminary in New York City. He was already fascinated by ghosts and the afterlife, and the theological questions they raised while at the Roman Catholic seminaries.
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IT'S ODD UP NORTH

David Paul. Illustrated Tales of Lancashire. Amberley 2019.
David Paul. Illustrated Tales of Cheshire. Amberley, 2019.

These two books are from a series by Amberley Press, recounting traditional tales of the counties of England. I have chosen Lancashire and Cheshire as they are the counties where I grew up and heard many of these stories as a child. I was particularly drawn to the tale of the 'Childe of Hale'.
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GHOSTSISTERS: SINKING SPIRITS

Robin Roberts. Subversive Spirits: The Female Ghost in British and American Popular Culture. University Press of Mississippi, 2018.

It came as a great relief to get to Chapter One. The fourteen-and-a-bit-page Introduction was a bit of a trial, due to its reliance on ludicrous feminist jargon-du-jour – ‘heteronormativity’, anyone? – repetition, and over-complex syntax. 

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STORIES ALL AROUND

Mark Rees. Ghosts of Wales; Accounts from the Victoria Archives. History Press, 2017.

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Wendy Hughes. The A-Z of Curious Sussex. History Press, 2017.

When reading books of ghost stories, particularly those related to a specific location, it is often the case that the stories are retold and edited in a way that sometimes bears no relationship to any original account or testimony, and we are often presented with a homogenised and rather standardised narrative.
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FASHIONABLE PHANTOMS

Susan Owens, The Ghost: A Cultural History, Tate Publishing, 2017.

Although this book is published by the Tate Gallery itself and is the work of one of its most eminent and respected curators, don’t let that put you off. Not even if you’re an active ghosthunter or, conversely, a nuts-and-bolts-Dawkins-is-God kind of Skeptic/sceptic. With some reservations – see below - Ms Owens is good.

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HAUNTED PLACES AND HAUNTING MEMORIES

Colin Dickey. Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places. Penguin, 2017.

For Colin Dickey ghosts and hauntings are not about the dead but the living, he is not concerned with the question as to whether ghosts exist or not, but what such stories tell us about places, their history and our reaction to them. 
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LIVING IN THE HOUSE ON THE BORDERLAND

Dennis and Michelle Waskul.  Ghostly Encounters: The Hauntings of Everyday Life. Temple University Press, 2016.

Denis Waskul, the lead author of this book is lying in bed one night, finding sleep difficult, his wife Michelle asleep beside him when he saw a mist forming at the top corner of his window, coming through the window and blind. From it came wispy tentacles, reaching out to him. 

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THE GHOST IN THE PROJECTOR

Murray Leeder. The Modern Supernatural and the Beginnings of Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

In the cinema of the 1890’s the image of the spectre, the ghost, and the skeleton are regular occurrences. The new trick photography of film was ideally suited to playfully examine our fear of mortality and urge to communicate with the living dead. 

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THE GHOSTS OF GEORGIAN ENGLAND

Sasha Handley. Visions of an Unseen World: Ghost Beliefs and Ghost Stories in Eighteenth Century England. (Religious Cultures in the Early Modern World Volume 2) Routledge, 2016.

This is a paperback reprint of an original published in hardback in 2007. In it Sasha Handley, a senior lecturer in history at Manchester University looks at ghost beliefs in the '[very] long eighteenth century' (1660-1832). As the series title suggests the emphasis is on the theological uses of ghost stories and their role in theological debate.
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NOWT SO QUEER AS FOLK

Melanie Warren. Lancashire Folk: Ghostly Legends and Folklore from Ancient to Modern. Schiffer, 2016.

First things first, when any book has 'Lancashire' in its title, you need to define the word, does it refer to the ancient county of Lancashire including the great cities of Liverpool and Manchester, or does it refer to the truncated 'Lancashire' created by Edward Heath in 1972. In this case, it refers to the latter, the Lancashire from Preston northwards.
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TECHNOGHOSTS

Steven T. Parsons. Ghostology: The Art of the Ghost Hunter. White Crow Books, 2015.

The subtitle of this book is somewhat misleading, it is not really about “the whole art of ghost hunting” but is largely devoted to a critical analysis of the various types of equipment favoured by the techno-geek ghost hunter and it performs that service very well.
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CHANCE OF A GHOST

Lisa Morton. Ghosts: A Haunted History.  Reaktion Books, 2015

Ghosts haunt our imaginations and our culture, from high art to the most kitsch pop culture. Half feared, part domesticated into the tourist/heritage industry. In this book Lisa Morton traces the development of ghost beliefs from ancient times to today’s (pseudo?) technical ghost hunting equipment. She explores their role in classical Greece and Rome, the advent of Christianity and its changes.
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DEAR DIARY ...

William J Hall. The Haunted House Diaries: The True Story of a Quiet Connecticut Town in the Centre of a Paranormal Mystery. New Page Books, 2015.

If you want a good ghost story this is it; the tale of a family living in an old farmhouse in a rural suburb of Torrington, Connecticut, who experience all sorts of spooky things, documented in diaries kept for a period of almost 50 years by now owner, who inherited it from her mother.
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HOLLYWOOD HAUNTINGS

Robert E. Bartholomew and Joe Nickell. American Hauntings: The True Stories Behind Hollywood’s Scariest Movies - from The Exorcist to The Conjuring, ABC/CLIO, 2015.

Feature films about ghostly hauntings and UFO encounters always benefit if they are based on a true story or events. In this volume Bartholomew and Nickell put to the test the ‘true’ elements of five popular ghost movies, namely The Exorcist, The Amityville Horror, An American Haunting, The Conjuring, and The Haunting in Connecticut.
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HAUNTING HUMPTY-DOO

Tony Healy and Paul Cropper. Australian Poltergeist: The Stone –Throwing Spook of Humpty Doo and Many Other Cases. Strange Nation, 2014.

The authors of “Out of the shadows: mystery animals of Australia” and “The Yowie” here provide a catalogue of Australian poltergeist cases and give detailed accounts of eleven of them.
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INTO THE GRAVEYARD TOGETHER

Chris Woodyard (Editor), The Ghost Wore Black: Ghastly Tales from the Past. Kestrel Publications.

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Chris Woodyard (Editor), The Victorian Book of the Dead. Kestrel Publications.

‘Soon it will be dusk. I have the dark lantern, the shovel, the hook, the sack. Let us go into the graveyard together.’ So declares Chris Woodyard, the selector and editor of the ghostly – nay, ‘ghastly’ – tales presented in The Ghost Wore Black. Should one have the nerve to accompany him, then clearly he’s the perfect companion and leader.
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