Three Ghost Stories: Volume 50 (Historical Fiction Books) Paperback – 14 July 2017

I read these at school and obviously as a child struggled with the victorian language. However on re-reading them today I discovered that I quite liked them! The signal man is undoubtedly the best, it takes a bit of working out but to today's modern readers it wouldn't appear to be creepy. The haunted house story is a bit of a let down in this issue as it was originally written by several authors, each taking a turn at writing a chapter - a bit of a disaster waiting to happen, because it was shortened by removing several chapters, and it reads as if Dickens had been at the magic mushrooms. The last story whose title now escapes me, but it concerned a young man who saw a murder a little while before it happened and then was summoned to do jury service. Obviously the ghost of the dead man appears to him during the course of the jury's summing up. None of these could strictly be called ghost stories but they would have been seen as that in those times.I did jump at the reference in the haunted house by the man who leased the said house saying that he had come down from the north having seen a beautiful display of the norther lights!! Where on earth was this northern place in the UK and who knew that the northern lights were showing great displays nearly 200 yrs ago in the north, I've not heard that mentioned before!! They were popular then before today's expensive excursions to see them in Scandinavia and Iceland!

I must confess that Dickens is an author I have avoided reading since an abortive attempt at studying his 'Hard Times' at school. I found his writing style heavy-going, with tortuous sentences and long, descriptive passages that seemed to take the story nowhere. Or, at least, that is how I remember it. And then there is the sheer length of most of his novels ...All of which is a good reason for reading some of his short stories as a way to get into Dickens. This Kindle edition compiling three of his many ghost stories has certainly made me rethink my view of Dickens and the accessibility of his writing.The opening story - 'The Signal Man' (1866) - is justly celebrated and is one with which I should have been familiar, having read it as a youth in a compendium of ghost tales. However, I could recall little of the story after so many years. It uses the lonely location of a railway signal box set in a deep cutting and thereby removed from the general bustle of daily life, and the story blends the uncanny with the everyday. The chill of the tale lies in the premonitions that the ghost or spectre brings to the signalman, and exactly what event it foretells. Dickens' style here is a clear, descriptive reporting of the story's sequence of events, as though taken from a writer's journal.'The Signal Man' is more a tale of the uncanny than a horror story, with the supernatural elements underplayed and their import very much left to the reader to work out. It is all the better for this, and the story stays with you for some time after reading.The second, and longest story is 'The Haunted House' (1859). What is presented here is, in fact, just two parts of an eight-part portmanteau story written by Dickens and five other authors (including Wilkie Collins and Elizabeth Gaskell). Dickens wrote the opening episode,'The Mortals in the House', which sets the scene for the seven individual accounts that follow, each one telling of an occupant's experience of their stay in a haunted house over the Christmas holiday. Here we find much more evidence of the 'difficult' writing style that I associate with Dickens, with sentences so long on occasions that he has to use several colons, semi-colons, and dashes to punctuate them.Dickens also wrote the sixth episode - 'The Ghost in Master B's Room' - as well as the closing one ('The Ghost in the Corner Room') that is omitted here. In a 2002 review in The Guardian of the complete portmanteau collection, Nicholas Lezard wrote of Dickens' episode 'The Ghost in Master B's Room' that it "is quite unlike anything you may have ever read by him; it seems to have been the product of an extended hallucination, and I can hardly make head nor tail of it, except towards the end."Reading just two parts of a much longer work, I found the story rather disjointed and it feels unfinished, incomplete (which, of course, it is). The narrative wanders and takes us into a nocturnal dream world that is the writer's childhood, and just when you think he has lost the plot you find that he has taken you to what is actually haunting, yet real.It is, however, a much lighter tale of ghosts and hauntings and there is more of a jocular, jovial feel to the supernatural aspects of the story. This is, after all, one of a series of Christmas tales that Dickens wrote - it was published in the 1859 Extra Christmas Number of a weekly periodical, 'All the Year Round' - and you feel the cheer of the season rather than the chill of horror.The final story is 'The Trial for Murder' (1865). The ghost in this short story is that of a murdered man who appears to the Foreman of the Jury at the trial of his assassin. What is uncanny is that the Foreman had previously seen the apparition twice before being summoned for jury service: the first time pursuing his killer down the street outside the Foreman's house, the second time beckoning within his house on the eve of the jury summons. Like 'The Signal Man', it is told in economic style and is relatively quick and easy to read. Dickens does not over-egg the horror and his narrator describes events as objectively as he can, without interpretation or judgement - which are left to the reader. 'The Trial for Murder' and 'The Signal Man' are similar in this respect, and eschew the wit, humour and moral reasoning that characterises much of Dickens' work. However, like 'The Haunted House', they too were written for the Christmas extra issues of 'All the Year Round', in 1865 and 1866. Both lack the direct references to Christmastime that are found in 'The Haunted House' and of course, 'A Christmas Carol', Dickens' most celebrated ghost story.

The Signalman is one of the creepiest stories I've ever read... and I've read a lot of creepy tales. It's the implication of the main character's involvement that haunts the reader, the question if the terrible event would have happened had he not interfered.Charles Dickens' writing style in the "Signalman" feels more antiquated than in some of his other books, with long-winded sentences and slow pace. This may not appeal to all modern readers.But the plot is as compelling as ever, masterfully crafted, simple and powerful.The other two stories are not bad either, but it is "The Signalman" that's my favourite. If you haven't read it yet, here's your chance to get it free.

I used to read these sort of Ghost stories when i was younger,the atmosphere is within the pages, more so than the likes of Modern horror writers who go for the shock rather than the story

I got this partly because it was free and partly due to the fact that I had never read Dickens, and not read a ghost story for some years. This was a nice introduction to Dickens, and a welcome return to a genre I have left for way too long.The stories are not over long, and are entertaining and at times, downright odd. The story of the haunted house gets downright bizarre and reminded me of HP Lovecraft at times.Given it's free and its Dickens - you can't really go wrong

Sorry but Dickens is very much an acquired taste (at least for me) and these stories are very wordy and not much else. I'm not even sure if one of them is complete, since it seemed to just stop in the middle after the usual stuff about unexplained noises (bells ringing etc.) in an old haunted house and some strange ramblings from the writer about a dream that he had when sleeping in a supposedly haunted room.I don't think it will make it on to the best seller lists.

Three short ghost stories to be found here. The Signalman and Trial for Murder are both excellent. The Haunted House veers off into abstract territory and ends weakly. In a rare occurrence the BBC adaptation of the Signalman is better than this story and well worth watching. Most enjoyable if one fancies a little Dickens without having to give up weeks of one's life.

The Signalman is a classic ghost story and The Trial for Murder is pretty decent. The Haunted House is rather wierd however. It is fragmentary and hard to follow but, as another reviewer has pointed out, we seem to have only those bits of this story written by Dickens here. Perhaps the full story makes more sense.