The Oxford Book of Australian Ghost Stories

Front Cover
Oxford University Press, 1994 - Fiction - 294 pages
Three phantoms wander the desert; a ghostly lover claims his bride at an outback station; a dead man appears beside a blood-red waterhole; a jackaroo witnesses a ghostly struggle; a frightful monster haunts the Nullarbor Plain. This anthology of Australian ghost stories - from the 1850s to the present - draws together a neglected but striking genre of fiction that works to remind those who recently settled this country how unsettled it actually is. New arrivals stumble across empty houses with ghostly occupants; lonely bushmen fantasise about ghostly women; Aborigines tell of bunyips, bugeens and 'living ghosts'; the bush is full of beckoning spectral images; and Death himself is seen prowling the streets. In these stories Australia becomes the 'down-underworld', a place where the departed will inevitably be resurrected in time, and where the dead continue to make their presence felt.

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Contents

w w Mary Fortune ?1833?
13
The Illumined Grave
19
The Ghostly White Gate
36
Copyright

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About the author (1994)

Ken Gelder is principal lecturer in English, Media and Cultural Studies at De Montfort University in Leicester. He recently commenced two years' leave of absence from the University of Melbourne, where he is Senior Lecturer in English.

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