Fantasy! But make it spooky! While traditional ghost stories technically count as “low fantasy” or “magical realism” to genre purists, many you I’m sure would rather your spirits haunt more interesting places than boring old Earth. What about ghosts in other worlds? Now there’s an interesting idea! While not all of these fantasy books take place in fantastical realms, spectral vibes of these novels are sure to fly your imagination to other places of existence. Peer beyond the veil and into the pages of these 10 best fantasy books with ghosts and spirits. Shuffle out of that mortal coil and let your soul skinny dip in the afterlife for a while!
The City of Brass
The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty is the story of Nahri – a con artist who takes advantage of afterlife-curious people like you. While she swears up and down across the streets of 18th century Cairo that her spells and palm readings are legit, she knows that she’s just selling spiritual snake oil. That is until what she thought was a phony spell ends up summoning a very real djinn, who tells her that she’s descended from a line of rulers from the mythical City of Brass. After a journey across the desert, Nahri comes to Daevabad, an ancient city filled with equally old spiritual rivalries. The ghostly movers and shakers of Daevabad won’t be too keen on a new competitor horning in on their turf, but when it comes to claiming her birthright, Nahri is feeling especially horny – that came out wrong.
Harrow The Ninth
The spooky sequel to the goth lesbian necromancers in space epic that was Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir’s Harrow The Ninth picks up where the first book left off. Written almost entirely in the second person, Harrow The Ninth puts the focus on the necromancer Harrow, and her emotional fallout after the tragedy that occurred at the first novel’s end. I won’t give you any spoilers, but Harrow went from solving space mansion murder mysteries with her sapphic enemy turned almost lover to fighting ghost planets alongside Space Jesus. A servant of The Emperor Undying, the immortal ruler of the universe, Harrow must to help this undead divinity stand up against gargantuan space spirits called Revelation Beasts. A less traditional ghost story there never was.
His Dark Materials
His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman is set in a multiverse populated by all manner of spirits! In the almost but not quite like our own world that tweenaged Lyra Belacqua calls home, every human being is accompanied by a shape changing spirit animal that serves as the living embodiment of their soul. After Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon uncover a theological truth that a world dominating church would rather keep under wraps, the pair hop across the multiverse in order to find answers – and maybe kill God in the process. They come across all sorts of spirits: angels, night ghasts, the souls of the dead, and soul sucking Spectres that float out of the void between universes. That last type of spirit is a real doozy, as Lyra and Pantalaimon painfully learn for themselves.
The Bear and The Nightingale
Katherine Arden’s The Bear and The Nightingale is The Sixth Sense set in Medieval Russia – sort of. Ever since she was little, the peasant girl Vasya has been able to see the spiritual world. After she grows up, she peeps a spirit that’s particularly easy on the eyes. Despite being a total hottie, the frost demon Morozko is a chilly customer. However, Morozko’s frigid attitude is nothing compared to his brother Medved’s – a god of death that wants to plunge the world into eternal winter, White Walker style. Morocco and Vasya must overcome their mutual mistrust in order to save both the mortal and spiritual realms – and maybe kiss a little bit in the process.
Under The Whispering Door
Under The Whispering Door by TJ Klune is the story of Wallace, who, like Hamlet, shuffled off his mortal coil a little earlier than expected. Now stuck in an otherworldly tea shop with a kindly reaper named Hugo, Wallace is told that it’s time to make the crossing into the world beyond. Despite being dead, Wallace isn’t quite ready, and asks the reaper for one more week in the living world. With seven days until the end, Wallace decides to do the very thing he spent his whole life avoiding: living. Once a cold and ambitious lawyer, Wallace attempts to let loose as little as a ghost, before letting go of life forever. If you’re looking for another punch in the heart like House In The Cerulean Sea, TJ Klune’s followup novel serves up an emotional knuckle sandwich.
The Bone Doll’s Twin
A high fantasy ghost story, The Bone Doll’s Twin by Lynn Flewelling is an underrated spooky classic. Set in a kingdom where female children are killed in order to simplify matters of royal succession, a haunted young woman named Tobin survives in the disguise of a boy. Turned male by a witch’s magic, Tobin is haunted by the angry specter of her dead brother, who gave his life so she could continue living hers. As rich and twisted as Pan’s Labyrinth, The Bone Doll’s Twin is part horror novel, part dark fantasy epic, and part queer allegory – you can read quite a bit into Tobin’s sorcery-influenced gender identity struggles. At least, I did.
The Ghost Bride
The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo is a historical fantasy set in colonial Malaysia, where a family of broke aristocrats are struggling to keep up their affluent appearance. In order to balance the budget, they offer their daughter Li Lan to serve as a ghost bride to the dead son of the wealthy Lim family. Traditional performed to ease a restless spirit, ghost marriages are a rare occurrence – but would grant Li Lan and her family the stability they crave. Things get increasingly unstable when the newly wed Li Lan begins making nightly visits into the Chinese afterlife. After stumbling into a ghost city haunted by soul of her dead husband, Li Lan encounters vengeful spirits that hunger for more than just her affection. Beetlejuice afterlife bureaucracy meets Spirited Away danger, The Ghost Bride proves that even in undeath, marriage takes work.
Lockwood & Co
A hallmark of spooky YA fantasy, Lockwood & Co. by Johnathan Stroud is the story of the people you should call when there’s something strange in the neighborhood. Ghost Busters? No, they’re a bunch of stream-crossing amateurs. Ghost hunter Anthony Lockwood is one of the best in the business, despite not being able to see dead people himself. In this alternate version of London, only children and teenagers can see the world beyond – an ability they lose in their twenties. When talented teenager Lucy Carlyle shows up looking for employment, Lockwood & Co. quick to offer a job. Her first order to businesses? De-haunt one of the spookiest buildings in all of London, by spending the night there and avoiding the potentially fatal consequences. An underrated ghost hunters series, The Screaming Staircase kicks things off with a bang – the “buried alive” kind you’d hear from the inside of a coffin.
A Wizard of Earthsea
While not a traditional ghost story, Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea features one of the most profound hauntings in all of fantasy: a person pursued by his dark side. After young Ged leaves behind his island to go to wizard school, he tries to impress his classmates attempting a forbidden spell, which horribly and unsurprisingly backfires. A perverse being from an unearthly plain of existence has entered into the world of Earthsea, and Ged is now hunted across the globe-spanning archipelago he calls home. Essentially a parable about confronting your shadow self in a Jungian sense, Ged learns that the greatest wizards are not those who can weave the most complicated spells, but those who are able to maintain magical harmony with the natural world. Too bad he had to do it the hard way.
A Stranger in Olondria
Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger In Olondria is the story of Jevick, a merchant’s son on a trip to the distant land of Olondria where reading is sacred. While selling his wares and partying hard like any self-respecting businessman would, Jevick’s work trip takes an unprofitable turn after he begins to be haunted by the ghost of an illiterate peasant girl. In order to ease the girl’s restless spirit and free his own, Jevick has to write the dead child’s story. It’s hard to get into the writing zone when you’re also in spiritual tug-of-war between two Olondrian cults with opposite views on the afterlife, but Jevick will need to learn to manage – like any young CEO must. The debut novel of a poet, A Stranger In Olandria is a lyrical meditation on the difference between the stories worth telling and the stories the public wants to hear.
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