What We Can Learn from Ghost Stories as Writers

What is the purpose of ghost stories?

The film critic Mark Kermode quoted author Stephen King recently, saying that the horror writer asserts, “All truly great ghost stories are about a search for the self.”

And at the risk of sounding like AI slop, this got me thinking. (It actually did.)

What is the purpose of ghost stories? Why do we scare ourselves with horror films and tales of paranormal phenomena?

Can a better understanding of the psychology behind ghost stories inform our creative writing?

On hearing Mark Kermode’s comments, two arbitrary thoughts immediately sprang to mind.

One, a quote from C.S. Lewis, author of the Narnia books, speaking in defence of traditional fairy tales that often feature violence and gore deemed too scary for children:

“Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.”

It’s safe to say Lewis knew a thing or two about facing cruel enemies, having lived through two world wars. He fought and was seriously injured in the First World War at just 19 years old, and during the Second World War opened his home to child evacuees escaping the Blitz in London. This quote was part of a lecture he delivered after the Second World War.

The second thought that sprang to mind was the idea that women take a special interest in true crime and serial killers out of a need to inform themselves. Research into women’s interest in true crime has explored motivations including empathy for victims, learning about perpetrators and self-protection, tied to evolutionary survival mechanisms.

But what connects these two things?

I think it's the idea that we face what scares us in fiction in an attempt to prepare or protect ourselves in real life. Information is power. If we can inform ourselves, we can feel better equipped for whatever scares us. In the case of fiction, imagination is power: if we can role-play our response to frightening scenarios, we prepare ourselves.

To be scared by monsters and psychopaths is to tap into our primal fears of being hunted.

Fear of the unknown also drives a lot of myth, which seeps into narrative. Tales of gods, monsters and the supernatural are as old as time. We watch films about dinosaurs on the loose or alien invasions to see plucky everyday heroes and heroines thrown into action to overcome insurmountable odds to survive.

We consume science fiction in all its forms to see good triumph over evil or humans master the unknown, often in the form of technology. Widely hailed as the first science fiction novel, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley poses the ethical question of pushing scientific boundaries: just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.

Oh, and post-Covid, we all recognise zombie films as allegories for a pandemic, right?

What makes ghost stories different?

Ghost stories inevitably consider death. And not much is more feared by us humans than death, a.k.a. the great unknown. Despite all their spookiness, ghost stories also confirm the possibility of an afterlife, which in itself may actually provide a strange sort of comfort.

Back to Mark Kermode. He again quotes Stephen King, who himself is referencing Ghost Story by Peter Straub. Paraphrased thus, all of ghost fiction is about:

• Confronting the past.

• Confronting the self.

• Confronting the things that haunt you.

  
  

Think What Lies Beneath and Stir of Echoes: the past infringes on the present, a restless spirit seeks revenge or justice.

Think The Sixth Sense or The Others: it is you who is dead.

Think A Christmas Carol: the cosy, Victorian ‘safe scare’ that deals with morality and the dead having a warning for the living.

But what about the really scary stuff?

This is where I have to admit that I am a scaredy-cat, and not a fan of horror. I was scarred for life after seeing Poltergeist at a very young age — thanks, Nan and Grandad! I also have a far too overactive imagination to watch a scary film and then go to bed. I’ve experienced night terrors and sleep paralysis, both of which are frightening enough without feeding the imagination more graphic imagery.

So how do we square the idea of ghost stories as a search for the self with the likes of The Exorcist or the one with the scary nun?

A character’s relationship to a ghost in a story, how they are haunted by them, often mirrors back their own internal demons. The conflict of the story is the psychological battle, confronting the self, alongside the physical manifestation of the haunting.

Ghosts are a manifestation of what Freud called the ‘uncanny’. They often appear in a mundane or domestic space that should feel safe, but by their presence they turn it into somewhere unsafe.

There is also an interesting psychological theory about the rooms of a house in a dream, or in a story, and what they represent. The basement is, not surprisingly, associated in some interpretations with the Shadow self and the unconscious. A hidden or undiscovered room might hold meaning in terms of a hidden or new aspect of self-identity. The attic can represent the mind, memory or spirituality.

In some dream analysis, the house is you, peeling wallpaper, blocked toilets and all. Consciously or not, these representations often turn up in fiction, and can be useful to writers to be aware of.

It is good for writers to understand that not everything that is a common trope should be dismissed or discarded as just a cliché.  The haunted house, the dark woods, a stormy night -  some tropes are worth exploring because they are recognisable to readers, and in film they even have their own visual language.

The trick is to think about what these familiar elements mean in the context of your story. What is it about this particular house that makes it haunted? Or what about this person makes them haunted? What might the dark woods represent for your character? What does the storm represent?

A familiar trope can become useful when it informs the characters or reflects the themes at the heart of the story.

The power of storytelling

As Winter begins it is believed the veil between our world and the spirit world grows thinner, allowing the living and the dead to draw closer. All Hallows Eve is rooted in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, which marks the beginning of winter, and is a time when the boundaries between worlds are more passable. Now celebrated as Hallowe’en, it carries the same meaning: Spirits might wander, ancestors might return, the past might reach into the present.  

Storytelling is deeply rooted in myth. Our cultural understandings are shared and passed down through the stories we tell, and ghost stories serve that function. They carry warnings, connect us to the past, reinforce the boundary between the living and the dead, and preserve social behaviours such as respect for the dead and the importance of observing customs and rituals.

Ghosts are often wronged, murdered, betrayed, abandoned. They sometimes represent society’s historical wrongs. (See: Poltergeist’s classic American haunting - a house built on an ancient burial ground!)

Ghost stories are here to remind us that the past is not always dead. We walk the same ground as our ancestors.

As writers, we do well to remember that.