Week one: the storytellerThis is a ghost story, so we start with the storyteller. Literary critics rarely use this last term, preferring to talk of the "narrator". But when it comes to hauntings this traditional description is fitting. Arthur Kipps is giving us a tale that he is condemned by his own memories to tell. When the novella opens, he is a man in late middle age, surrounded by adult stepchildren at Christmas. Naturally they begin to tell ghost stories: Christmas is the time for this, when the year is darkest and family or friends are gathered together to be entertained. For the classic ghost story is a performance. Some of the best ghost stories – The Turn of the ...