The

CLASSIC HORROR BLOG

Critical Essays on Horror, Ghost Stories, & Weird Fiction

— from Mary Shelley to M. R. James —

by M. Grant Kellermeyer

Charles Dickens' The Goblins Who Stole a Sexton: A Two-Minute Summary and Literary Analysis

If the title of this story is familiar to you, it is probably due to the fact that it is often touted by editors and literature...

Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol: Inspirations, Interpretations, and a Literary Analysis

Arguably Dickens’ most famous work, “A Christmas Carol” packs a stunning archetypal power – a relatability without expiration date – that...

Charles Dickens' The Lawyer and the Ghost: A Two-Minute Summary and a Literary Analysis

Dickens wrote several types of ghost stories, and most were more rhetorical exercises or moral parables rather than horror stories, but...

Charles Dickens' The Signal-Man: A Two-Minute Summary and a Literary Analysis

On June 9, 1865 at 3:13 in the afternoon, an elderly Charles Dickens was travelling by train with his mistress and her mother in...

Charles Dickens' To Be Taken With a Grain of Salt: A Two-Minute Summary and a Literary Analysis

Most famous of Dickens’ ghost stories (somewhat undeservingly when compared to the original, weird, and mystifying mainstays...

Charles Dickens' Shadowy, Anxiously Existential Ghost Stories

English literature is punctuated by a series of inescapably titanic figures – one or two per century – who overwhelmingly defined the...

Ghosts of Fate: Charles Dickens' Real-Life Haunting in The Signal-Man

Famous for his charismatic whit, irony, and satire, Charles Dickens’ ghost stories often typified the Victorian supernatural aesthetic –...