One of the first and few scary ghost stories by a female author takes spot 22 in my countdown of the Top 40 ghost short stories for the first half of the nineteenth century. The story is Allan M'Tavish and it is set in Ireland. It is a ghost story of the sea and includes the appearance of a waith or warning ghost, without giving too much of the story away. The horror tale was published in 1833 by Caroline Norton (1808-1877) whose full name was Caroline Elizabeth Sarah (Sheridan) Norton. She was an accomplished poet and novelist. Her portrait below gives her an uncanny resemblance to Virginia Poe, Edgar Allan Poe's only wife.
If you would like to skip ahead in the countdown, the top 10 scary ghost stories from this period are laid out with story backgrounds in my newly edited book: The Best Ghost Stories 1800-1849: A Classic Ghost Anthology ----> AndrewBarger.com/BestGhostStories1800.html
