Humorous Ghost Stories

Not every ghost story has to be terrifying! Indeed, horror and humor are surprisingly similar modes of writing—both depend on eliciting certain emotional reactions from the reader through carefully timed revelations and unexpected juxtapositions. Horror can all too easily give way into unintentional humor, as any connoisseur of schlocky B-movies can tell you. But that blurred line can also be courted intentionally. All throughout the Golden Age of the ghost story—from the mid-nineteenth century through the early twentieth—writers poked fun at the popular genre with silly and satirical takes on the ghost story. Here are just a few of my favorite examples of spectral tales more likely to make you split your sides with laughter than scream in fright:

“The Canterville Ghost” by Oscar Wilde

I’ve gone in depth into Oscar Wilde’s Gothic parody already, but I couldn’t miss the opportunity to bring this underrated work back up. Published in two parts in British literary magazine The Court and Society Review in 1887, “The Canterville Ghost” was one of Wilde’s first pieces of prose to see print, paving the way for his far more famous works like The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest. This silly, spooky tale satirizes both the ghost story form and American consumerism. The story centers on the family of an American diplomat who purchases an ancient estate in the British countryside, despite being warned of its resident specter. Much of the story’s humor comes from the family’s practical and materialistic methods of combating the ghost—for example, they extoll the virtues of a particular brand-name stain remover for erasing the recurring spectral bloodstains and offer the spirit some of “Doctor Dobell’s tincture” in case it is suffering from indigestion. The ghost, meanwhile, is hilariously pathetic. Poor Sir Simon tries so hard to be frightening but ends up terrified himself of the family’s mischievous young children. Despite half of the story reading like an episode of Scooby-Doo, the ending is surprisingly heartfelt as the serious-minded daughter of the family helps Sir Simon to find peace. You can find the full text of “The Canterville Ghost” on Project Gutenberg and read it for yourself. 

“The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall” by John Kendricks Bangs

Need a humorous number to add to your roster of Christmas ghost stories this holiday season? Then check out this extra-short tale by American humorist John Kendricks Bangs. “The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall” was included in Bangs’s 1894 collection of short stories, The Water Ghost, and Others. In this tale, Bangs takes a common ghost story trope—the dripping ghost of a drowned woman—to the extreme. To start off, far from a tragic tale of thwarted love or insurmountable grief, this story’s ghost has a ridiculously frivolous backstory: she jumped into the sea out of distress over her bedroom being painted the wrong colors. Now she appears at midnight every Christmas Eve to douse the ill-fated room in sea water or else pester the master of the estate. The story gives her all manner of hilarious epithets from “the damp and dewy lady” to an “incursion of aqueous femininity,” but my favorite is the ghost’s own self-deprecatory description: “I never aspired to be a shower-bath, but it is my doom.” The Oglethorpe family tries all sorts of practical methods of dealing with the ghost, from waterproofing the afflicted bedroom to trying to evaporate her using steam pipes. But it takes an ingenious young heir and a particularly cold Christmas night to finally thwart her. You can read the story online here.

“Ye Goode Olde Ghoste Storie” by Anthony Boucher

You may know Anthony Boucher as a celebrated master of mystery novels, who authored such classics as The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars (1940) and Rocket to the Morgue (1942). He is also honored by the yearly Bouchercon, a worldwide mystery convention, and its annual prize the Anthony Awards. But like many celebrated mystery writers, he did his fair share of dabbling in the ghost story. In fact, “Ye Goode Olde Ghoste Storie,” became Anthony Boucher’s first published work at age fifteen when it was printed in Weird Tales in 1927. It is a deliberate play on the classic M. R. James-style ghost story, beginning with a gathering of country folk telling tales to each other. The narrator launches into a tale about his encounter with a ghost in England. While visiting the estate of his aptly named friend Lord Fantomheath, our narrator ends up staying in the cursed bedroom—because what ghost story is complete without a cursed bedroom? It is said that every guest to stay in that room dies by getting his throat slit. The same would have happened to our narrator as he shaved before dinner, if it wasn’t for—a sudden tone-shift at the end of the story. The bulk of this tale’s humor comes from its unexpected ending, so I won’t spoil that bit for you. But I highly recommend you listen to the audio rendition of this story on episode 846 of the Pseudopod podcast. You can also read the text online on the Pseudopod website. 

Do you have any humorous ghost stories to recommend? What did you think of the ones above? Let me know in the comments!