What is the Meaning of: Ghost story | Concept and Definition of: Ghost story
A story is a story dealing with imaginary events, featuring a group of characters and which involves few narrative resources to develop an argument not too complex.
A ghost is somehow the fantastic/illusory manifestation of a deceased person, providing a sense of fear and illusion. In addition, the Phantom is the designation of a literary subgenre. The feeling of terror can cause cold sweats, the paralysis of the muscles or even death from cardiac arrest.
That said, a ghost story (also known as horror story) is a narrative centered on the ghosts / the dead, or the hero, which is designed to frighten the reader that the action takes place. It is for this reason that such deals quite horrific and sordid themes for the human being, such as death, serious diseases (epidemics), crimes, natural disasters, the spirits and the supernatural beasts.
Often, ghost stories have a moral, insofar as they are intended to scare the reader to prevent it to adopt certain conduct, thus avoiding to reproduce such acts in real life. In other cases, the ghost story is just an aesthetic exercise looking, just like in any literary work, to have the effect on the reader.
Among the major authors of this kind, there are worth mentioning the Americans Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) and Stephen King (1947), and the French Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893).
For Poe, he wrote many stories and horror news, namely: 'The black cat', 'Ligeia', "The fall of the House Uscher", 'The cask of amontillado', "Berenice", "The truth about the case of M. Valdemar", "The telltale heart" y "The oval Portrait" among others.