The Victorian Ghost Story

A Victorian ghost story is seen to be haunted not by an unlimited demon but by man as fallen. Once they accept the reality of God, they in a sense stop being ghosts and take on flesh. The theology of MR James's supernatural tales reveals all the moral complexities of the fallen human condition when no longer anchored in Christian orthodoxy. This event points not only to a transcendence of the imminent frame but suggests that this transcendence has already taken place. By the very act of reading a ghost story, we are engaging our imaginations in a way that moves us closer to accepting the possibility there is a spiritual world.