This post is contributed by Katie Bell, senior editor of the Dickens Society blog. Her PhD is from the University of Leicester, and she currently researches Dickens and the paranormal. She has contributed several other pieces to the blog, is a high school teacher near Atlanta, Georgia, and Halloween is her favourite holiday.

Charles Dickens always wanted to see a ghost, but he never quite managed it. In 1859, he wrote to his friend (and spiritualist), William Howitt, to inquire if he knew of any genuinely haunted houses that could be stayed in and surveyed for spirits, or “ghost-busted” in modern terminology. Here we see Dickens was one of the first paranormal investigators! However, the outing did not root out any ghosts; “In the end, there was no ghost and not even a house, report[ed John Hollingshead who recorded the visit in his autobiography], so the gents decided to settle down” to dinner instead (Prasil). Fifteen years before the ill-fated ghost hunt, in 1844, Dickens was in Italy and ill. He dreamt one night that his beloved dead sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth, came to him as a spirit. It was the “first time he had dreamed of her since February 1838” (Kaplan 174). He wrote to John Forster that Mary appeared to be “full of compassion and sorrow” for him (“Letter to Forster” 196). Biographer Fred Kaplan explains that “whether or not Mary’s appearance was a dream or ‘an actual vision’ made no difference. He believed in dreams as embodiments of truth, of the imagination as the force that made invisible realities visible, attesting to the external reality of what the imagination perceived” (Kaplan 175-176). Dickens was deeply interested in and practiced mesmerism, which, while different from spiritualism, similarly depends on a belief in energy fields. Despite where he ultimately landed on the belief of Mary’s appearance to him (either as ghost from the beyond or as being a part of a dream), he found the encounter valuable to his understanding of consciousness.

Due to his persistent interest in the paranormal, there has been a cultural fascination with outlining Dickens’s involvement and beliefs (or non-beliefs) in spirits. An edition of The Spiritual Magazine in 1860 shows to what extent Dickens’s contemporaries discounted his scepticism: “We can hardly believe that Mr Dickens does really disbelieve in haunted houses, nor in other phases of spiritual phenomena” (qtd. in Ruffles). “The Ghost Club” of London (established in 1862 and still meeting today) investigates “paranormal phenomena associated with ghosts and hauntings” and claims Dickens as one of its founding members. However, in my 10 years of research on Dickens’s interest in ghosts, I have never been able to find any concrete evidence of Dickens’s membership other than the Club’s initial assertion. In 1873, only three years after Dickens’s death at Gad’s Hill, Thomas P. James of Vermont, U.S.A., claimed that the spirit of Dickens communicated to him the last half of the author’s uncompleted novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (this is a thoroughly engaging read for any Dickens enthusiast if at least to see how James may have been inspired by Dickens’s style). James’s “ghost written” ending remained popular with Americans for several decades after its publication, and it brought him offers of additional book contracts, all of which he declined. James never published another book and seems to have slipped into obscurity. According to the Brattleboro Reformer, he seems to have been quite talented at disappearing, “rarely stay[ing] in a job for longer than a year”, and was romantically connected to at least six women, all of whom he seems to have abandoned (Parker). There were many who claimed James’s “ghost writing” was a farce, but there were just as many others who supported it. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle pronounced it genuine and said there was “a certain poetic justice in the matter, as Dickens in his lifetime, even while admitting psychic happenings for which he could give no explanation, went out of his way to ridicule spiritualism, which he had never studied or understood” (727).

