You know, the creepy young girl, long black hair, pale face, lack of expression, detached, quiet and wearing old styleclothes.
I have seen it around many times, the Ring and Emily the Strange come to mind. Can’t remember the others.
Any ideas where else it has been used? or where it originated?
I know the whole “pale face, dark clothes and ghostly look” thing was popular during the Victorian era. I believe that might, at least in part, have been due to the prevailence of TB. Kind of like “heroin chic” these days.
Ah! A chance to mention my fav! Check out the Staples ad that came out in the fall of '04. It featured Alice Cooper and a very Wednesday-ish looking little girl doing their back-to-school shopping. Try the “Alice Cooper Song of the Day” site (just Google it) and look in the November stuff under the one that says “Ads”.
Oh, and anything Wynona Rider was in during the first few years of her career. 
Well, Wednesday Addams is a creation of Charles Addams, the cartoonist. That predates anything listed in the OP by several decades.
That’s true. She and the other family members didn’t have names until his cartoons became a television series, though. Uncle Fester usually appeared alone in the cartoons, and it wasn’t clear he was part of the family until the show.
I’d suggest that Miss Havisham and Emily (If that’s her name) from Great Expectations by Dickens might be the origin of the nubile version of that. But definitely I think that Ring and other more modern incarnations have to be considered homage to Wednesday, not inspiration.
There is, of course, Gorey, as well. The dark victorian waif motif is certainly period…
http://www.absenteeauctions.com/stereographica/cgi-bin/SHOWITEM.CGI
Gorey’s earliest is '52, and I can’t think of anything earlier using the type for humor… but as far as serious versions? Penny dreadfuls, anyone?
http://www.fearofdolls.com/gorey3.html
John Singer Sargent painted a creepy-looking young woman in a white dress staring out of the picture, but I can’t find it right now. He’s late Victorian/Edwardian, which fits the trend.
The earliest Addams Family cartoons appeared (unnamed) in The New Yorker in 1937, and were collected with other Charles Addams cartoons in the book Drawn & Quartered in 1942.
As AskNott said, the characters were not named by Charles Addams until the television series in 1964. There were two inspirations for Wednesday’s name: actress Tuesday Weld; and this nursery rhyme:
Is that Miss Emily in “A Rose for Emily”? Were this older versions of the archetype? I am thinking pre-pubescent.
A very recent incarnation of the archetype (sort-of) is Violet as she starts of in The Incredibles.
Miss Havisham is a decrepit older woman at the time of the novel, though.
After a fashion, it was. But I don’t think the dark clothes were in style, and I’m not sure it would have been considered desirable on anyone Wednesday’s age.
I know, I was thinking more of her ward. But I wasn’t sure of her name, so I had to link Havisham in there.
Having been born on a Monday (at 1441 hours, if you’d like to know) I would have to say this one is false. 
Estella.
That’s her. But I have to say I always pictured her more as a pert little blonde haired bitch. The kind Wednesday would have hated 
.
I’d say it goes back ot Charles Addams. And to Edward Gorey to some extent. But then they got to it as their own perverse spin on Victorian cliches. For instance the child who’s too good for this world…so she’s DEAD!
Interesting bunch the Victorians.
I always assumed Wednesday was supposed to be the classic little ghost girl. That detached manner and old fashioned clothing are justin keeping with the character being a ghost.
I have no idea when the fist ghost girl appeared in popular fiction, but it seems to be a recurring theme. There’s something inherently creepy about a young girl who is dead. And usually they don’t actually know they are dead, hence the slightly detached manner.
As for where esle it has ben used, a better question might be what horror movies it hasn’t been used in. The detached little ghost girl turns up in Sixth Sense, The Others, Rasident Evil, The Shining, Dawn of the Dead, one of The Matrix movies (forget which one), Child of Glass. And that’s off the top of my head.
I’d start looking through Victorian or earlier literature for the fist appearance of the ghost girl. It certainly sems to have been fimrly entrenched as a horror movie staple by the late 20th century.
Not merely the dead… winding sheets are white, dear child… but the poor. Pauper’s children were often dressed in dark clothes… as it did not show stains as well, and could be redyed easily. And thus, you get the poor, darkly dressed, innocent children who are not corrupted by money, who live among death…
Notice the contrast between the good clothes and the daily wear.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/olivertwist/ei_downandout.html
The poor schoolroom. Look at the depths of shadow drawn in the eyes.
http://humwww.ucsc.edu/dickens/OMF/litvack.html
There is a certain similarity, if less austere, here.
http://www.victorianlinks.com/elegancies/02/03/springdangers.shtml
Henry James’s classic ghost story The Turn of the Screw had a similar character… or did it? Figuring it out is part of the fun…
Sadako in The Ring is the latest in a long line of female ghosts that have inhabited Japanese folklore for hundreds of years.
Well, I figure the one on the left [url=“http://www.artic.edu/artaccess/AA_Modern/pages/MOD_5.shtml”]here*, as a young girl, pretty much fits the bill… this was done in 1930, so late 1800’s for when she was a kid.
Problem is that it’s hard to tell what dark colour they are wearing in a black and white photo. They may have been green or brown even some burgendies.
There is an odd connection between old photos and how we view the past. Some people only see the 1940s and earlier as black and white or sepia.
I have a feeling that it would have been rare to see children all in black unless they were in mourning.
I think the idea of the Gothic child image is Addams creation with Wednesday. It was his dark mirror humour to have the opposite image of a pretty rose cheeked blond girl in curls and a flowery dress of the 1930s.
