Components of a Good Ghost Story

Components of a Good Ghost Story

A good mystery novel needs to be based on life in the past similar to

the Victorian era for the reason that of industrialisation and it was

an era of when inventors started experimenting and creating new and

bizarre ideas. In the Victorian era many stories were based around the

gothical theme. The story ‘signalman’ is a ghost story, it was written

in 1866 by Charles Dickens. Another example of a gothic story is the

‘red room’, which is also a ghost story or contains beings of the

spiritual world written by H.G Wells in 1896. Both of these novels

were written at the end of the gothic period. I will now find the

similarities of both novels.

The social context of the ‘red room’ and the ‘signalman’ is similar;

the narrator in red room sounds smart and rich as shown in the example

below:

“If you will show me this haunted room of yours, I will relieve you

from the task of entertaining me.”

The narrator wants to get on with the ghost stories of the old people

as he is saying you won’t have to be a host to me if you just show me

the haunted room. In the signalman the narrator is a posh person as he

is called a sir.

The historical context of ‘red room’ is that it has been set in

similar surroundings of that of a castle as shown in the example:

“ The echoes rang up and down the spiral staircase, and a shadow came

sweeping after me”.

This quote demonstrates that the novel is a traditional ghost story,

as traditional ghost stories would be expected to contain a setting of

which of a big, empty and eerie building such as a ...

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... the both stories the narrators are describing

what is happening at the present time.

In conclusion I would say the ‘signalman’ is a good mystery because of

the language Dickens uses and the theme of the story. The way in which

Dickens uses to trick the reader into thinking the story has moved on

to a castle from being set at a railway line is very interesting and

pleasing to the reader. The signalman is a very interesting novel as

during the middle of the novel you don’t know for sure whether there

are two signalmen or if one of them is in actual fact a ghost. The

context of the story makes it difficult to understand. The novel ‘red

room’ is an ordinary ghost story, which is astonishing as the language

and context are also difficult to understand. It is also like a new

style ghost story that has a traditional theme.