Charles Dickens wrote a number of supernatural and horror stories, some of which were included in his longer works, while others were published in magazines. This collection gathers them together in one volume, providing an invaluable insight into the author’s storytelling apprenticeship and his steady growth towards excellence. As well as offering a further dimension to the world of his better-known masterpieces, these tales—from "A Madman’s Manuscript" to "The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton" to the celebrated "The Signalman"—illustrate Dickens’s well-known love of a spooky story told around a blazing fire, the pastime of a bygone age to be rediscovered for our own delight.

Charles Dickens is a much-loved author for his vast and important contributions to English literature. This collection brings together his supernatural short stories, some of which were included in his longer works, and others that originally featured in magazines, including ‘The Bagman’s Story’, ‘The Ghost in the Bride’s Chamber’ and ‘To Be Read at Dusk’, among others. They are all fantastically gripping stories from one of the greatest writers of all-time. Essential collaborations with his acolytes Wilkie Collins and Elizabeth Gaskell are also included.

Even now, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, when science has largely replaced superstition as our way of viewing the world, who among us does not hesitate, however briefly, before entering a darkened room? Who does not feel an involuntary shiver at the sound of footfalls somewhere back there? Who does not wonder, even fleetingly, if the spirits of the dead might still wander the earth? Who does not feel a jolt of primal fear at things that go bump in the night? For all these reasons and more, stories of ghosts, unexplained happenings, and the supernatural remain among the most popular and enduring tales in all of world literature. Now The Lyons Press presents CLASSIC GHOST STORIES, a chilling collection of some of the very best tales of mystery and imagination ever penned, by some of the finest writers the world has ever produced. So curl up in a comfortable chair, turn on a few more lights to chase away the shadows, and prepare to be scared silly. These are delightfully creepy tales that have stood the test of time, from such stellar authors as: Ambrose Bierce Edgar Allan Poe Edith Wharton E.F. Benson Guy de Maupassant William Fryer Harvey Charles Dickens Amelia B. Edwards M.R. James Algernon Blackwood Rudyard Kipling Edward Bulwer-Lytton Mary E. Wilkins ...and many more

Publisher Description

Collection of thirty-five English ghost stories written during the Victorian Era.

DIVFirst-rate selections include Hardy's "The Fiddler of the Reels," James' "Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad," Dickens' "The Haunted Hotel," and tales by Saki, Kipling, Lawrence, Trollope, Stevenson, and others. /div

"The Signal-Man" is a horror/mystery story by Charles Dickens, first published as part of the Mugby Junction collection in the 1866 Christmas edition of All the Year Round.The railway signal-man of the title tells the narrator of an apparition that has been haunting him. Each spectral appearance precedes a tragic event on the railway on which the signalman works. The signalman's work is at a signal-box in a deep cutting near a tunnel entrance on a lonely stretch of the railway line, and he controls the movements of passing trains. When there is danger, his fellow signalmen alert him by telegraph and alarms. Three times, he receives phantom warnings of danger when his bell rings in a fashion that only he can hear. Each warning is followed by the appearance of the specter, and then by a terrible accident.The first accident involves a terrible collision between two trains in the tunnel. Dickens may have based this incident on the Clayton Tunnel crash[1] that occurred in 1861, five years before he wrote the story. Readers in 1866 would have been familiar with this major disaster. The second warning involves the mysterious death of a young woman on a passing train. The final warning is a premonition of the signalman's own death"