During Charles Dickens’ birthday week, all of KS3 and KS4 took part in a special lesson on Dickens’ Ghost Stories. In year Seven we have been creating our own ghost stories. We used extracts from ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘The Signalman’ to help us with our writing.

The thing that I found most interesting while studying Charles Dickens, was the features included in most of his ghost stories. These were things such as creating suspense, setting the scene and the atmosphere and using pathetic fallacy. He used Phrases such as ‘ It was a cold, dead morning’ and ‘…he felt the chilling influence of its death, cold eyes’.

The most challenging part was to try to make your writing have an impact on the readers feelings whilst they’re reading it. For example ‘ He walked in a dark room and saw a ghost’ doesn’t make you feel scared whereas ‘Our voices sounded small in the noisy darkness. We called her name again and again but still no reply, just the voices of the howling wind’ makes you feel the emotion of that character.

I really enjoyed these lessons, creating ghost stories, and learning about the life of Charles Dickens because it included a lot of interesting facts and enjoyable activities. I hope we can dedicate another week to a specific author and write our own creative stories in their style.

Click here to see the Showcase of Ghost Stories from BMS students

By Maisie Hemens – 7 Beech