There isn’t much confusion about what defines a Ghost Story. Most readers know that such a tale normally features at least one disembodied person–being, of course, a ghost or a spirit, or at least the semblance of such. Some Horror enthusiasts, however, include beneath the Ghost Story Umbrella tales of demonic possession and bargains with the Devil, witches, ghouls and graverobbers, and werewolves (or other were-creatures). The Ghost Story aficionado, however, would disagree and place all of the tales devoid of ghosts beneath the more generous Horror category. After all, there are a wide variety of ways to approach the classic Ghost Story. There is no need to muddle the genre by including the rest of the Horror subjects. Masters of the Ghost Story include, but are not in any way limited to, M. R. James, Charles Dickens, J. S. Le Fanu, Ambrose Bierce, and Edith Wharton.
The Ghost Story is the Afterlife breaking into the world we call reality with its own disturbing, awakening reality. How the writer describes that otherworld gives each Ghost Story its own distinct flavor. Disembodied spirits can be detected through sound alone–moans, chains rattling, pipes clanging. Or they can manifest as flesh-and-blood while carrying nauseating odors or revealing horrific visages. Some ghosts are mere memories, while others are souls not yet separated from their bodies who are acting as prophesies for a future time. Some traditionally make only squeaks and chirps with their voices, others speak fluently and sometimes even eloquently. Some appear to anyone who can see, others are selective about who they want to notice them. Some seek justice for past wrongs, others are so angry that they intend only indiscriminate harm. Some are saintly protectors, others are demonic and dangerous. Some ghosts are only figments of the imagination, while others are lost or confused or deeply saddened souls who seek something few of us alive can discern. Whatever a ghost is or is not, the writer of the Ghost Story masterfully either creates a tale from thin air or recreates a situation he has personally encountered or has heard about. All-in-all, the story told rarely fails to intrigue or excite or to cause some level of introspection in the reader. Every one of us eventually becomes a ghost of one form or another, and the Ghost Story helps us to prepare for our own inevitable journeys into the afterlife. The question remains: Will you haunt earthly houses with or even without your will engaged, or will you majestically and magnanimously haunt universes? Ultimately, the choice is yours.
‘The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.’
~ C. S. Lewis
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