A signalman who works on the railways observes that the mysterious appearance of a ghost always precedes a terrible tragedy on the railway line. A Christmas Carol may have been more influential in helping to establish the tradition of the Christmas Eve ghost story, but this later tale retains its ability to chill the blood of modern readers. It takes a familiar trope of the ghost story – a couple of friends spend the night in an old mansion – and offers a sinister insight into one man’s past, a particularly nasty judge whose ghost visits the two men.Ĭharles Dickens, ‘ The Signal-Man‘ (1866). Irish writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was a master of the ghost story, and this creepy little tale is among his most popular. Sheridan Le Fanu, ‘ An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street‘ (1853). Mysterious goings-on involving a spooky organ playing music and a scene reminiscent of Wuthering Heights ensue. She tells the young children about a dark incident that she experienced in the company of the children’s mother, when she was a young woman and visiting her mother’s ancestral home (this isn’t the last time a haunted house will feature on this list). The narrator – the old nurse of the title – is an old family retainer who has worked in the service of the same family for three generations. ‘The Old Nurse’s Story’ was written for Charles Dickens’s magazine Household Words. Elizabeth Gaskell, ‘ The Old Nurse’s Story‘ (1852). Gaskell is best known for writing such classic realist novels as North and South (which we include in our list of best Victorian novels), but she could also write spookily about the supernatural.
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