American author Charles Willing Beale's horror book The Ghost of Guir House was first released in 1897. This is a pretty erratic "story" that alternates between a theosophical philosophy explanation and a gothic romance. A captivating romantic plot is balanced by a sense of mystery and possibly even evil, and there are three main characters that are really well-developed despite being slightly quirky. The plot is kept alive by the author until the very end of the book, but it is shelved by protracted discussions on occult concepts like hypnotism and emanationist between two of the characters. The book starts out as a respectable ghost story before turning into a societal critique that extols the virtues of socialism. Charles Willing Beale wrote a gritty mystery romance titled The Ghost of Guir House. But instead of writing in the traditional Gothic style, the author explores moral, psychological, and then theosophical considerations. Long conversations between the three people in the book-who are encased in a spooky house-include the author's thoughts.
Charles Willing Beale was an American civil engineer, hotelier, and author of horror and science fiction novels. He was born in Washington, DC, on December 9, 1845, and passed away in Arden, North Carolina, on August 16, 1932. The Ghost of Guir House is his best-known composition. On December 9, 1845, Charles Willing Beale was born in Washington County, Pennsylvania. He received his civil engineering degree from the University of Pennsylvania when he was sixteen years old and worked as a surveyor for the Pacific Railroad for a number of years. He moved to western North Carolina in 1869 and experimented with a variety of economic operations. He eventually created and managed a hotel that hosted prominent visitors including author Mark Twain, presidents Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, and many others. In the literary world, he had a keen interest in Eastern culture and tradition as well as the so-called occult sciences; to hone his meditative method, he used hypnotism and lengthy periods of silent meditation. He was a prolific writer as well, submitting numerous brief articles to many magazines in the late 19th century. He only had two of his novels published, though.
