During Dickens' lifetime (1812 - 1870), interest in the supernatural was high, and in the middle of the nineteenth century movements such as mesmerism (belief in a sort of invisible natural force that influence the physical world) and spiritualism (a belief that spirits of the dead exist and can be communicated with by the living) became incredibly popular. Therefore, it's probably to be expected that authors of the Victorian period would write an awful lot of good ghost stories.
From the hand of a spirit at the window, in Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, through to The Turn of the Screw by Henry James toward the end of the Victorian period, spirits of the dead haunting the living make many an appearance in Victorian novels and novellas.
In reality, Dickens was something of a sceptic, and had little interest in Spiritualism, except that he did attend a number of séances, but only to investigate and debunk the claims being made by peddlers of the "spirit business". However, he had just as much of a love for the ghost story as any other Victorian of his time.
In Dickens' most famous ghost story, A Christmas Carol, the spirits are a means of exploring those links between humanity that go deeper than the everyday and mundane. Through these figures of death, the author could explore what it is that makes life good and beautiful - worth living. In a precursor to A Christmas Carol, Dickens' short ghost story, The Goblins Who Stole a Sexton, also features supernatural beings that seek to interfere in the life of a man, at Christmas time, who carries hate inside of him. Clearly a theme that had been on Dickens' mind a while - The Goblins Who Stole a Sexton featured in The Pickwick Papers, along with three other short ghost stories, about seven years before the publication of A Christmas Carol.
As well as uplifting tales, like A Christmas Carol, Dickens was also quite capable of exploring the darker and more brutal side of humanity, and in his short story, The Ghost in the Bride's Chamber, he does so unflinchingly. In this story, a young woman endures a constant drip of cruelty until she is worn down by its power.
There was a darkness in Dickens' mind, perhaps informed by his troubled early years, and he offered up some of the most haunting scenes ever committed to English literature. He was a wonderful humourist, but he could craft a gothic and haunting tale just as well.
The ghosts and spirits in his stories were a useful device for exploring the deeper meanings of life. Because death, life extinguished in this world, is the only forever in this life. And so, death can be a powerful inspiration, a reminder of what makes life rich and meaningful. But his ghosts could also be a manifestation, a warning, of how acts of abuse and cruelty can haunt and mark a life. His best ghost stories are a reminder to live life decently and well.
You can purchase a collection of Dickens' ghost stories here, a collection published by Pan Macmillan and which brings together all of Dickens' ghost stories.
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