This classic volume features hilarious tales of the supernatural from authors including Oscar Wilde, Washington Irving, and others.
While traditional ghost stories inspire spine-tingling fear, this collection features nineteen tales that will have readers howling with laughter. Here are stories of ghosts who play jokes, hauntings-gone-wrong, and paranormal hoaxes of the highest order.
First published in 1921 and introduced by Dorothy Scarborough, Humorous Ghost Stories features Oscar Wilde’s satirical take on the wraith, “The Canterville Ghost”; Brander Matthews’s story of spectral courtship, “The Rival Ghosts”; Washington Irving’s classic tale of a frightful wedding feast, “The Spectral Bridegroom.”Dorothy Scarborough was an American author who wrote about Texas, folk culture, cotton farming, ghost stories, and women’s life in the Southwest. Scarborough was born in Mount Carmel, Texas, and she went on to study at the University of Chicago and the University of Oxford. Beginning in 1916, she taught literature at Columbia University. She died on November 7, 1935, at her home in New York City and is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Waco, Texas.