Elisabeth van der Meer, "Russian Ghost Stories" (A Russian Affair, 15 Oct. 2018): "Now that the evenings are getting longer again, it's the perfect time to read ghost stories. And there were plenty of ghosts, witches and other scary things around in 19th century Russian literature!" The list includes Nikolai Gogol's "The Viy" (1835)--basis for the classic horror film Viy (1967; 72 mins.; IMDb; detailed review; enthusiasm for it on MeFi)--and Anton Chekhov's "The Black Monk" (1893; LitMed [spoilers]), an eerie tale connected toBraga's "Légende valaque" (lyrics). If a low-key drama set rather than written in the 19th C. sounds more appealing, there are many ghosts in the Russian paranormal mystery TV series Detective Anna (2016-2017; 56 eps.; IMDb). A dozen stories of the uncanny available online in translation put ghosts, witches, and other scary things in wider perspective across the 19th Century:
- Johann August Apel, 1805, "The Family Portraits" (like other translations collected in Tales of the Dead, this story holds a formative place in the history of weird fiction in English: previously on MeFi, "200 years since the dreary summer that gave birth to literary monsters")
- E.T.A. Hoffmann, 1816, "The Sandman" (Wikipedia; see also Sigmund Freud's analysis in "The 'Uncanny'" [PDF] and Dorothea E. von Mücke's Guardian article "The Sandman: Tale of Madness and Trauma Still Haunts, 200 Years On")
- Wilhelm Hauff, 1825, "The Story of the Haunted Ship" (part of the story cycle, The Caravan; the non-supernatural story that followed it gets some attention in Freud's essay too and also appeared in Weird Tales)
- Prosper Mérimée, 1837, "The Venus of Ille" (Mérimée was at the time Inspector General of Historic Monuments: see Julian Barnes, "An Inspector Calls")
- George Sand, 1838, "The Orco" (in two letters from March-April, 1834, Sand describes her personal feelings about Venice and a separation there that became well-known; "The Orco" was perhaps an influence on the standalone "Taman" chapter in Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time; see also Sand's Légendes rustiques with notable artwork by her son)
- Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, 1852, The Strange Friend of Tito Gil, a.k.a. The Friend of Death (dryly eloquent novella featuring a friendly Death; see also the short fairy tale by Fernán Caballero [Cecilia Francisca Josefa Böhl de Faber], 1850, "Juan Holgado and Death," where Death is a friendly woman)
- Leo Tolstoy, 1863, "The Porcelain Doll" (unsettling letter, often taken as a short story; see Leah Bendavid-Val's Song Without Words: The Photographs & Diaries of Countess Sophia Tolstoy at the Open Library for diary entries putting the couple's relationship into perspective)
- Villamaria [Marie Timme], 1873(?), "The Sea-Fairy" (a literary fairy tale especially full of weird oceanic beauty and horror)
- Guy de Maupassant, 1887, "The Horla" (Wikipedia; "The Horla" was reprinted in Weird Tales, along with the earlier story "On the River")
- Young women of the village of Sātsq on Deans Inlet, 1895 [1886-1887], "Wā'walis" (Nuxalk story about a sorcerer collected by Franz Boas; related mythology, including the country of the ghosts; Boas also collected a Heiltsukversion of the story in 1897; Jennifer Kramer's Switchbacks at the Open Library documents Nuxalk sentiments on Boas, linguists, etc. at a certain point; incidentally, an animated version of the legend "The Sniniq and the Little Girl" (2012; 6 mins.) tells a remarkable story about a 'Sasquatch'-like being)
- Shunkintei Ryūō, et al., 1896(?), "News from Kwaiba" (the ghost of O'Iwa seeks vengeance in a chapter from an English adaptation of mostlyone Japanese version of Yotsuya Kaidan; see especially Jasmin Boehm, "On the Ghost of O'Iwa, and Why She's Still Scary"; see also The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959; 76 mins.; IMDb))
- Marie Hyacinthe, Toulouzau, Port Blanc, 1898 [1891], "The Oarsmen" (from Dealings With The Dead: Narratives from "La Legende de la Mort En Basse Bretagne"--selections from a folklore collection edited by Anatole Le Braz but with relatively clear attribution; see also "The Five Drowned Sailors" told by Marie Mauchec from Quimper in 1891 and "Yannic-ann-ôd" told by René Alain from Quimper in 1889)
