This essay sets out to illustrate the evolution of horror in ghost stories through a literary analysis of M.R. James’s “The Mezzotint” (1904) and Susan Hill’s The Man in the Picture (2007). It is shown that despite many similarities, The Man in the Picture is a more frightening story than “The Mezzotint” mainly because of five major differences in the narrator, the haunted picture, the build-up of suspense, the relationship between the ghost and its victims, and the resolution of the mystery. Many critics have dealt with the ghost story genre before but no one seems to have analysed James’s and Hill’s stories in the way that is presented in this essay. In addition to the analysis, the essay also includes a pedagogical chapter, showing how a ghost-story project in upper-secondary school can improve the students’ language, their knowledge of literature and their critical thinking.