Many Charles Dickens stories feature ghosts. Part of the attraction of The Signal-man is that, although generally considered one of these, there is no hard evidence of a ghost. Dickens masterfully uses setting to create a forbidding, unearthly atmosphere, and then leaves the question of the ghost to the reader. Like all first-person stories, the narrator’s version is open to misinterpretation and bias. The only evidence of the supernatural are the ghostly sightings described by the (now dead) signal-man, and some (potentially coincidental) shared expressions and gestures. Themes: duty & responsibility, fate, isolation, guilt, sanity, the supernatural.
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I agree
Not very scary.