Check It Out: Fictional ghosts can be fun, too

Italked about nonfiction ghost books, and now I want to talk about fictional ghosts.

Ghosts appear in literature as far back as 2000 B.C.E., and in oral traditions even further. Ghosts play a part in several of Shakespeare’s plays, but perhaps the oldest ghost story that most of us can call to mind is “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens (1843), in which Ebenezer Scrooge interacts with three distinct ghosts over the course of one night. This story has been produced as a film many times, with many variations.

The library has the 1984 version of “A Christmas Carol” with George C. Scott on DVD, as well as “Scrooged” with Bill Murray (1999) and “The Muppet Christmas Carol” (2005).

As a literary device, ghosts are often used as messengers, and lend themselves well to plays or films, where