11 h 17 minAudiobook4 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the ghost has more to worry about than the people it haunts?
In Humorous Ghost Stories, Dorothy Scarborough gathers English and American tales in which spirits struggle to frighten the living. Some are vain, clumsy or painfully polite. Others find themselves outwitted by people who refuse to shudder. These separate comic hauntings turn a familiar question around: what happens when a ghost cannot get the reaction it expects?
Scarborough opens with a short introduction exploring why people laugh at what once makes them afraid. The collection includes Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost and Frank R. Stockton's The Transferred Ghost. Haunted houses, midnight noises and wronged spirits provide familiar ground, but wit changes the mood. Fear and laughter share the house, and the living can be as troublesome as the dead.
What you’ll discover
- Ghosts with human worries Meet spirits whose pride, shyness and bad luck make haunting less simple than it seems.
- The living turn the tables Watch curious, cheerful or businesslike people unsettle the ghosts who should unsettle them.
- Wilde and Stockton Explore The Canterville Ghost and The Transferred Ghost among this gathering of comic tales.
- Familiar chills, unexpected laughter Enjoy gothic trappings that invite a shudder, then bend toward a joke.
- A scholar's playful subject Follow Scarborough's interest in the supernatural toward the ghost who fails to frighten.
Who will love it
For readers who love light, short fiction, Wilde or Stockton, and ghost stories without nightmares, with vain, clumsy spirits outwitted by the living.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A ghost can be funny and still haunt
- Living people often outdo the dead
- Ghosts have worries, pride and bad luck
- Why such tales have lasted and how to read them
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Humorous Ghost Stories
Proud ghosts meet practical people as haunted rooms and night noises become the stuff of comedy.
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From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A ghost can be funny and still haunt
The first idea behind the collection is that fear and laughter sit closer together than we think. A ghost is a figure built on rules. It walks at night, it clanks chains, it wants something unfinished settled. Once a writer lets a reader see those rules clearly, they start to look like habits, and habits can be mocked.
Scarborough, who studied how the supernatural works in fiction, understood this well. In the comic tale the ghost is still there, and the house is still strange. But the story asks what happens when the dead meet people who are practical, bored or unimpressed.
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What is Humorous Ghost Stories about?
It is an anthology of short tales in which ghosts and hauntings are played for laughs. Spirits are proud, awkward or outwitted, and the living respond with practical good sense instead of terror.
Who edited Humorous Ghost Stories?
Dorothy Scarborough, an American author and Columbia University teacher, put the collection together. She studied supernatural fiction and wrote about it, which shaped her choice of comic tales.
Does it include Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost?
Yes. Wilde's tale of an American family and the old English ghost of their new house is among the best-known stories in the anthology, alongside Frank R. Stockton's The Transferred Ghost.
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