SOURCE: "The Yellow Wallpaper" (New England Magazine, January 1892) by Charlotte Perkins-Gilman

DESCRIPTION: "There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern.  I don't like it a bit.  I wonder--I begin to think--I wish John would take me away from here!" ("The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins-Gilman)

NOTES: Charlotte Weiland is locked up in an old nursery and begins to see shapes moving behind the ugly patterns on old yellow wallpaper. Her husband is a doctor and he thinks he is treating her for a nervous condition. The ghostly form in the wallpaper seems to be a woman (sometimes many women) shaking the lines like a person trapped in a prison. Charlotte becomes obsessed with working her way through the pattern to get to the woman. Later she sees that the woman can escape in shadows outside her prison but with night she is drawn back. In the end, Charlotte locks herself in her room and solves the pattern, becoming one with the ghostly woman.

HISTORY: Like many good ghost stories, interpretation comes into things. Is Charlotte really falling victim to a ghost caught in the wallpaper or is she merely slipping into insanity? The choice is yours and perhaps is dependant on your nature. Myself? I always go for the monster explanation. Agnes Moorhead performed the story twice on the old radio show Suspense, (July 29, 1948 and June 30, 1957) (You can get the mp3 here.) . A film adaptation of "The Yellow Wallpaper" (2008) features Juliet Landau as the imprisoned Charlotte Weiland.