The Perfect Terror of the White Nightgown

October 24, 2021 8:45 PM

SL Jezebel from 2019. "I don’t believe in ghosts, but maybe I do, just a little. I certainly believe in the power of haunted tales, and the Lady in White is one of the most common structures for ghost stories... she’s often cast as a thin woman with long flowing hair, wearing a Victorian-style nightdress and wandering along roadsides, through cemeteries and churches, under bridges, and through the woods. She exists in contrast to the Woman in Black and the Woman in Red, two other ghostly types that flit through our history. They are always mysterious, dressed in monochrome, lacking distinguishing features— blurred non-people—reeking of sadness. Even in death, what a woman wears is important. Even after death, her outfit still matters."

An exploration of the role of the white nightgown in (mostly Western) ghost stories.

posted by The Underpants Monster (10 comments total)

Hmmm. I had always thought the ghost = white clothes came from burial shrouds, or from the hi-viz needs of a ghastly nighttime encounter, but this article makes a good case for more going on.

On another tangent, I’ve never heard of a ghost in red (well, before the last 20 years or so), but gray is also a very fashionable color for ghosts.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:56 AM on October 25, 2021 [6 favorites]

Warning: When I Am a Ghost, I Shall Wear Purple.
posted by otherchaz at 5:49 AM on October 25, 2021 [18 favorites]

GenjiandProust: I’ve never heard of a ghost in red

The veiled lady of Curry Rivel in England wore a red mackintosh. Trans history podcast One from the Vaults had a Halloween special about the apparition a couple of years ago.
posted by Kattullus at 6:15 AM on October 25, 2021 [7 favorites]

You think I would remember that, Kattullus….
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:09 AM on October 25, 2021 [1 favorite]

the hi-viz needs of a ghastly nighttime encounter

Yet day-glo orange and gold lamé remain unpopular with incorporeal fashionistas.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 11:37 AM on October 25, 2021 [4 favorites]

Dyes used to be expensive and fadeable, so everyone's inner layer was likely to be white because the inner layer was what you wanted to wash most often and it would go white soon enough.

Collection of nightwear images from the NYPL, including an 1867 one that is all melodramatic and all.

Wilkie Collins' woman in white was wearing day clothes, she just liked white ones. Well, plus some other stuff, it's a tripledecker plot.
posted by clew at 5:41 PM on October 25, 2021 [4 favorites]

Red is hard to see in very low light.

I once had a tiny wire wound porcelain heater screwed into one socket of a bank of 3 over a bathroom sink; it was not a perceptible source of light during the day, but when you'd go into the bathroom in the middle of a lightless night it would glow a very faint and somehow ethereal silver, yet in the very earliest light well before dawn, it was a dull red.
posted by jamjam at 12:09 AM on October 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

Red is hard to see in very low light.

so the ghosts wearing red at night are the very sneakiest ones. OooOo00oooooo…!!!!!
posted by clew at 4:29 PM on October 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

Red ghost at night, eyeball’s delight
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:01 PM on October 26, 2021 [3 favorites]

More color options -- Lavender, a true scary story.
posted by TrishaU at 7:53 PM on October 26, 2021 [3 favorites]