Writing a Ghost Story II:
Who Is That Dead Guy and What Does He Want?
by Ophelia
http://members.aol.com/opheliamac/home.htm
A general warning:
This article is about writing classic ghost stories, the kind your sicko counselor used to tell you at summer camp. However, some ghost stories don't fall into this category, most notably:
The first type is different because there is no mystery involved. Nobody wonders, "My God -- what is it? What could it want?!" because the ghost is right there telling us: "My name is Ted and I died in 1894," etc. This type of story is better treated as a straight mystery, romance, adventure story, or whatever else it may be. The only unusual thing is that the main character happens to be dead.
A non-human entity is distinct from a ghost in that a ghost is a character while a non-human spirit is usually more of a force. You can identify with Jacob Marley, but not with Hurricane Andrew. Part of the horror of a classic ghost story is that the ghost seems so alien and so familiar at the same time. Sure, it walks through walls and carries its severed head by the hair, but its motivations are the basic human ones: love, revenge, greed, fear, etc. In an "Exorcist" or "Amityville Horror"-type story, the psychic entity's motivations are unclear, or are explained simply as "pure evil." (Pure evil is very soft and almost unworkable, so it's usually alloyed with zinc. Hitler was an alloy of 80% evil and 20% iron, so he tended to rust in the rain. I am not lying about this).
If you are writing either of these types of stories, this article will be of limited usefulness to you. Get out while you can!!
Still there?
Okay. Before you get going on your ghost story, you need to answer some basic questions:
This information will help you create your ghost legend -- the story-within-a-story that your living characters will hear and disbelieve at their peril. There are as many different treatments of the ghost legend as there are ghost stories, but most have this in common: whatever happened to turn Old Mr. Crabtree (or Sweet Sally Louise) into a ghost, it wasn't nice and it isn't over.
Unfinished business is an important theme of ghost stories. The ship that was lost at sea still sails back and forth around the cape, looking for its home port. Elmer Yablonski chopped the head off that lady hitchhiker all those years ago, and tonight he hears the sound of long fingernails scratching at his bedroom window.
Some classic ghost legend scenarios include:
The Great Injustice - the innocent man hanged, the killer who went unpunished
The Death Out Of Season - a young child that died, a bride who died on her wedding day
The Unbearable Loss - a separation so terrible that the dead seek to be reunited with the living
It can be difficult to capture the "haunting" quality a good ghost legend has, which is why I suggest drawing from life. Consider real events that have haunted the public imagination. Decide what elements of these events attract you, and copy them. The result needn't be recognizable. For instance, the story of JFK's assassination has some themes in common with the death of Laura Palmer in "Twin Peaks." You have a "beautiful person" who is at the social pinnacle of a naive, inward-looking culture. It seems like things will keep getting better and brighter forever, until there is a terrible, unexpected death. In the aftermath, ugly things come to light that reveal the "golden one" wasn't so golden after all. The world loses its innocence. Dale becomes Bob. Nixon becomes president. Wait -- I'm confusing fantasy and reality again. Darn all that non-educational television I watched as a child!
Okay, let's say you have a ghost legend you feel really good about. What do you do with it? First of all, don't reveal everything to your reader on page one -- or even on page 100, or necessarily ever. Remember the example in the last section about Hero Bob (no relation to "Twin Peaks'" Bob) who lit a match and glimpsed a pair of hanging feet? Reveal information to your readers in small sections just ambiguous enough to let them fill in some details themselves.
For those of you so sick of ambiguity you're ready to burn Chris Carter in effigy, let me explain what I mean by this. Letting your readers wonder, "Was it really the ghost of Large Marge in that 18-wheeler?" is an acceptable, if well-worn, use of ambiguity. If you say to your readers, "Was it Large Marge, or a look-alike, or an alien in a rubber mask, or Bobby Ewing, or -- wait-- maybe it wasn't an 18-wheeler, maybe it was a spaceship -- no, a secret government aircraft, that's it, flown by bees -- oh, sorry! It was all a hallucination, but a government-induced hallucination . . ." it just gets annoying.
Anyway . . . the point is that you should allow your ghost to retain some of his mystery or he won't be fun anymore. You can still get a lot of your back-story across if you do it indirectly.
Examples:
More Fun: Bob was sure he heard water running, and he wondered how that could be. The house's main valve had been shut off 50 years ago after Eunice Schmedlapp died. He nudged the bathroom door open and peered in. A bright moon shone through the window and revealed a carpeting of dust over the great marble bathtub. No water had run in here for decades. And yet the sound was unmistakable -- the rush of high-pressure water splashing into a pool, and very soft, a human sob.
Less Fun: Bob was standing in the hall outside the disused bathroom when he heard a voice say, "Hey!! It's me, Eunice Schmedlapp! My lousy brother-in-law wanted my share of the inheritance, so he cut my wrists in the bathtub to make my death look like a suicide. What a jerk!"
