The Canterville Ghost

When I grew up, we had a very small bookcase filled with very special books, including a family a bible, a very large dictionary, and the complete works of Oscar Wild. I badgered my Dad into teaching me to read, and Oscar was one of the first books I read cover to cover. I don’t know where the others are, but that compendium is still one of my most treasured possessions.

I was very taken with it because we emigrated to Australia, and while I didn’t find a ghost in the house, my imaginary friend was Dennis. We learned to… show more.

Not strictly written for children, this classic parody provides the model for countless hilarious hauntings that have cropped up in children’s books ever since. The style is somewhat outdated but that won’t stop you from enjoying the frustration of 16th century Sir Simon de Canterville meeting his match in the Otises, a no-nonsense 20th century American family. Horrific bloodstains are whisked away by Pinkerton’s Champion Stain Remover and Paragon Detergent; clanking chains around Sir Simon’s skeletal wrists and ankles are oiled with a small bottle of the Tammany Rising Sun Lubricator; and most humiliating of all, the ghost’s… show more.

As far as I know, Oscar Wilde was the first writer to use the idea that a ghost is someone who is somehow trapped in the past and unable to move on because of something that he or she did when they were alive. Sir Simon Canterville murdered his wife in 1575, and is still haunting Canterville Chase 350 years later – rattling his chains, looking after the bloodstain where his wife died, and frightening anyone he meets in the corridors, until…

Well, you’ll have to read the story to find out what happens to him, but it is without… show more.