Roald Dahl's Favorite Ghost Stories (and a few of mine, too)

  Roald Dahl is best known for his timeless, darkly-humored children's books, featuring giants who kidnap children for snacks and a telekinetic bookworm who takes revenge against her evil schoolmistress. There are many unexpected things about Roald Dahl's life that you might not know (for instance, that he was a pilot for the RAF during World War II, and was shot down and narrowly escaped with his life), but the fact that he was obsessed with ghost stories probably shouldn't come as a surprise. Much of his fiction contains more than a hint of spookiness, or at least a sense of things not being quite...right.

  Dahl loved ghost stories so much that he decided to edit an anthology of them, a collection that would represent the absolute scariest, best-written tales he could find. But during his research, he found himself increasingly frustrated by the stories he read, and dismissed most of them as “trivial, poorly written and not the least bit spooky.”

He read more than 30 stories before he finally found one that met his high standards. The introduction he wrote for that anthology is fascinating, as he struggles to figure out why it is so difficult to write a good old-fashioned, genuinely scary ghost story. His conclusion is that a good ghost story must be subtle.

He wrote that “the best ghost stories don't have ghosts in them. At least, you don't see the ghost … occasionally you can feel it brushing past you, or you are made aware of its presence by subtle means.”

In other words, it's not enough to simply have a ghost appear out of thin air and shout “Boo!” You must first do the work of hinting at a ghost by building up a lot of tension and developing a creepy atmosphere. This is much easier said than done.

  In honor of winter's approach and our early darkening nights, I thought I'd write about my favorite ghost stories. It's a short list, and that's because, like Dahl, I think a truly good ghost story is a rare treat.

  First, I cannot recommend Dahl's anthology highly enough: Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories. Dahl's hard work paid off; there are some wonderfully frightening stories in this collection.

  Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger is one of those stories where the ghost is just as real as the characters she haunts, but what's really frightening about her is just how much power she exerts from beyond the grave. This book also contains one of my favorite descriptions of a ghost I've ever read; I love it so much that I have it framed on my wall.

  And my absolute favorite ghost story, the one that at one point made me get up and turn on every single light in my apartment, is The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. The protagonist is a young doctor in England who becomes enamored with a wealthy family and their huge, crumbling mansion, with disastrous results. I believe Dahl would have loved this book had he been alive when it was published. It's subtle and literary and terrifically creepy in an underhanded way, and it will stay with you for a very long time. Best read with a cup of something hot and a raging storm outside.