Psychological ghost story
The psychological ghost story is a type of ghost story which is particularly told from the protagonist's point of view, and in a way that suggests the protagonist may be an unreliable narrator -- mad or deluded.
Perhaps one of the most famous examples is Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper (1892).
Other examples and writers include (women in bold):
- Charles Dickens, The Signalman (1866)
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper (1892)
- Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898)
- Oliver Onions, The Beckoning Fair One (1911) [1]
- Robert Aickman
- Walter De La Mare
- Olivia Howard Dunbar
- L.P. Hartley
- Violet Hunt
- Vernon Lee
- Edith Wharton
- Modern examples / practitioners
- Daphne Du Maurier
- M. K. Hobson ("Oaks Park")
- Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
- Joyce Carol Oates
- Kit Reed ("Akbar")
- Ekaterina Sedia ("Tin Cans")
- Carolyn Turgeon ("La Llorona")
- Sarah Waters, Affinity
Further reading
- Ted Billy, "'Domesticated with the Horror': Matrimonial Mansions in Edith Wharton's Psychological Ghost Stories", Journal of American & Comparative Cultures, Volume 25, Issue 3-4, pages 433–437, September 2002 (full-text for sale from publisher)
- Jessica Amanda Salmonson, "The Psychological Ghost Stories of Olivia Howard Dunbar" (abridged introduction to The Shell of Sense, a collection of Dunbar's short stories)