This week’s image selection is taken from Ghostly Tales – an 1896 collectionby the Countess of Munster, Wilhelmina Fitzclarence. While the eleven supernatural stories vary in terms of quality, they are accompanied by some wonderfully atmospheric illustrations of ghostly visitation. You can view an edition scanned by the British library here.
In The Tyburn Ghost,Minny wakes to find that “someone was very close to her; that in fact a face was almost touching hers; for she smelt a fetid breath, like to what (she fancied) must be the odour of the grave!”In The Page-Boy’s Ghost, the narrator describes getting lost in a creepy old house: “The house was full of crooked passages, and one night, I came suddenly round a corner, and face to face with the attenuated figure of an emaciated-looking page-boy, who stood, quite still and looked at me!”In The Bruges Ghost, the narrator recalls waking up to find a curious figure leaning over her with “the vilest expression I ever saw!”
The Sea of Books 