Just as flying saucers/UFOs/UAPs are entirely a creation of the English language mass media, so ghost encounters are largely a creation of late 19th-early 20th Century British fiction, creating many variations on the theme of haunts and hauntings. Just about every famous 19th Century British writer wrote a ghost story--- everyone from Charles Dickens to Rudyard Kipling, E. F. Benson and Henry James. But the most influential authors by far were Cambridge Professor M. R. James and journalist Algernon Blackwood. Things changed dramatically with the early 20th Century advent of American author H. P. Lovecraft, who discarded the standard superstitions on which most 19th Century weird fiction were based, and replaced them with cosmic science-fictional elements.  Despite Lovecraft's innovations, which were not generally appreciated until the last half of the 20th Century, it was in no way unusual for even very famous mainstream authors to publish collections of their ghost stories in the early 20th Century. A good example is Edith Wharton, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her realistic novels of troubles arising in the wealthy families of New England, but who nevertheless wrote enough ghost tales to collect in a book. The mass media of the 20th Century--- radio, movies and TV--- retained the dismally confused and often incoherent cliches involved in the 19th Century ghost mythology. The ghost as some kind of residue or remnant of a deceased individual is somewhat specific to European-English culture. In most of the rest of the world the "ghost" figure is often a kind of supernatural, demonic monster, not in general some immaterial residue of the dead.

M. R. JAMES

ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

H. P. LOVECRAFT