“A Ghost Story” (1870)

In approximately 1870 everybody wanted to write a ghost story—it was a lifelong side obsession for snob Henry James, who envied Sheridan Le Fanu. How could Mark Twain be any different? He was as skeptical and above ghosts as James but more forthright. Paradoxically, he lets himself go for the effects, which work better than anything James did (except, maybe, The Turn of the Screw and “The Jolly Corner”). Twain makes it clear where he stands on the paranormal by making this the ghost of the Cardiff Giant, which hoax and all attendant hysteria had happened just the year before, in 1869. A worthy target for excoriation, no doubt. What may be most interesting in this story is the way Twain’s first-person narrator describes all the abandoned buildings and homes in New York City, where he takes up residence. He writes, “I took a large room, far up Broadway, in a huge old building whose upper stories had been wholly unoccupied for years until I came.” Another word for it might be “squatting”—it’s hard to tell. But it’s all spooky and there are cobwebs and such. He comes home to “a cheery fire in the grate.” Not sure how that happens. It’s really pretty strange the way the story goes and makes me wonder how much Twain was aware of Poe. I would guess he knew Hawthorne and Irving. The strange scene-setting is part of what makes the effects work—remember, Twain is formally skeptical of the whole thing. But he is committed to the ghostly air even though his ghost is explicitly the ghost of a hoax, of a nonentity by definition. The ghost manifests as heavy footsteps and something pulling his blankets off him in bed—not bad! It continues as “night in a haunted house” stuff until our guy is face to face with the ghost or thing or whatever, at which point it becomes very silly as intended. It’s interesting to me how reputable writers approach horror, as a surprising number of them have done. On one level it’s about the commercial success, the reason James envied Le Fanu. But I also think horror can be more palpably, vitally experienced than most literature, and of course that’s a fascination to many writers. Charles Dickens was absolutely a master at it, as is Joyce Carol Oates going on 200 years later. Henry James missed more often than he hit. As far as I know—am I missing something?—Twain never did much more with it. His main targets remained the authors of the Romantic era, of which fantasy and horror may nonetheless be considered subsets.

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