Portentous, derisive, dull, dismal, damnable...

Charles Dickens goes on a ghost hunt

Photo: Getty.

In 1860, a few years after moving into Gad’s Hill Place in Kent, Charles Dickens received word that a ghost had been spotted at the nearby Larkin Monument. Days later, he (Dickens, that is) wrote to a friend and fellow novelist Wilkie Collins and described the hunt that ensued.