Of all the fictional ghostly encounters Dickens included in his works, there is one that may be based in reality, or at least a portion of it is. In the 14 September 1861 issue of All the Year Round, “Four Stories” was published, for which Dickens wrote in the preface: “All four shall be told exactly as I, the present narrator, have received them. They are all derived from credible sources; and the first–the most extraordinary of the four–is well known at first hand to individuals still living” (589). With this, Dickens grounds “Four Stories” as being real-life ghost stories collected, presumably, to both entertain and to assert the validity of the experience of hauntings. The first piece in the narrative describes a “well-known English artist” (Mr. H.) who was en route to paint a portrait of a society elite’s husband. While on the train to the estate, he was joined in his carriage by “very delicate looking [young woman], with a remarkable blending of sweetness and sadness” (589). The two fell into a discussion on art and portrait painting where upon the young woman asked the artist if he would be able to paint a portrait from memory. She asked him to examine her features carefully, and after the artist reluctantly replied he thought he could paint her portrait from memory, she left the carriage. Mr. H. arrived at his destination and was surprised to see that the young lady from the train was another of his host’s guests at dinner. They again fell into a pleasant conversation about portrait painting, and then all the guests retired for the night. The narrator continued by explaining how the next morning, when Mr. H. asked after the young woman, his host stated that there had been no young woman at dinner the previous night. He finished up his commission and returned to London, but “For two whole years […] he never all the while forgot a single lineament in the fair young face of his fellow-traveller” (590). He later undertook another commission to paint a portrait of a man’s daughter who had died two years previously. The portrait would have to be completed from a description only, but no matter how the father described his daughter to Mr. H., the latter could not produce an accurate portrayal. Suddenly, Mr. H. remembered the young lady from the train, and he began to sketch her. Upon seeing the sketch, the father “exclaimed, ‘That is she!’” (590). To the avid ghost story reader, it will come as no surprise that the father related further that his daughter had died two years ago on 13 September, the very afternoon of Mr. H.’s meeting with the young woman on the train.

To Dickens’s surprise, artist Thomas Heaphy (the younger) wrote to All the Year Round, saying that the first story in “Four Stories” was his and he was the “Mr. H.” in question. On 5 October 1861, “Mr H’s Own Narrative” was published. Dickens also wrote the preface to this piece stating that there was “no possible doubt of [Mr. H] being a real existing person and a responsible gentleman…” but Dickens would not make any “theor[ies]…towards the explanation of any part of th[e] remarkable narrative” (36), nor did he explain in print how he came by Heaphy’s story. However dubiously (or paranormally) Dickens received Heaphy’s story, what cannot be doubted are Dickens’s editorial skills; “Four Stories” is a more cleanly presented account of a ghostly encounter. Heaphy’s narrative is constrained by unimportant details (perhaps to assert the validity of his story), but the plot is the same. There are a few more coincidental meetings (sometimes a bit too coincidental), such as Heaphy accidentally writing to the father of the dead young woman when the former was attempting to invite an old friend to dine with him. Other dubious aspects of the plot include the final ghost encounter occurring during the Christmas season (a bit too on the nose) and the father of the dead girl being stricken as “insane” and suffering from “fearful delusions” (41), which included seeing Heaphy meeting his deceased daughter in a “paroxysm” (42), until the portrait is completed. Just like the previous story, the commissioned portrait is completed by memory from the ghost encounter, but in Heaphy’s version, his artistic talent is so earth-shattering as to bring the bereaved father back from the brink of insanity. Heaphy ends his tale by narrating that he has “often seen Mr. L. [the father] since that period; his health is perfectly re-established, and his manner and conversation are as cheerful as can be expected” (42).

John Forster writes of having seen the version included in “Four Stories” prior to its publication at Gad’s Hill (therefore defining Dickens as the author of the originally published version despite its anonymity). Forster further details that the story was “identified as one related [to Dickens] by Lord Lytton” (523). He quotes a letter from Dickens to Edward Bulwer-Lytton dated 15 September 1861, that Dickens thought what Heaphy sent to AYR was “so very original, so very extraordinary, so very far beyond the version I have published, that all other like stories turn pale before it” (523). Forster also gives Dickens credit as the author of the anonymous first piece included in “Four Stories,” quoting a letter from Dickens to himself where the former recollects his shock at reading Heaphy’s version: “His own written story is out of all distance the most extraordinary that ever was produced; and is as far beyond my version” (523). Dickens did tend to be the headliner in his group efforts and also had one of his three contributions to the publication of The Haunted House (1859), also published in AYR, appear first. After having read both versions of the story, it is easy to see how Dickens would have been impressed by Heaphy’s account due to the striking way in which the stories were made known to him (or perhaps the horror of possible plagiarism), but further, the added detail of the date Heaphy included in his version of when met the ghost woman on the train: 13 September. Upon reading the first installment in “Four Stories,” Dickens explained to Forster via letter that Heaphy, who had already agreed to publish his story in a different magazine for the next Christmas season but had not yet written it, assumed that his printer had leaked it because (as Dickens recounted to Forster) “‘how else was it possible that the date, the 13^th of September, could have been got at? For I [Heaphy] never told the date, until I wrote it” (524). In the letter, Dickens countered: “Now, my story had no date; but seeing, when I looked over the proof, the great importance of having a date, I (C. D.) wrote in, unconsciously, the exact date on the margin of the proof!” (524, author’s emphasis). Seeing as how “Four Stories” was published 14 September, perhaps 13 September just made logical sense during the writing of the proofs. However, Forster inserts further accounts of precognitive dream experiences Dickens had as a way to (perhaps) explain this statement of his about the subconscious knowledge of the date when putting to paper the story allegedly heard from Bulwer-Lytton. Subconscious dream state, synchronicity, collective memory, or actual haunting by the woman on the train will never be known, but what is clear is that Dickens believed the experience had meaning beyond that of a mere coincidence and, further, that it demonstrated the greater cosmic structure of the human experience.

