When I started writing, I realized that I thought I knew ghost stories—because I had read and heard many—but I had never read them systematically. If I was going to write one myself, I would need to build up some expertise.
The Shining was my first stop. Even with its movie-driven fame, this is an underrated classic. Nuanced, with long asides depicting each character in detail, and a bubbling paternal rage underneath, the novel reads like Raymond Carver shot out of a rifle.
But I was surprised to find—after admittedly unscientific searching—that there are surprisingly few contemporary ghost stories. To dig deeper I was forced to travel farther back in time. I read a few anthologies of the genre. Favorites include:
- Charles Dickens’ The Trial for Murder, aka To Be Taken With a Grain of Salt
- Bram Stoker’s The Judge’s House
- Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Body Snatcher
- Elias and the Draug by Jonas Lie
Roald Dahl’s “Book of Ghost Stories” is a terrific collection, though notable mainly for its incredibly charming introduction by the author.
That introduction begins to suggest a framework for the genre. After reading a few dozen stories, I have my own take on the genre, with some broad strokes noted below.
1. Ghost stories are not necessarily scary. They’re different from horror. They are built on atmosphere. This is usually driven by someone—the “object” of the ghost’s “subject”—taking a giant step into the world of the supernatural. This person is in constant danger, but of an undefined sort. They are in danger of losing themselves somehow: losing touch with reality and screwing up royally (The Shining, Turn of the Screw); getting killed by the ghost (The Judge’s House, Elias and the Draug, many kwaidan); or merely getting frightened silly and showing up at the end of the tale with white hair. Still, I would put align story scares with chills, and the fear of the unknown, rather than outright scares. For me, for example, the scene in The Shining where Danny Torrance is chased by the hose in the corridor is a typical ghost story scene; whereas the scene where Jack Torrance is chased by the hedge animals, is horror. One is the product of imagination, and implied; the other is physical and poses physical danger.
2. Ghost stories should be short and end abruptly. If the story is sustained by atmosphere, once the atmosphere is punctured, there is nowhere for the story to go. Once a principle character dies, it’s pretty much over in a classic ghost story. The Turn of the Screw is the paradigm of this. Think about the ghost stories you heard in grade school: “..and they discovered that the hitchiker they had picked up that night died the year before in a car crash on that very spot!” The twist comes at the end to allow the atmosphere to build and then pop—with the final chill being the gift the story gives you. I would argue that anybody engaged in writing a novel-length ghost story has to compromise the genre and either mingle their story with horror, or thriller, in order to sustain a longer plot.
3. The critical part is building the bridge to a nether-world. The fun of the genre is joining your protagonist in entering that trembly, febrile psychological state where the character perceives the ghost. Dicken’s story, cited above, is one of the best examples of this I read. (To emphasize the abruptness of this altered state, the protagonist first sees the ghost in the morning while his valet is serving his breakfast.) Another wonderful example is the true-life Moberly-Jourdain incident, where two English schoolteachers claimed to encounter a “time-slip” or trip to a ghostly past, on the grounds of Versailles. The language they used to describe their experience included diction like “oppression” and “heaviness.” I love these words—they ring true to me about the shift in perceptions required to meet a spirit halfway.
4. The genre does not demand deep characters. While some ghost stories take long tours to explain character—A Christmas Carol, The Shining—it’s not strictly necessary. The story unfolds like a Greek drama, with action taking place on a shallow stage, as it were, with all the development happening in the present. We don’t really need to know much about the kid who thinks it’s a good idea to take up a dusty old uninhabited house so he can study in peace for a few nights… or the freezing guy on a lonely road who’s cold and lost enough to hail a coach pulled by snorting, flame-eyed stallions… the protagonist merely becomes a normative point of view. Many Victorian stories take pains to peel away disbelief with opening paragraphs that allow that the subsequent pages will seem incredible to some… just to make sure you’re aligned with the narrator. We don’t need the protagonist’s family and professional past, the nuances of their personality, to explain their actions (and reactions). We just need enough to drop them into the action. After that, anybody would behave as the protagonist does in the same circumstances (unless you are lucky enough to hear the readers and audience screaming at you from their seats: “Don’t do it!!!”)