Holy Ghosts: Classic Tales of the Ecclesiastical Uncanny

A festering evil lurks in the grotesque carvings of a cathedral’s hallowed inner sanctum; sheltering in an Alpine chapel, a young libertine confronts his eerie monastic doppelgänger; locked in a Spanish cathedral, a honeymooning couple bears witness to a fatal procession.Churches and other sacred sites have inspired writers of the weird and uncanny for centuries as spaces in which death and the afterlife are within touching distance – where ghosts, demons and possessed effigies remain to haunt the living. Through eleven stories published between 1851 and 1935, this new anthology revives a throng of undying spirits from a host of unsung and classic authors including Elizabeth Gaskell, M. R. James, John Wyndham, and Edith Wharton.

About the Author

Fiona Snailham is an academic based at the University of Greenwich, whose research and published work explores nineteenth-century literature and culture, and the intersection between Christian theology and Victorian mediumship and spiritualism. She is also a contributor to BBC History Extra and History Today.

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