Dickens’s opinions on the possibility of spectres seem to be as complicated and contradictory as the author himself. Though he drew upon concepts of the Victorian spectre in his works and practiced the science of mesmerism for most of his adult life, at the same time, he publically doubted the desire and ability of ghosts to communicate with the living through séances and the “rappings” that were claimed by the spiritualist movement. In an 1858 issue of Household Words, Dickens wrote that his “presumption was strongly against those respected films taking the trouble to come here, for no better purpose than to make supererogatory idiots of themselves” (“Well-Authenticated Rappings” 217). From this duality, Dickens’s writings work to create a bridge between nineteenth-century science and the paranormal. He often used ghost experiences as dream sequence encounters for his characters, concluding that the ghost was actually another aspect of the character’s psyche, a split self. Two examples are the short story “The Queer Chair” contained within The Pickwick Papers and his 1844 novella, “The Chimes.” However, just as frequently, he suggested that the spectres are real entities, like the ones who haunt Scrooge and the Signal-man. Of the reality of spirits, Dickens stated he was always interested in them, whether or not they were real: “My own mind is perfectly unprejudiced and impressible on the subject. I do not in the least pretend that such things are not. […] I have always had a strong interest in the subject, and never knowingly lost an opportunity of pursuing it” (Dickens to William Howitt 116-17).

Works Cited

Primary Sources

Dickens, Charles. “Four Stories.” All the Year Round. Volume 5, No. 125 (1861): 589-593.

–. Letter to John Forster. ?30 Sept. 1844. The Letters of Charles Dickens: The Pilgrim Edition, vol. 4: 1844-1846. Ed. Kathleen Tillotson, Associate Ed. Nina Burgis, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977. 195-97.

–. Letter to William Howitt. 6 Sept. 1859. The Letters of Charles Dickens: The Pilgrim Edition, vol. 9: 1859-1861. Ed. Graham Storey, Associate Ed. Margaret Brown, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. 116-17.

–. “Well-Authenticated Rappings.” Household Words. Volume 17, No. 413. (1858): 217-220.

Doyle, Arthur Conan. “The Alleged Posthumous Writings of Great Authors.” The Fortnightly Review. Volume 122, No. 732 (1927): 721-735.

Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. Vol. 3 Project Gutenberg, 1875. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/25851/pg25851-images.html#Page_2_494.

Heaphy, Thomas. “Mr. H.’s Own Narrative.” All the Year Round. Volume 6, No. 128. (1861): 36-43.

Secondary Sources

Kaplan, Fred. Dickens: A Biography. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.

Parker, Rolf. “The mysterious end of the historical trail of T.P. James.” Battleboro Reformer, https://www.reformer.com/local-news/the-mysterious-end-of-the-historical-trail-of-t-p-james/article_77d82582-bbaf-51d0-8e42-7489290815e7.html, 30 Oct. 2017.

Prasil, Tim. “Charles Dickens, Ghost Hunter? Well…” BROM BONES BOOKS, 25 Jan. 2023, brombonesbooks.com/2023/01/03/charles-dickens-ghost-hunter-well/.

Ruffles, Tom. “A Hankering After Ghosts: Dickens and the Supernatural.” Blogspot. Blogspot, 6 Dec. 2011. Accessed 2013.

The Ghost Club. www.ghostclub.org.uk, 2012.