2 h 23 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 2 h 23 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
A lonely signal box, a damp railway cutting, a tunnel: how little does it take for dread to begin?
Three Ghost Stories gathers Charles Dickens's tales of the supernatural, including The Signal-Man. Beside a tunnel, deep in a steep railway cutting, an ordinary place becomes a setting for fear. Dickens works through plain speech and quiet detail, letting unease grow where you might expect only the familiar routines of daily life.
These stories belong to a Victorian tradition of ghost tales told on dark winter evenings. Many of Dickens's supernatural tales first appear in his magazines' special Christmas numbers. Beneath their chills lie questions of guilt and fate: what do we owe those we wrong, or those we fail to help?
What you’ll discover
- A railway cutting's dread Enter the lonely setting of The Signal-Man, where a signal box stands beside a tunnel.
- Fear in quiet details Feel unease build through small habits, exact places, and conversations that stay deceptively calm.
- Ghosts with moral weight Look beneath the supernatural encounters to questions about guilt, fate, and the help people owe.
- Christmas shadows Discover the old-fashioned chills of a storytelling tradition rooted in long, dark winter evenings.
- A shorter path into Dickens Meet a side of Dickens his long novels only hint at, in tales suited to an evening.
Who will love it
You will love this book if you enjoy ghost stories by the fire, Victorian humor, railway settings, courtroom suspense, and narrators who test every strange event against common sense.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A daylight house tests a skeptic's nerve
- The village whispers of a hooded woman
- Fear spreads among the servants like an infection
- A house party sets out to hunt the truth
- Master B's room sends the narrator back to childhood
- A murder in the morning paper enters a bachelor's room
- The foreman of the jury is followed by the dead
- The signalman waits for a warning he cannot read
- The tales ask what we do when reason and fear collide
- A shifting voice carries comedy, dread and sorrow
Who’s who
- The narrator of The Haunted HouseA cheerful skeptic who rents a shunned house, calls himself John, and wants to learn whether its ghosts are real or only rumor.
- PattyThe narrator's sister, who proposes giving up servants and filling the house with trusted friends so that fear cannot spread.
- IkeyA stable lad in a striped waistcoat who believes the house is haunted and is not above helping the haunting along.
- Master BThe ghost of a boy in a cheap suit, named only by a letter on a bell, who leads the narrator through his own past.
- The Foreman of the JuryA bachelor banker in Piccadilly who sees the victim before the trial and is chosen to lead the jury.
- Mr. HarkerThe kind officer who guards the jury at the London Tavern and notices only moonlight where the foreman sees a figure.
- The SignalmanA learned, careful railway worker who watches a danger light and is tormented by a specter whose warnings he cannot understand.
- The travelerA curious visitor who tries to calm the signalman with reason while worrying about the safety of the line.
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Drei Geistergeschichten
A railway signalman begs a stranger not to call out, because a ghost has used those very words before.
Medium level2–5 hours to readDeutsch
Excellent
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In short
What would you do if you saw your own father sitting beside your bed, head resting on his hand, and then found nobody there? Charles Dickens gives that moment to the narrator of The Haunted House, the first of three tales in this book.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A daylight house tests a skeptic's nerve
The Haunted House opens in broad daylight. The narrator walks the last mile from a railway station and sees a goods train gliding through the valley. There is no wind, no thunder, no lightning. Dickens strips away every spooky prop so that the house must stand on its own.
The night before, the narrator shares a carriage with a gentleman who speaks with spirits. He reads out messages from Socrates and Galileo, and they are comically feeble. The narrator gets off at the next station, thinking of the orderly laws that run the universe. Beside them, the spirit notes seem poor hackwork.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- Language
- Deutsch
- Reading time
- 1 h 35 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Dickens, Charles. Three Ghost Stories. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/three-ghost-stories.
Dickens, C. (2026). Three ghost stories. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/three-ghost-stories
Dickens, Charles. Three Ghost Stories. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/three-ghost-stories.
@book{dickens2026three,
author = {Dickens, Charles},
title = {Three Ghost Stories},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/three-ghost-stories}
}
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What is Three Ghost Stories by Charles Dickens about?
It gathers three tales: The Haunted House, about a shunned house and a party of friends sent to test it, The Trial for Murder, about a juror who sees the victim, and The Signalman, about a railway ghost.
Who is Master B in The Haunted House?
Master B is the name of a ghost linked to a bell and a small triangular room, known only by that initial. The narrator guesses at his name and finds that the ghost leads him into memories of childhood.
Is The Signalman based on a true story?
It is fiction, but Dickens wrote it with the real fear of railway accidents in mind. His own narrator puts forward reasons like diseased nerves, wind in the wires and coincidence, and the story tests each of them.
The author
Charles Dickens
1812–1870 · English novelist
Charles Dickens was an English novelist born in Portsmouth in 1812. He lived in London and later at Gad’s Hill Place in Kent, where he died in 1870. His books include The Pickwick Papers (1836–1837), A Christmas Carol (1843), David Copperfield (1849–1850), and Great Expectations (1860–1861).
More by Charles Dickens
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