I’ve always enjoyed a good ghost story. However, some critics
argue that ghost stories, like many horror stories, are inherently formulaic:
the protagonist enters the spooky house/mansion/castle, they witness strange
happenings, not believing them at first, until ultimately being forced to
believe. But the ghost story is more than just an excuse to describe scary
noises and raised hackles. The ghost story, at its best, gives us a glimpse
into the character’s guilty conscience (how many ghosts are, in fact, looking
for revenge?) or leaves us with questions about our own mortality. Here are
five ghost stories that do a great deal with that formula, enough to go beyond
it.
Elizabeth Sanderson, a single mother, faces one of her
greatest fears: the disappearance of her son Tommy. Police are searching for
him. Her mother is trying her best to support her. Her daughter Kate is acting
out. Angry comments are being left of her social media page. Paul Tremblay does
a great job of displaying a mother desperately trying to keep going, despite
the police turning up no leads and the journal pages she discovers show her
that she may not have known her child as well as she thought. She doesn’t show
the skepticism many characters in ghost stories do; the possible ghost of her
son is another connection, besides his journal pages, that she can latch on to.
Along with the appearance of this specter, there are also
many other social dynamics at play, from the mother reminiscing about her
troubled ex-husband, to Kate wondering what has happened to her brother, to Tommy’s
friends who may have something to hide. What made this story so memorable to me
is that the supernatural part is almost unnecessary for me to enjoy it; simply watching
a compelling mystery unfold and how the characters deal with their own grief
and feelings of responsibility was enough.
The residents of Black Springs are under a horrible curse,
brought upon them by the spirit of the Black Rock Witch, who still wanders the
town, her eyes and lips sewn shut to contain her dark power. The residents have
acclimated to her visitations and even have a high-tech security team called
Hex protect the town by keeping tabs on the witch and making sure news of her
existence never reaches beyond their town. Unfortunately, there’s the Internet.
The Black Rock Witch is, by herself, a scary horror villain,
a silent, corpse-like woman, eyes and lips sewn shut, basically free to wander
the town as she sees fit. However, she’s not really the antagonist, and that’s
what has made this story interesting, along with the novel idea of a secret
curse trying to exist in our information age. Some may argue that the
antagonists are the rebellious teens who manage to upload a video of the witch
and get it out to the public. Others might argue that it’s the superstitious
townspeople who let their fear go too far. Ultimately, there are many
responsible for what ultimately happens to the citizens of Black Springs.
In Cleveland, Ohio, the Orsk furniture superstore, part of a
retail chain that sells inexpensive Swedish furniture, is being vandalized
every night and the security cameras have caught nothing. A crew volunteers to
work the night shift to hopefully catch the perpetrators in the act, but some of
them believe that there is something supernatural at work. And of course they’re
right.
The book definitely follows the haunted house formula as the
crew is trapped within the haunted store and tries desperately to escape, but
what makes this book stand out for me is the location. By setting this in a
superstore and having the protagonists be workers for that store, the book is
able to explore the angst felt by many in minimum wage jobs who might hate
going to work and are wondering what had gone wrong in their life. Think a
cross between Ghost Adventures and Office Space. I also advise reading the
physical copy for the illustrations of the furniture/torture devices provided
by illustrator Michael Roglaski.
This is the book that let me discover Joe Hill, the pseudonym
for Joe Hillstrom King, who could have lived his literary life as Stephen King,
Jr. Far from being just a recycled King, Joe Hill adds a great deal of the
fantastic to his stories, particularly to this ghost story where a ghost who
lives in a dead man’s suit is purchased by aging rocker Judas Coyne to add to
his collection of diabolical bric-a-brac. Unfortunately, the suit contains the
vengeful spirit of Craddock McDermott, stepfather to a groupie that commits
suicide.
Far from simply moving furniture, McDermott attacks the mind
and the victim might be playing with a gun or knife in a way that is obviously
not safe. A ghost that can have you doubting your own actions is indeed a scary
adversary, but the novel also lets us explore what makes Coyne tick. Throughout
the novel, he goes beyond the aging rock star cliché to show a character that,
despite his share of demons, is someone the reader can root for, especially
after the real relationship between rocker, groupie, and vengeful spirit is
revealed, which is also an emotional punch in the stomach.
Admittedly, I have a special place in my heart for this
book. It was not only the book that let me discover Stephen King. It was the
book that, as a high school senior, let me discover horror fiction. What really
drew me into this book was that it was more than the creepy goings-on at the
Overlook Hotel. What this book shows is how important the characters, the
victims, are to a good ghost story.
The story of a family stranded at a Colorado hotel and whose
patriarch descends into madness became a movie directed by Stanley Kubrick, one
with the author himself actually hated, but both movie and book use the
claustrophobic atmosphere of a snowed-in hotel and show how an overall loving
father can ultimately lose everything.
Danny Torrance, the boy with the titular Shining,
understands what the ghosts are before any of the adults do, but what really
pulled me into the book was watching the degenerative slide of the father Jack
Torrance. The reader knows that Jack loves his family but is also deeply
flawed. An alcoholic with anger management issues, he constantly bears the
responsibility for the situation he puts his family in. The Overlook Hotel, and
the haunts who reside there, are able to use these psychological flaws, from Jack’s
crippling self-doubt to his explosive anger directed at others, to chip away at
his defenses, forcing him to turn that anger on his family as he slips fully
into madness. No other ghost story in recent memory has such a tragic figure
turned antagonist as Jack Torrance.
Got any ghost stories to suggest? Write to me at scarylibrarian43@gmail.com and
share them.
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