interest in supernatural phenomena was high during charles dickens lifetime he had always loved a good ghost story himself particularly at christmas time and was openminded willing to accept and indeed put to the test the existence of spiritshis natural inclinations toward drama and the macabre made him a brilliant teller of ghost tales and in the twenty stories presented here which include his celebrated a christmas carol the full range of his gothic talents can be seenchilling as some of these stories are dickens has managed to inject characteristically grotesque comedy as he writes of revenge insanity precognition and dream visions he indulges also in some debunking of contemporary credulity