The Ghost and the Bonesetter

Part of Le Fanu’s earliest earliest twelve short stories, written between 1838 and 1840, they purport to be the literary remains of an 18th-century Catholic priest called Father Purcell. They were published in the Dublin University Magazine and were later collected as The Purcell Papers (1880). They are mostly set in Ireland and include some classic stories of gothic horror, with gloomy castles, supernatural visitations from beyond the grave, madness and suicide. Also apparent are nostalgia and sadness for the dispossessed Catholic aristocracy of Ireland, whose ruined castles stand as mute witness to this history.