Literary notes about ghostly (AI summary)
Writers have long used "ghostly" to evoke an air of the supernatural and otherworldly, imbuing their narratives with a sense of mysterious dread or ethereal beauty. In some works, it marks the collision of the tangible with sensations beyond the ordinary, suggesting a presence that haunts the mind and body [1]. In others, it serves as a familial or symbolic motif, lending characters or elements a spectral, almost ancestral quality [2]. The term also frequently colors the atmosphere of a scene—whether it be the silent, eerie pallor of a landscape [3] or a subtle, unsettling aura hovering in the background [4]—underscoring its versatility in enhancing both mood and metaphor in literature.
- In just that way it seemed to me that a ghostly set of new sensations was struggling with those of my ordinary self.
— from The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories by H. G. Wells - Woe is me, my Jacky, cried he, my dear Johnny, my old crony, my brother, my ghostly father!
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais - The sky had still the pallor of dawn, and there was a ghostly silence on the lagoon.
— from The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham - It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look; with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead.
— from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
