When one is considering writers involved in the creation of ghost stories, supernatural fiction and tales of horror, Rudyard Kipling – the author of The Jungle Book and the Just So Stories – does not immediately spring to mind. Like many successful storytellers of the Victorian era, however, he was drawn from time to time to this particular genre. In some ways it is less surprising that Kipling turned his hand to Gothic entertainments than other English scribes who were lodged in the safe and mundane environs of leafy suburbia, for he spent a great deal of his early life in India at a time when mysticism was almost a way of life there. Indeed, a significant number of his stories have an Indian background. The term ‘imperial gothic’ has been coined to describe Kipling’s strange tales of India. The richness and alien qualities of this locale, allied to the unusual occurrences in Kipling’s plots, give the stories an extra unsettling frisson, which only enhances their power to disturb and intrigue the reader. There is a timeless element to Kipling’s stories of ghosts, monsters and inexplicable happenings, which evoke a bygone era while remaining as relevant and stimulating today as when they were first written. Kipling is an author who has never been entirely free of controversy, however, as we shall see.
Top Posts & Pages
Liddell’s Ghost
Click image to read my short story, 'Liddell’s Ghost' in Cygnus, the Journal of Speculative Fiction.
Changed
Click image to read my short story 'Changed' in The Cynic Online Magazine.
First Date
Click image to read my short story 'First Date' in Aphelion, the Webzine of sci-fi and fantasy.
Ghost Walk
Click image to read my short story 'Ghost Walk' in Aphelion, the Webzine of sci-fi and fantasy.
M R James
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Ghosts of Christmas Past
‘There must be something ghostly in the air of Christmas,’ wrote Jerome K. Jerome in the introduction to his darkly comic collection Told After Supper (1891), ‘something about the close, muggy atmosphere that draws up the ghosts, like the dampness of the summer rains brings out the frogs and snails’. Dickens would no doubt agree, […]
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M R James’s Suffolk
The macabre beneath the landscape is not dispelled by nearness to the sea. What Henry James knew, and described in English Hours (1905) – the strangeness present on a flattened seashore – M R James (no blood relation, although the two were acquainted) expressed in two of his best-known ghost stories: Oh, Whistle, and I’ll […]
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A Warning to the Curious
Here’s a real festive treat. In 2000 the BBC produced a series called Ghost Stories for Christmas, with Christopher Lee in which Lee played M R James reading four of his own stories. Lee, who actually once met James, obviously enjoyed making this series and A Warning to the Curious is a real highlight – enjoy!
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Lost Hearts
I have been haunted by the writings of M R James since childhood but when asked what is my favourite of all his ghostly tales I’ve never fully been able to answer. Lost Hearts, an early tale which apparently James didn’t much care for, and which only appeared in Ghost Stories of an Antiquary to […]
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A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Tractate Middoth
Here’s a real treat to conclude the series of Christmas ghost stories that I’ve been posting for the last few weeks – the BBC adaptation of The Tractate Middoth from just a couple of years ago. Fingers crossed they do another one this year!
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Ghost Cities 