A few nights ago, I made the mistake of rereading Charles Dickens' 'The Signal-Man' in bed. Bad, baaaaad idea. It's long been my favourite ghost story - and the BBC adaptation one of my favourite short slabs of telly - but even knowing every story beat in the tale didn't protect me from that growing unease and dread.
And so it was at 1am, when indigestion was begging me to visit the kitchen cupboard for the Mylanta, that I instead found myself pulling the covers tighter and just wishing it away. After a short while, I remembered that I'm actually forty two and don't believe in ghosts. Yet even then I felt the need to switch on the kitchen light.
Yeah, yeah, point fingers and laugh. That would be to miss the point. I don't believe in ghosts, haven't since my sense of reason grew mature enough to put away childish things (stop the knowing sniggers at the back there). I am one of those ardent cynics that believes astrology is only slightly less ridiculous than divining the future from chicken entrails, that religion is about as factually relevant as Winnie the Pooh (but not nearly as much fun) and that ghosts say more about our individual psychology than anything... gasp... supernatural.
Yet I couldn't shake the uneasiness. I had the first nightmare I can remember in years, and yes it was a dream of ghosts. Malevolent ghosts. When Mr Pickles the cat licked my face at 2am I nearly had a heart attack. Why? Why is my reason and logic so easily cast aside by an instinctive, irrational and emotional response to something I know doesn't exist?
Some of you may already know that I'm a bit of a fan of the good ol' ghost story. Last year I wrote 'See the Blazing Yule Before Us' (still available online) as a Ghost Story for Christmas. This will be published in the 'Deck the Halls' anthology in time for Christmas this year. However, my latest ghost story, 'The Banging on the Door', will be published on October 25th in the new anthology 'Eighty-Nine', available via Amazon. Preorders are also available from the Literary Mix Tapes website.
A third, longer ghost story is currently in the planning stages to become this year's Christmas Eve ghost story and last night's wild imaginings have prompted a fourth for whenever I find the time. (Hah!)
Let's be clear here. A ghost story isn't merely a story with a ghost in it. Otherwise we'd have to include Hamlet, Ghost Busters and Scooby Doo. And that would be just silly. No, I'm talking about a very specific genre with a clear set of rules. A ghost story is written to be told at a fireside on a cold winter's night, or in a tent with a torch under your chin.
So why the passion for chilling ghostly tales? The irony is that I'm not really a fan of horror fiction at all. But the ghost story is something else entirely.
Most modern horror fiction relies on external threats, pretty much disconnected from the viewer. The classic teen slasher movies such as 'Nightmare on Elm Street' and 'Halloween' follow a formula that resolves and closes off the fear by the time the audience is filing out. The threat is blown up/banished to hell/staked through the heart, and the most likeable protagonists - and therefore the ones the audience is invited to identify with - walk off happily ever after. The rollercoaster ride is complete. The buggy comes to a stop. Off to the pub.
Splatter and torture porn films take this disconnect even further. These are designed to create revulsion and shock, which for some inexplicable reason Hollywood sees as synonymous with fear. But again, the audience is kept at a safe distance from the events. No one leaves the cinema with an uncomfortable sense that Saw may identify them as the next victim. No one really imagines flesh-eating zombies in their kitchen at night, do they?
But read or watch a ghost story and suddenly every trick of the light, every glimpse in the corner of the eye, every moving shadow plays on your fears. Ghost stories remain unresolved, in that they attempt to confirm the threat instead of resolving it. So many ghost stories commence with a sceptical attitude, only for the events to strip away logic and reason until the reader is left with the unsettling idea that maybe there are other supernatural things out there.
A ghost story is therefore far more internal and psychological than most other horror fare. It is no coincidence that many ghost stories focus on a single individual, and very often this single character is the only one to experience the supernatural events.
And here we return to Dickens' 'The Signal-Man'. The titular character remains throughout the only one to see the apparition or hear the vibration of the bell. There is a suggestion of it all being an over-active imagination, all in his head. Except for the fact that...well, you have to read it (the ebook version is available free from the Gutenberg Project as are most others mentioned).
This theme of a sole character questioning his own reason (or alternatively a sceptic character reasoning with one who has experienced the supernatural, as in 'The Signal-Man') is also prominent in the short stories of M.R. James. In possibly his most famous story - 'Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad' (from the collection 'Ghost Stories of an Antiquary') - a learned man opines quite eloquently on the nonsense of supernatural belief, but comes to doubt his own senses upon a few rather terrifying experiences.
This theme of self doubt and of the rational being unpicked until the character (and thereby the reader) comes to question his own beliefs and certainties, was at the heart of the classic Jonathan Miller BBC adaptation.
Sadly, the more recent 2010 adaptation starring Jonathan Hurt ditched all the ambiguity in favour of a straight forward haunting, rather missing the point somewhat.
As such, a good ghost story often creates more questions than answers - the fear living in the gaps. Much is left unexplained. A tale that weaves too much exposition around its supernatural events risks depriving them of their true power. It is the unknown that frightens us, the uncertainty and doubt that stays with us long after the final page.
Because, in the most successful ghost stories, the supernatural always wins. Always. The threat remains unvanquished and perfectly capable of moving on to haunt another victim - maybe even ourselves.
Ultimately, ghost stories are about death. Although by no means a rule, a large proportion of ghost stories certainly end with a death, either in the literal or figurative sense. In 'Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You', the death is of the man's reason and rationality, his philosophical world comes crashing down. In many others, such as James' 'The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral', 'A View From a Hill' and more, the death - or near death - is quite literal.
In almost all cases, ghost stories are tragedies, with the impending doom increasing with every line. Except for one highly notable exception. Although 'The Signal-Man' is only one of Dicken's ghost stories, it is far from his most famous. That would be 'A Christmas Carol', where, as we all know, Scrooge actually follows a completely different story arc to other haunted characters. Yes, his personal philosophy is challenged and in many ways destroyed. Yes, he is confronted with his own mortality and yes, the tale is vague to whether the events are truly supernatural or contained within a lucid dream. But Scrooge ends up a better and happier man - a ghost story with a rare happy ending.
'A Christmas Carol' is a rare exception. And it is interesting to note that most people view this as much lighter fare than normal. We even quite happily read it to our children, so inoffensive does it seem. The best movie adaptation of it even has Muppets!
For some reason, the ghost story - so popular in every age of storytelling, fell out of popularity in the second half of the twentieth century. Maybe it was the rise of electric lighting and fewer people carrying flickering candles up dark stairways. Maybe Hollywood with its obsession on more tangible and less cerebral horror, and an insistence on stories that wrap things up neatly at the end, changed our cultural sensibilities.
One modern ghost story that harks back to the golden age of Dickens', James, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and Algernon Blackwood is Susan Hill's 'The Woman in Black' published in 1983 (hence I can't point you to a Gutenberg free version). Although, tellingly, it is still set in the Victorian era.
'The Woman in Black' has just been adapted into a new film version out next year and starring Daniel Radcliffe. I hope this is the start of a revival of the true ghost story.
The ghost story by its very nature and intent sets out to undermine the reader's rational thought, believer or not. We are led by the main character with whom we identify on a psychological journey, moreso than a merely supernatural one. All too often the central characters voice the very same scepticism and firmness that we would claim for ourselves, only to have it increasingly stripped away by the unexplained. That can only have the effect of exposing the reader's own fears, challenging our own reason and seeding our imaginations with apprehension for every creak in the house.
At least that is how I'm defending my hesitation to go into the kitchen at 1am the other night.