Since you're going to have to get most of the information across indirectly, it's probably best to keep your ghost's story and motivation relatively simple. "You killed me, now I'm going to kill you" is easy to get across. "My tax accountant was double-billing me in order to buy large amounts of high-risk technology stock in my name as revenge for my refusing to back his candidate's proposal for campaign finance reform" will be very difficult to work with.
What About The Breathing Characters?
The living characters' job is to react to the ghost, figure out what he wants, and address the terrible unfinished business that brought him back from the dead in the first place. Maybe they'll end up giving him what he wants so he can finally rest. Maybe they'll make sure he can never get what he wants so there's no reason for him to go around bullying people anymore. Maybe they'll fail and die horribly themselves. Whatever you like, so long as the ghost and his desires remain the focal point of the story.
Not to say you can't have your living characters fall in or out of love, have personal revelations or nervous breakdowns, become Better People, etc. It might improve your story to have them do these things, especially if you can find a thematic tie with the ghost's unfinished business. However, don't forget that your living characters are essentially secondary, even though they're the ones "onstage" 99% of the time.
A Thought About The Living & The Dead
Conventional wisdom tells us that nobody wants to hang around a ghost for long. If your living characters don't flee after the first time the ghost shows up, they must want something pretty badly. Maybe they're willing to do almost anything to make him go away for good, or maybe their motives are more complex. Perhaps the ghost has information not available anywhere else, or a character has such a powerful emotional connection with the dead person that he just can't keep away.
In any case, the opposing forces of desire and fear create good character angst and good fiction. The character who stands shivering before the door, knowing he must open it but dreading the Thing beyond, creates more suspense than the character who high-tails it out the window or who strolls right through the doorway. If you can, give your characters something to want from the ghost as well as something to fear.
A Word About Themes
Some writers like working themes into their stories and some don't. Ghost stories can be fun for people who like themes because they naturally lend themselves to metaphors. I.e., Hero Bob is a haunted man -- the ghost of Eunice Schmedlapp is following him around. Agent Mulder is a haunted man -- he has a lot of emotional hang-ups.
Here is a thumbnail sketch of a "theme" ghost story. I was reading the paper the other day when I saw an article about a landlord who hired an arsonist to burn out some tenants who couldn't pay their rent. The arsonist waited until the four children were home alone and started by burning the steps that led from the only exit. Neighbors called the fire department, but it was so badly in debt to its maintenance contractors that none of its equipment had been fixed in a long time. When the firefighters showed up, the pumper truck didn't work. The fire consumed the house and all four children died.
Now we have unfinished business: injustice and death out of season. We also have a theme: debt. The tenants owed the landlord, the fire department owed its equipment contractors, and now everybody owes an unpayable debt to the dead children. The rest of the story will be about who gets paid back for what. In fact I will call my imaginary story "Paybacks."
I'll probably start with something appalling happening to the landlord. Say he goes back to the burnt-out building intending to destroy evidence by burning the rest of it to the ground. Instead he meets four invisible little ghosts who claw and grab at him as if desperate to escape. The ghosts' hands burn like hot coals, and when his body is found there's a tiny handprint scorched in the middle of his forehead.
Enter Mulder and Scully. I think Scully is more uncomfortable with the idea of "owing people" than Mulder is, so I'll make this her story. I'll set it during the Cancer/Emily arc, when she's very needy. Maybe this is an MSR that deals with issues about intimacy and dependence. Although the romance and associated angst will add emotional impact, I'll probably keep the romance content to about 20%. I'll do this partly because I'm me and I'm a case file junkie, and partly to make sure this remains an identifiable ghost story. If your story is 80% romance and 20% ghost, you might just want to drop the ghost altogether, since he's probably only a distraction. You don't need a dead guy drifting around the set of "Gone With The Wind," do you? ("I don't know nothin' about buryin' no bodies . . ." Sorry . . . sorry. Never mind. . .)
The X-File in "Paybacks" will involve Mulder and Scully investigating in their usual way, being scoffed at by everyone but slowly discovering the Truth. The ghost story will be about a supernatural power dispensing justice. The romance will follow the usual formula: unacknowledged problem, catalyst, messy emotional conflict, soul-searching, warm fuzzies. These will be woven around the theme of debt and what it means to owe something to somebody. A good outline will help me keep these elements straight.
The story will end with something really atrocious happening to the arsonist -- even worse than what happened to the landlord. I will probably hint that the little ghosts are at rest after the arsonist bites it.
So there you have it -- everything I know about writing ghost stories. So shut off the lights and get to work, or better yet, find a nice, isolated campfire. Hold the flashlight so it shines up into your face and glare at everyone until they become very, very quiet. Now begin:
"It was 20 years ago, on a night just like this . . ."