Top 10 ghost stories

1. Henry James's The Turn of the Screw (1898)

This Victorian classic, situated in a secluded rural estate, has to be included on any list of ghost stories. Two orphan children in the care of a governess claim to be able to see the ghosts of a man and woman who are vengefully haunting the home. One of the remarkable things about reading this unsolved story is how, when viewed with current sensibilities, its ambiguities present themselves as metaphors for domestic child abuse and neglect.

2. Eka Kurniawan's Man Tiger (2015)

Ghost stories from various cultures serve as a kind of cultural barometer. In Indonesian tradition, ghosts are very prevalent, and the white tiger that appears in this tale is both a phantom that lives inside the young murderer Margio and a real tiger that the villagers can actually see. Kurniawan is the first Indonesian author to be nominated for the Man Booker International longlist thanks to this little, passionate, and gorgeous work. Is this a true ghost story? Who gives a damn?

3.Richard Lloyd Parry's Ghosts of the Tsunami is the fourth (2017)

Even though it's not precisely a ghost story, this fantastic non-fiction account of the 2011 tsunami that killed tens of thousands of people in Japan is a fascinating example of how the living are haunted by the desire to retrieve their dead. Parry focuses on the catastrophe at Okawa Primary School, when all but two of the students perished. You will be haunted by many of his descriptions. For me, it was the bereaved parents learning how to operate mechanical diggers so they could dig through mud and silt for their children's bodies long after the official search had given up.

4.George Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo, (2017)

Though it was Saunders' first novel, he was already a well regarded short story writer, and his polyphonic narrative of numerous spirits received the 2017 Man Booker award. It focuses on President Abraham Lincoln's sorrow over his little son William and serves as an amusing yet sombre reminder that sadness affects both the powerful and the weak equally.

5. Michelle Paver's Dark Matter (2010)

This excellent adult fiction by the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness author demonstrates what a prolific writer she is. Like many other ghost stories, it begins with the discovery of a journal. In this case, the journal was kept by Jack, a wireless operator on an Arctic expedition in 1938, just as war clouds were gathering in Europe. As the polar winter and never-ending night draw in around them, the gang realises they are not alone and sets up camp in a desolate bay.

6. Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones (2002)

When it was first published, this tale from the afterlife, told by the ghost of a 14-year-old murder victim, became an instant bestseller. Saoirse Ronan starred in Peter Jackson's corny but nonetheless moving adaptation of the book. Susie Salmon observes her family's grief from her own little heaven as the police are unable to apprehend her killer. In less skilled hands, it would have been sappy, but Sebold's brilliance and insight make you go with the flow and want young Susie to find justice and peace for her family more than anything.

7. Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger (2009)

The Ayres family's decaying home, Hundreds Hall, receives a request for a doctor. Is there something more nefarious going on, or have they simply fallen on hard times like so many other aristocratic families of the postwar era? In her portrayal of family secrets and class, Waters draws on her in-depth knowledge of Victorian gothic and mixes it with all of her normal expertise to produce work that is both consciously conventional and thoroughly current.

8.Susan Hill's "The Lady in Black" is ninth (1983)

Because to its immensely successful stage and film adaptations, Susan Hill's novel has become one of the most well-known modern ghost stories and hasn't lost any of its horrifying gothic intensity. A solicitor named Arthur Kipps attempts to piece together the affairs and lethal past of the property and its owner, the late Mrs. Drablow, in the eerie Eel Marsh House, which is completely blocked off from the outside world when the waters rise over its causeway. Yet the black woman will follow him around forever.

9. Ali Smith's novel Hotel World (2001)

Beginning with the spirit of a young woman working as a chambermaid who dies after climbing into a dumb waiter on the fourth floor only to prove she could fit, five narrators haunt this joyful and creative tale. A fitting start to a tale that dives headfirst into an examination of loss with a wonderful "Woooo-hoooo" is when the cord snaps and she falls (its opening phrase). This book is evidence that ghost stories can take many different forms, including enchantment, poetry, and even humour. The most adaptable form, in fact.

10. Toni Morrison adores it (1987)

This important document about the atrocities of slavery begins in a frightening way. "124 was vindictive. loaded with a baby's poison. The women in the home were aware of it, and the kids were too. The ghost of a child who was killed by her mother to free her from slavery appears in the most well-known book by the Nobel Prize winner and serves as both a malicious spirit and a metaphor for how the great evil of slavery haunts its victims long after it has been abolished, haunts American history, and ought to haunt us all. In reference to "the cacophony of the desperate dead," Morrison remarked that writing it "was to pitch a tent in a graveyard inhabited by exceedingly noisy ghosts". when news of Morrison's passing first broke