This critical edition presents Christina Rossetti’s ghostly poetry, analyzing its overall cultural impact and influence. In addition to her poetry, we have included contextual documents pertaining to mourning, widowhood, and poetic expression. As a whole, this edition gives insight into how and why poetry can be an appropriate method for women to express grief in […]

Works of art are inherently spectral in that they are fictional representations of life and reality, particularly theatre, which brings into a nonexistent world to life by creating layers of performance between audience and actors, and even the characters of the play. Through a close reading of both the text and performance of Henrik Ibsen’s […]

This edition critically analyzes “The Romance of Certain Old Clothes” by Henry James. It is put into context with three other Victorian ghost stories that use the similar trope of ghostly hands. The theme of these ghostly hands is used to explore Victorian era issues concerning class, property exchange, and the roles of women. Read […]

Complicated by the issues of identity, the immigrant experience is fraught . As such, authors engage with this theme by manipulating time and setting. These themes reimagine ghosts in hyperreal forms distorted by memories and perceptions. This article investigates hyperreality in the context of immigrant literature, this paper will introduce its audience to the ghosts […]

This edition provides a critical examination of M. E. Braddon’s “The Shadow in the Corner.” Specifically, the authors explore the ways in which themes of haunting in the Victorian period and in M. E. Braddon’s work are informed by competing notions of subjectivity and the shadowy presence of female working class figures in both the […]

This essay examines Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, texts featuring sentient house hauntings. The author focuses on how the family unit in each text undergoes drastic destruction, arguing that the breakdown of the family is the […]

“This edition provides critical insight into the classic Japanese folktale commonly referred to as “The Ghost of Sakura.” Themes include the narrative of the feudal peasant, the cultural importance of the collective good, and the Western view of Japanese culture. We have also included two original essays by Mitford and an article from The New […]

“All memorials offer solace to those who visit, but the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is particularly suited to this cause because of certain aspects of its design. As this article demonstrates, qualities such as its black reflective surface, its gradual increase height, and the ordering of the names work to create an emotional connection to the […]

“The following critical edition of Frank R. Stockton’s “The Transferred Ghost” focuses on the ways in which the rise in spiritualism parallels the emergence of the middle class and white-collar positions in the United States in the late 1800’s. By analyzing Stockton’s story along with other comedic ghost stories from the period, this edition will show […]

“This article explores an aspect of haunting and terror that surfaced after the Columbine school shooting, a specter crafted and refined through the journalistic practice of framing. This ghost inhabits the house of media, where it still continues to surface. American Horror Story: Murder House presents an incarnation of this ghost, opening a new way of thinking […]