I love stories with moody settings. Beston’s lyrical writing in The Outermost House captures seasonal changes and sensory details with such beauty. In fact, he even called himself the “poet of the landscape.”

“The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton” was published as part of Dickens’s series The Pickwick Papers and written seven years before A Christmas Carol.

Maybe it’s the way the heavy clouds have blanketed the mountain with warmth that brings to mind a passage from a collection of beloved Victorian ghost stories.

Earlier this fall, I spent some time in New England. My tour began in Salem, Massachusetts, an absolutely charming place: historical, quaint, rational. Yet simmering not far beneath the surface was something a little more curious.

When my Victorian ancestors crossed the ocean, I like to imagine that their trunks were not only filled with their earthly possessions, but also stowaways–English faeries, Irish banshees, and Scottish selkies. And concerning my Renaissance ancestors, their motto was “Droit et Loyal” meaning “Just and Loyal.” Do you know who they were?

A delicate being with gossamer wings. Is this what you imagine when you think of fairies? Well if so, you may be in for a shock. Varla Ventura, the author of “Fairies, Pookas, and Changelings” suggests something else. She claims: “The kingdom of the Fairy is one of vengeance, thievery, trickery and wild creatures who wish nothing more than to steal your child, drown you in the bog, or spoil your best Sunday shoes. The woods are lonely, dark, and deep. You have been warned.”

During my visit to Animas Forks, the evening light had inched down Treasure Mountain and stretched across the grey, weathered wood of the abandoned buildings. Most tourists already on their way back to town, so all had been quiet. Only the occasional trill from a nearby marmot. And a breeze, whirling playfully through grass and wildflowers…with the ever so slight murmuring of laughter.

Adobe walls envelop you with cool respite on a sweltering day and cozy warmth on a frigid one. Furthermore, it’s also been said that once you’ve been sheltered by adobe walls, you won’t want anything else.

Understanding clan affiliation is still emphasized in Navajo society, since they believe this shows respect for tradition, which has been passed down for generations.

As for the castle, it was “a great warren of intricate defenses, with its moat and drawbridge, its outer and inner ring of towers, its busy kitchens, a favorite place for dogs and boys, its mighty hall, with comfortable solar above” and of course, the highest tower “with a view across to the Welsh marches” reserved for Merlyn and his owl, Archimedes.

“I like Thornfield, its antiquity, its retirement, its old crow-trees and thorn trees, its gray facade, and lines of dark windows reflecting that metal welkin: and yet how long have I abhorred the very thought of it, shunned it like a great plaque-house. How I do still abhor.” Mr. Rochester, Jane Eyre

Keeping with my Dickens theme, my literary house of the month is Miss Havisham’s Satis House, from the Dickens novel Great Expectations.

I love Victorian ghost stories because they embody one of my favorite storytelling elements–the past haunting the present. In addition, the function of most Victorian ghost stories was to produce the pleasurable shudder, another of my favorite things to experience while reading.

I love passing on the magic of reading, writing and storytelling to the younger set…

I should have known all along that things weren’t what they seemed to be…