Do you believe in ghosts?

As the winter nights draw in and the cosy fire casts curious shadows about the room, you may find yourself dwelling on those unexplained frights; flickers in the corner of your eye, a half-remembered figure at the end of your bed. Ghosts, spirits, spectres or spooks, we have always felt the presence of someone - or something - hovering in the darkest corners of our imaginations.

The great writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, from Elizabeth Gaskell to Rudyard Kipling, also produced some of the most influential ghost stories ever written, defining the genre for generations of writers to follow.

Gathered in this spine-tingling collection are some of the most iconic Victorian ghost stories, from Charles Dickens’s ‘The Signalman’ to M.R. James’s ‘A Warning to the Curious’, alongside more unexpected contributions from masters of the form such as J.S. Le Fanu and H.G. Wells.

You may think you don’t believe in ghosts, but these stories will haunt you nonetheless…