Although James was American-born, he was an Englishman by preference, and many of his stories, including The Turn of the Screw, take place in England. For other ghost stories that take place in England, a good introduction is The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories, edited by Michael Cox and R. A. Gilbert and published by Oxford University Press (1989). This massive anthology includes forty-two stories, written between 1829 and 1968, from such literary greats as Walter Scott, Bram Stoker, Rudyard Kipling, and Edith Wharton.

One of the most enduring English stories involving ghosts is Charles Dickens's holiday favorite, A Christmas Carol, first published in 1843, concerning the famous three ghosts—The Ghost of Christmas Past, The Ghost of Christmas Present, and The Ghost of Christmas Future, along with the ghost of Ebenezer Scrooge's friend, Jacob Marley. Together, the three ghosts warm the...