#Ikos hide out ghost story movie

“I turned towards the long narrow windows, and there, sure enough, I saw a little girl, less than my Miss Rosamond, dressed all unfit to be out-of-doors such a bitter nightcrying, and beating against the window-panes, as if she wanted to be let in.

“ The Old Nurse’s Story ” by Elizabeth Gaskell (1852)Ī classic gothic Victorian ghost story, replete with ancestral secrets, organ music, and a seriously haunted house. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.” But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. The miserly Ebenezer Scrooge is thoroughly haunted by three ghosts until he is scared into embracing the Christmas spirit! The most famous Christmas ghost story of them all! Obviously we have to start with this one. We, like Dickens, believe that this can be a “witching time” for these kinds of tales, and we invite you to join us in just a bit of terror for the season…Ī Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (1843) So here are a few of our favorite Christmas-y ghost stories, some from the Victorian age, some from a bit after. And part of it is simply that legends are powerful ways of dealing with anxiety AND having fun, and they always have been! So why were the Victorians so obsessed with ghosties? (And it wasn’t just ghost stories – they also had fads for holding seances, picnicking in cemeteries, and forming spiritualist and occult societies.) Part of it was the development of a middle class – more leisure time and higher literacy means more people reading! And part of it was that ghost stories offered fantasies of destabilization of the powerful, at a time when the British empire was at its height.

Scholars have estimated that as much as 50-70% of all nineteenth-century ghostly fiction was written by women (Carpenter and Kolmar, Ghost Stories by British and American Women)! Interestingly, women contributed a huge proportion of these Christmas ghost stories. He believed that “Christmas Eve “witching time for Story-telling” and frequently included ghost stories in the magazines he edited. Dickens was also a huge editor of Christmas ghost stories. Dickens’ classic work was by no means the only ghost story going (though it was, as Dickey argues, perhaps the most sentimental and therefore lasting.) But ghost stories appeared all over the place, some much better than others of course, but all intending to inspire at least a small shiver.

#Ikos hide out ghost story movie

This is a small, fun movie that isn't without its faults (you can see the `secret' coming from a mile away) but the buildup to the unveiling of this secret is pure fun.While telling ghost stories in the dark of the year has been popular for centuries, Christmas ghost stories were wildly popular in Victorian England, especially in periodicals and as part of oral tradition. The horrors come from lower scale thrill, like a spooky house, an eerie soundtrack and quick flashes of horrific images that are sudden and impactful enough to make your heart leap into your throat. While it was novel to see these great actors in action, particularly in a genre where they are not normally known, this film is great because it does not rely on gore or special effects to scare the pants off the viewer. The problem lies in the fact that they also share a long-kept secret that is now coming back to haunt them. and Melvyn Douglas as members of the `Chowder Society' a group that gathers around the fireplace to drink brandy and tell ghost stories. Ghost Story stars Fred Astaire, John Houseman, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. I watched this film with a friend who described it as `one of the scariest movies he had ever seen.' I will agree with this assessment because the thrills are not cheap ones they are genuine scares.