"A compelling, deeply rewarding novel from a unique southern storyteller, American Ghost is Janis Owens' richly woven story about how unresolved family history and the racial tensions of the past threaten a love affair between two young Floridians"--

American ghosts stories have their origins in the gothic, mixed with the fears of the pioneer landscapes. A terrific new collection of classic tales Settling in for a night of spine-chilling entertainment? Here's a gripping collection of classic American ghost tales by authors such as Edgar Allan Poe ('The Masque of the Red Death'), Francis Bret Harte ('The Ghosts of Stukeley Castle'), Edith Wharton ('Afterward'), Mark Twain ('A Ghost Story'), Harriet Beecher Stowe ('The Ghost in the Mill'), O. Henry ('A Ghost of a Chance'), H.P. Lovecraft ('The Outsider') and many more. FLAME TREE 451: From myth to mystery, the supernatural to horror, fantasy and science fiction, Flame Tree 451 offers a healthy diet of werewolves and mechanical men, blood-lusty vampires, dastardly villains, mad scientists, secret worlds, lost civilizations and escapist fantasies. Discover a storehouse of tales gathered specifically for the reader of the fantastic.

Thumb Rivera is in a bind. A college dropout, aspiring writer, smalltime marijuana grower, and biker club hang-around, Thumb finds himself confined to his rural ranch house in the desolate Maine countryside, helpless to do anything but watch as his former friends and housemates scheme behind his back, conspire to steal his girlfriend, and make inroads with the Blood Eagles, a dangerous biker gang. Thumb is also dead. A ghost forced to haunt his survivors and reflect back on the circumstances that led to his unsolved murder, Thumb discovers he has one channel through which he can communicate with the living world: Ben, an unemployed ghost hunter. Ben soon convinces local curmudgeon Fred Muttkowski, failed novelist turned pig farmer, to turn Ben's Ouija-board conversations with Thumb into an actual book. Thumb has two things on his mind: To solve, and then avenge, the mystery of his own violent death, and also to tell his story. That story is American Ghost-as told to Ben, then fictionalized by Fred. It's at once a clever tale of the afterlife, a poignant examination of the ephemeral nature of life, and a celebration of writing and the written word.

This book traces the historical development of the American ghost story from its Indigenous, Puritan, and Enlightenment origins to its heyday in the nineteenth century and continued vibrancy in modern literary and visual culture. It explores the main tropes, thematic preoccupations, principal settings, and stylistic innovations of literary ghost stories in the United States, and the ghost story’s rich afterlife in cinema, television, and digital culture. Throughout, the role played by ghost stories in nation-building, and the questions these tales raise about race, class, sexuality, religion, and science, will be examined. The book examines major practitioners in the field, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, Shirley Jackson, Henry James, Stephen King, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, and Edith Wharton, alongside prominent ghost narratives in cinematic, televisual, and online form, including podcasts, gaming, and ghost-hunting apps. This study also gives a new prominence to neglected or less familiar authors, including BIPOC writers, who have helped to shape the American ghost story tradition.

Take an eerie road trip! A chilling collection of true ghost stories spanning every state in the United States with a full range of ghostly manifestations and haunted locations! From séances to shiny graveyards, take a ghostly journey across the United States. Visit the highways and byways of the supernatural across the country and in each state in the union. American Ghost Stories: True Tales from All 50 States tours possessed houses, unearthly burial sites, forbidding farms, sinister forests, school bathrooms, and all manner of places haunted by spectral visitors, including … Sullivan, Maine, and Nelly Butler, America’s “first ghost.” Wilder, Kentucky, and Bobby Mackey’s Music World, which was originally built as a slaughterhouse and then served at various times as a honky-tonk, bingo hall, biker bar, and cocktail lounge before becoming a direct portal to Hell. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and The Pfister Hotel, where every U.S. president since William McKinley stayed—as did Elvis Presley—and its weird noises, flickering lights, malfunctioning electronics, and moving objects. Exeter, Rhode Island, and Mercy Lena Brown, the vampire ghost that was caught on a YouTube video. San Jose, California, and the maze-like Winchester House, which was allegedly designed to confuse ghosts that haunted the original owner … and have continued to haunt people every since. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and the Skirvin Hotel, the historic Art Deco hotel, former speakeasy, and location of several gunfights that is haunted full time by Effie, a Prohibition-era chambermaid. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the numerous sightings at the Betsy Ross House. Huntsville, Alabama, and the Maple Hill Cemetery, the internment site for governors, U.S. senators, representatives, and soldiers that is the site of … a playground! Tularosa Basin, New Mexico, and Pavla Blanca, the woman in white roaming the dunes of the White Sand National Monument. And many more paranormal experiences, poltergeists, residual hauntings, curses, witches, prisons, bridges, mental institutions of an America plagued with spirits, phantoms and ghosts! More than merely a collection of 50 true ghost stories, American Ghost Stories puts you in the middle of the eerie action with captivating stories that would be at home at any midnight campfire. The only difference is that these stories aren't urban legends or fantasies meant to scare you. These stories live right next door to every one of us. We suggest you don’t read them when you are home alone and the lights begin to flicker!

Contains 51 supposedly true, classic American ghost stories from newspapers, journals, and magazines.

Horror fiction is an important part of the popular culture in many modern societies. This book compares and contrasts horror narratives from two distinct cultures--American and Japanese--with a focus on the characteristic mechanisms that make them successful, and on their culturally-specific aspects. Including a number of narratives belonging to film, literature, comics and video games, this book provides a comprehensive perspective of the genre. It sheds light on the differences and similarities in the depiction of fear and horror in America and Japan, while emphasizing narrative patterns in the context of their respective cultures.

Ghost-watching American Modernity explores the intersections of haunting and space in nineteenth- and twentieth-century works from Spanish America and the US. In an intervention that will reconfigure the critical uses of haunting for scholars across different fields, Blanco advances ghost-watching as a method for rediscovering haunting on its own terms.

Sixteen spine-tingling tales from the dark side of our nation's literary history include "The Gray Champion" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Ligeia" by Edgar Allan Poe, plus fables by Sarah Orne Jewett, Henry James, Mark Twain, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Ambrose Bierce, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Frank R. Stockton, Parke Godwin, and others.

Creatively spent and politically irrelevant, the American horror film is a mere ghost of its former self—or so goes the old saw from fans and scholars alike. Taking on this undeserved reputation, the contributors to this collection provide a comprehensive look at a decade of cinematic production, covering a wide variety of material from the last ten years with a clear critical eye. Individual essays profile the work of up-and-coming director Alexandre Aja and reassess William Malone’s much-maligned Feardotcom in the light of the torture debate at the end of President George W. Bush’s administration. Other essays look at the economic, social, and formal aspects of the genre; the globalization of the US film industry; the alleged escalation of cinematic violence; and the massive commercial popularity of the remake. Some essays examine specific subgenres—from the teenage horror flick to the serial killer film and the spiritual horror film—as well as the continuing relevance of classic directors such as George A. Romero, David Cronenberg, John Landis, and Stuart Gordon. Essays deliberate on the marketing of nostalgia and its concomitant aesthetic and on the curiously schizophrenic perspective of fans who happen to be scholars as well. Taken together, the contributors to this collection make a compelling case that American horror cinema is as vital, creative, and thought-provoking as it ever was.