In the ghost story ‘Thurnley Abbey’, Alastair Colvin, an old colonial hand, points out that ‘there are few ghosts outside Europe – few, that is, that a white man can see’ (Landon 1984: 228). Although he is of course proved wrong, white men's vision, it is suggested, is impaired or impeded when it comes to apprehending the supernatural. There is much they cannot (or will not?) see. Women (white or otherwise) are not mentioned here, yet in ‘Thurnley Abbey’, the two men and one woman who apprehend the terrifying ghost figure (or fragments of it), are equally petrified and appalled. They spend the night huddled together to save their reason and provide comfort for each other, still terrified of what they have seen. In this story and in many others, the echoing question of the ghosts that ‘a white man can see’ resonates through English ghost stories of the long nineteenth century.

This chapter considers the ghosts that become visible to white men, but it also examines the phenomenon of the appearance of white men as ghosts. It references the work of three women writers of ghost stories from across the Victorian period: Catherine Crowe, writing in the early Victorian era, Rhoda Broughton from the middle of the age, and Edith Nesbit's late Victorian tales. Exploring the question of men and ghosts through the work of these three popular women writers, we can trace the way that ghosts and ghost sightings reflect on Victorian ideas of masculinity. Victorian ghost stories have long been discussed by scholars in relation to gender, and the writing and reception of these tales enabled women to have a voice and allowed a sort of veiled criticism of patriarchal society. Ghost stories were written by both sexes, but some of the most successful, radical and progressive were written by women. For many women the act of writing ghost stories was liberating. Diana Wallace states that