BOOK REVIEW: Queer Hauntings: True Tales of Gay and Lesbian Ghosts by Ken Summers

 

Behind many hauntings is a history of drama, passion, and often tragedy. Big events and strong emotions that anchor the souls of the dead to the mortal realm. For many ghost-hunters, chronicling the stories of who their spectral subjects were in life is even more fascinating than the hauntings themselves.  But as author Ken Summers points out in his introduction to this book, nearly all of these backstories deal with straight- or at least, perceived straight- individuals. “Where were the gay, lesbian, and bisexual entities in paranormal literature?” he asks.

“Queer Hauntings” is Summer’s effort to document these overlooked or forgotten ghostly manifestations.  The book is as a survey of locations, such as historical gay bars or the abodes of famous queer people, where supernatural happenings have been reported.. Many of the ghosts have fascinating histories, such as Timber Kate, a sex worker in the Old West who performed regularly on-stage with her partner Bella Rawhide. Or James Whale the director of Frankenstein and other Universal horror movies who began life as a quiet, sensitive artistic kid in an English mining town.

 Like many ghost stories, there is great tragedy too, such as the robbery and murder of Bill Neville, whose spirit allegedly still dwells in the theater he loved so much in life. Or Lizzie Borden’s lonely, reclusive life which was punctuated by a brief romance with a married woman.

Though the book primarily focuses on hauntings in the US, Summers also highlights a few queer ghosts form the United Kingdom, such as Piers Gaveston, the intimate companion of King Edward II whose ghost plays tricks on visitors to Scarborough Castle.

Some of the queer implications for the ghosts may seem slight because in life many of these people had to hide their bi- or homosexuality from the public, so researchers can only get hints and inferences- such as folks who had especially close and intimate “friends” of the same sex. And like many alleged real-life hauntings, the evidence in these cases can be very slight- a few phantom footsteps heard in the early morning or a dark, wispy figure walking down a corridor. But regardless of the veracity of these supernatural occurrences, they add an important queer element to the literature of hauntings.

Get a copy of Queer Hauntings here.

BOOK REVIEW: The Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories, Volume One. Edited by Alastair Gunn

 

Winter is the season of ghosts. As the nights grow longer and the days colder, as the trees turn to twisted skeletons and the land itself goes to sleep, it is said that the walls between worlds grow thin, allowing the dead- and other, stranger spirits- to step into our world. If you look at Yule traditions outside of America, you’ll find hordes of ghosts, witches, trolls, household spirits, and other things creeping around the outside walls or hiding behind the stove.

This Yuletide spookiness underlies the British tradition of telling ghost stories around Christmas. When you hear “Christmas ghosts” you probably think of Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” (and maybe also the line about how “there’ll be scary ghost stories” from the song “It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”).  But this was just one among many in a long history of tales. And indeed, it was only one among man Christmas ghost story Dickens wrote.  

Winter ghost stories have been told in Europe for centuries, but in Britain the tradition really took off in the Victorian period. These tended to be what you might call “cozy” stories. The protagonists were often well-to-do or at least comfortably off. The hauntings frequently took place in or around a stately manor or otherwise well-furnished dwelling. These were tales meant to spook, but not horrify. Something to create a little creepy fun on a cold winter’s night. What M.R. James called “a pleasing terror”.

The Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories is actually a series of anthologies collecting dozens of ghostly tales from the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  Each volume has a theme for the included authors, and this first volume focuses on women writers of British ghost stories.

Though many of these tales ae meant to be light, there are still plenty with a gothic sense of dread such as Elizabeth Gaskell’s “The Old Nurse’s Story”, or Isabella Banks “Wraith-Haunted”. Others are quieter, moody encounters such as Amelia B. Edwards “How the Third Floor Knew the Potteries”, or Louisa Baldwin’s “How He Left the Hotel” (I’m particularly fond of the latter tale because I find the thought of being an elevator-operator in a haunted hotel oddly quaint and charming).

Some stories are just short descriptions of ghostly encounters, such as Mary Louisa Molesworth’s “The Story of the Rippling Train”, or Ellen Wood’s “Seen in the Moonlight”. Then there are tales that are phantasmagoric enigmas such as Rhoda Broughton’s “The Man With the Nose” which has lots of Freudian and even feminist themes to it.

Many of the stories are written as if they were transcriptions of a narrator relating a story to friends- likely because they were meant to be read out loud to an audience gathered around the fireplace. The effect gives the tales a distinct feel that can take some getting used to. Also, some of the cultural attitudes can be dissonant or off-putting at times coming as they do from a society and time period obsessed with class and maintaining social mores. Though the only story that really falls flat is Lilian Giffen’s “The Ghost of the Belle-Alliance Plantation” which relies on a weird racist trope for its big jump-scare moment.

Overall, however, there is enough variety in the tones and themes of these stories that a reader will likely find several favorites. You can get a copy of The Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories, Volume One right here.