"The ghost story, first as an oral tradition and later as a literary genre, remains among the most long-lived and flexible of narrative forms, proving as popular on the small screen as at the cinema, in the theatre or on the page. The supernatural was a regular feature of classical drama - ghosts are crucial to the dramatic development of Shakespeare's Hamlet and Macbeth for instance - but the ghost story only emerged as a distinct genre in the Victorian era, with its fascinations with spiritualism.
In 1843 Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol forever tied the festive season to the genre."
Sergio Angelini on screenonline.org.uk
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