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Literary ghosts to spook up your Halloween

TNN | Last updated on - Oct 29, 2021, 18:04 IST

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Literary ghosts to spook up your Halloween

Though Halloween is a typical American festival, with the help of globalization and Hollywood movies, it just adds to one more colour to the plethora of Indian festivities. Halloween is definitely incomplete without some grotesque spook to it, and if you are a bookworm, what could be better than finding all the interesting literary ghosts at a place ready for you to discover them. Spice up your Halloween this year with an insight into these ghosts straight from the land of books, and to know more about them, just read the books they appear in. So here are some greatest ghosts from literature that is sure to spook up your evenings!Happy Halloween and happy reading!

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Ellie's Ghost from 'Endless Night'

Agatha Christie is the queen of crime but 'Endless Night' is a shining example where the writer combines crime, psychology and horror effortlessly. When Michael and Greta conspire against Ellie for acquiring her wealth, they plan a wedding and a murder. Michael marries her and then kills her by giving her cyanide. Replete with regret for murdering his wife, Michael sees Ellie's ghost and claims being haunted by it for sometime before he murders Greta as well. The ghost sheds light on Michael's lack of conscience and his consequential guilt and regret which sends chills down the readers' spine, literally.

Photo: Harper Collins

3/11

The ghost of the Christmas yet to come in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Not the ghost of Jacob Marley or of the Christmas present or the Christmas past, but the ghost of the Christmas yet to come appears central to Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”. It shows Ebenezer Scrooge, the old miser who does not like celebrating Christmas, is in a horrible condition on one certain Christmas in the future. The Ghost shows him a gloomy and lonely vision of his death and thus makes him realize that he needs to change his ways of living to avoid the horrific image from coming true. Not a very scary ghost but the images drawn clearly make you reflect upon your own life and get a little scared.
Picture Credit: Simon & Schuster

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Banquo’s ghost from Macbeth by William Shakespeare

The sudden appearance of Banquo’s ghost at a feast startles the already skeptical Macbeth who behaves frantically after that. Despite all the efforts of Lady Macbeth of calming him down, he fails to get past the scary illusion of the ghost of Banquo and talks to him projecting his guilt of murdering Duncan, followed by Banquo and then Banquo's son. Although the ghost appears for a very short time and remains silent all the while, Macbeth’s actions and words convey the deadly imagery and the spookiness associated.
Picture Credit: Simon & Schuster

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The ghost of Beloved from 'Beloved' by Toni Morrison

Although Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” is lot more than a ghost story but the character of the ghost of Beloved is an unconventional kind that does not creep you out but scares you and makes you cry at the same time. The very first line of the novel highlights the intensity of the effect of the baby ghost: “124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom.” Be it because of Toni Morrison’s writing or her strong characterization, one cannot forget the ghost of the baby Beloved after being emotionally drenched in the book.
Picture Credit: Penguin

6/11

The ghost of 'The Woman in Black' by Susan Hill

Written in the style of a traditional gothic novel, this book clearly aims to make your spines chill. Arthur Kipps retells a series of incidents of his past, that mostly follows the image of a woman clad in black, or Jennet, who haunts the town of Crythin Gifford after her death avenging the accidental death of her son. Jennet later appears when Kipps returns to London and he sees her before his son dies in an accident and his injured wife dies ten months later. Describing a few spookier events and elaborating the representation of the ghost lady, Susan Hill clearly leaves no stones unturned in making her ghost a blood-curdling character.
Picture Credit: Amazon

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Rebecca from Daphne du Maurier’s "Rebecca"

“It wouldn't make for sanity would it, living with the devil.” This line from Maurier’s bestselling book “Rebecca” clearly defines how the living Rebecca made it hellish for the people around her to live and also after her death. It was her sinister admirer Mrs. Danvers who kept her alive in her devilish ways. Although not explicitly a ghost, the narrative of the character of Rebecaa is enough to scare someone to the extreme.
Picture Credit: Penguin

8/11

The ghost of Sir Simon in The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde

With his unique and funny ways to scare the Otis family, Sir Simon is clearly the most colorful ghost character ever written. He also takes us inside the complexity of the emotions of a ghost and presents a picture of a ghost that is not as spookier as he appears. He bonds with the youngest member of the Otis family, Virginia and in her words teaches her, “what Life is, what Death signifies, and why Love is stronger than both.” An unorthodox ghost character with a slight alignment towards human emotions, Sir Simon is definitely someone you could sympathize with rather than get scared of.
Picture Credit: Amazon

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The ghost of Michael Furey from The Dead by James Joyce

Haunting the memory of Gabriel Conroy’s wife, this character of Michael Furey is not that of a typical literary ghost. He is the kind of ghost that takes you to the past and its brutalities and other than making the characters of the story realize things, makes the reader also ponder upon important aspects of life. Because of his wife’s narration of her past dead lover Michael Furey, the main protagonist of the story ponders the role of the countless dead in living people's lives, and the idea of people becoming memories with time.

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The ghost of King Hamlet from 'Hamlet' by William Shakespeare

A crucial element of the tragic trajectory of Hamlet, the ghost of King Hamlet is scarier to Hamlet than to the readers. He appears suddenly asking him to avenge for his death which startles him. He reappears rebuking his son for not avenging his death and Hamlet fearfully apologizes. A strong apparition, if it does not makes our jaws drop, it definitely scares us as we see the reflections of Prince Hamlet’s fear.
Picture Credit: Simon & Schuster

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The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

One of the best literary ghost stories published during the 20th century, the rented hill house is central to the protagonists and the supernatural elements of the play. It is the house that creates images of ghosts that is not only scary for the protagonists but for the reader. Not a human ghost, but the house is certainly spookier than many human literary ghosts, if at all they could be called "human".

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Literary ghosts to spook up your Halloween