Superstition The Old Nurse’s Story can be found in collections of Gothic stories, ghost stories and tales of the macabre, and is one of only two of Elizabeth Gaskell’s stories to include an actual ghost. It might seem odd that Elizabeth Gaskell, the wife of a Unitarian minister, should write about supernatural events and hauntings; yet despite Unitarianism’s foundation in rationality, Elizabeth appears to have been somewhat superstitious. In October 1859 she writes to George Smith, her publisher:
