After Shakespeare had made plentiful use of ghosts as a literary device, other authors followed, among them the probably forged tales of Ossian, in the eighteenth century.
The prolific narrative painter Nicolai Abildgaard wasted no time in reading Ossian and retelling the stories in paint. His Fingal Sees the Ghosts of His Ancestors in the Moonlight was completed in 1778, and is a suitably Romantic expression.
In about 1794, Abildgaard added Culmin’s Ghost Appears to his Mother.
Girodet’s finished painting was given the dual title of Apotheosis of the French Heroes Who Died for the Fatherland during the War of Liberation, Ossian receiving the Ghosts of the French Heroes and was probably completed in 1802. It is perhaps the most elaborate and complex painting inspired by Ossian.
Then on 19 December 1843, Charles Dickens’ topical novella A Christmas Carol was published. This revolves around the appearance of a succession of ghosts to its anti-hero Scrooge, seen here in masterly illustrations made for a 1915 edition by Arthur Rackham.
Scrooge is first visited by the ghost of his former business partner Marley, who wanders the earth shackled by chains and cashboxes after his lifetime of greed. The ghost warns Scrooge that he faces the same miserable fate, but has one chance of redemption. He will be visited by three further spirits who will show him how. When Marley’s ghost leaves, Scrooge looks out from his window to see many more spirits, each similarly shackled.
The first of those apparitions is the Ghost of Christmas Past, who shows Scrooge episodes from his more promising past. These include his relationship with his sister Fan, and a Christmas party thrown by Scrooge’s first employer Fezziwig. But when faced with the choice between his fiancée Belle and his greed, Scrooge chooses the latter. Belle is seen later, at the time of Marley’s death, happily married with her own family, and describes Scrooge’s miserly existence. At this, Scrooge demands the spirit takes him back to the present.
Next, later in the night of Christmas Eve, comes the Ghost of Christmas Present, who shows what is about to happen on Christmas Day. Much of this centres on the celebrations of Scrooge’s loyal employee Bob Cratchit and his family, particularly his son Tiny Tim, who is seriously ill and likely to die unless the family can be freed from poverty.
The ghost also shows Christmas being celebrated in a miner’s cottage, and in a lighthouse. They then visit Scrooge’s nephew, where they’re playing games such as blind man’s buff.
Before leaving Scrooge, the ghost reveals to him two starving children named Ignorance and Want.
The third and final haunting, by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, takes Scrooge to his own funeral, as a disliked and unloved man.
His cleaning woman, laundress and the undertaker pilfer his property, dividing it up to sell for profit.
Scrooge asks the spirit to reveal someone who feels emotion at his death, and is shown a poor couple who have been given more time to put their finances in better order. Scrooge is then shown the Cratchit family mourning the death of Tiny Tim, before being shown his own untended grave. At this, Scrooge sobs and recognises that he must change his ways.
Dickens had built the association between the Christmas festival and ghosts, and ghosts were now well-established.
In 1802, Sir Walter Scott had published an anthology of ballads titled Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, among which was this story of Clerk Saunders, painted here in watercolour by Elizabeth Eleanor (Lizzie) Siddal in 1857, when she attended the Sheffield School of Art, and before she married Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It shows the heroine May Margaret kneeling on her bed and raising a wand to her lips. As she does this, the ghost of her murdered lover Clerk Saunders walks through the wall, and asks her to renew her vows.