{"id":441,"date":"2016-10-31T09:00:33","date_gmt":"2016-10-31T13:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/rbsc\/?p=441"},"modified":"2026-06-30T16:11:46","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T20:11:46","slug":"ghosts-in-the-stacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/ghosts-in-the-stacks\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghosts in the Stacks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Sara W<\/a>eber, Speci<\/em><\/a>al Collections Digital Project Specialist<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From ghoulies and ghosties<\/em>
\n And long-leggedy beasties<\/em>
\n And things that go bump in the night,<\/em>
\n Good Lord, deliver us!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traditional Scottish Prayer<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“What do you have in Special Collections?” is a question we are asked quite regularly. While we don’t have any ghosts (that we know of), we do have books<\/a> that contain ghost stories. Whether a central character intended to frighten the reader or a convenient plot device, ghosts appear in a variety of works of fiction. Listed here are a selection of such stories to be found in our rare books.<\/p>\n\n\n

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One of the earliest\u00a0recorded ghost stories is that told by Pliny the Younger in his Letters<\/em><\/a>, written in\u00a0the early 2nd century AD. He repeats a story he has heard told of an Athenian phantom “in the form of an old man . . . with a long beard and bristling hair” [Book 7, Letter 27].<\/p>\n\n\n

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“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” from The sketch book of Geoffrey Crayon, gent<\/a><\/em>, by Washington Irving (London: J. Murray, 1821).<\/p>\n\n\n

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“The Ghost and the Bonesetter” by Sheridan Le Fanu, first published in 1838 in the Dublin University Magazine<\/a><\/em> (Dublin, Ireland: William Curry, Jun., and Co.; and London: Simpkin and Marshall).<\/p>\n\n\n

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A Christmas Carol<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(London: Chapman & Hall, 1843) and The haunted man and the ghost’s bargain<\/em><\/a> (London: Bradbury & Evans, 1848), both by Charles Dickens. Although a tradition that has nearly disappeared, telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve was popular during\u00a0the Victorian era.<\/p>\n\n\n

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A night in a haunted house: a tale of facts<\/em><\/a>, by Edward Tracy Turnerelli (London: Ward & Lock, 1859).<\/p>\n\n\n

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“The Phantom Coach” by Amelia Edwards, first published December 1864 in the Extra Christmas Number “Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy” issue of\u00a0All the year Round<\/a><\/em>, a Victorian periodical\u00a0edited by Charles Dickens (London: Chapman and Hall, 1859-1895). Many 19th\u00a0century ghost stories were initially published in magazines.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Irish wonders: the ghosts, giants, pookas, demons, leprechauns, banshees, fairies, witches, widows, old maids, and other marvels of the Emerald Isle<\/a><\/em>, by David Rice McAnally (London: Ward, Lock, 1888).<\/p>\n\n\n

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Some Chinese ghosts<\/a><\/em> (Boston: Roberts brothers, 1887) and In ghostly Japan<\/a><\/em> (Boston: Little, Brown and Co. 1899), both by Lafcadio Hearn.<\/p>\n\n\n

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“Tom Daly and the nut-eating ghost” from\u00a0Tales of the fairies and of the ghost world, collected from the oral tradition in South-west Munster<\/a><\/em>, by Jeremiah Curtin (London: D. Nutt, 1895).<\/p>\n\n\n

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M. R. James’s Ghost stories of an antiquary<\/a><\/em> (London: Penguin Books, 1937) and More ghost stories<\/a><\/em> (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1959). James’s\u00a0first and second collections of ghost stories, these were originally published in 1904 and 1911, respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Gods, goblins and ghosts; the weird legends of the Far East<\/em><\/a>, by Bertha Lum (Philadelphia and London: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1922).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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Madam Crowl’s ghost: and other tales of mystery<\/a><\/em>, by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, edited by M. R James (London: G. Bell and sons, ltd., 1923).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Happy Haunting to you and yours from all of us in Notre Dame’s Special Collections!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

P.S. If you’re curious about ghost stories here on campus, check out Notre Dame Magazine’<\/em>s article “Haunt thee, Notre Dame?”<\/a> from the Autumn 2009 issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Sara Weber, Special Collections Digital Project Specialist From ghoulies and ghosties And long-leggedy beasties And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us! Traditional Scottish Prayer “What do you have in Special Collections?” is a question we are asked quite regularly. While we don’t have any ghosts (that we know of), … Continue reading Ghosts in the Stacks<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1936,"featured_media":1584,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[72244],"tags":[77938,77948],"class_list":["post-441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-collections","tag-book","tag-otd-holidays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1936"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":43,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11745,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions\/11745"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}