Three Types of Ghost Story

Hill Woman in BlackI’ve been reading a few ghost stories lately. Most recently Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black (having already seen Nigel Kneale’s 1989 TV film, and the recent Hammer version), though I found it wanting in a way I didn’t with, say, Dark Matter, or my recent re-read of The Turn of the Screw. Thinking about why this was has led to a little bit of theorising about three types of ghost stories and how they work. So here goes.

The first, and purest, type of ghost story revels entirely in the protagonist’s horror of the supernatural. To make it work, the ordinariness of both the protagonist and their everyday world has to be clearly established, so when the supernatural makes its appearance, it feels truly weird and frightening. In this type of ghost story, the ‘ghost’ doesn’t even have to be a ghost, in the sense of a undead human spirit. M R James’s stories are probably the best example of this type, and his ‘ghosts’ are more often demons or elementals — embodied curses or prohibitions — and when they are human, as in, for instance, ‘Number 13’ or ‘Count Magnus’, they’re often supernaturally-tinged sorcerers or necromancers. This type of ghost story is all about technique — the way the supernatural is hinted at, built up, and finally revealed. The only emotion required of the protagonist is terror; details of his or her inner life just get in the way. You don’t get a lot of human insight from M R James’s stories, but you do get a good ghost story.

The Woman from The Woman in Black

from Nigel Kneale’s 1989 adaptation of The Woman in Black

The second type is as much about the protagonist’s horror at the display of human qualities, such as despair or sorrow, driven to such an extreme they’ve become supernatural. The Woman in Black is of this type. (The book is, anyway. I’d say the 2012 Hammer version, upping the cinematic shock value, turned the Woman into a far more demonic creature than she is in the book.) The bulk of conventional Victorian ghost stories are of this type, too. There, a ghost lingers beyond death because either it has been wronged, or has done wrong, and needs to set things right before it can move on. With The Woman in Black, there’s no longer that Victorian feeling of a moral order keeping certain dead souls from moving on till they’ve done what they’re supposed to; rather, it’s the Woman herself, so consumed by sorrow, anger and the need for revenge that she can’t pass on. The thing about this type of ghost story is that the protagonist is still looking on the ghost as something separate — as purely a horror. Things change slightly in the last chapter of The Woman in Black (the narrator comes to experience something of what made the Woman what she is) but not enough to take this story to the next type; the Woman is still seen as something exceptional and horrific, a twisted and rare form of human being, something to be pitied and feared, not empathised with.

The Haunting of Hill House coverThe third type is about how the protagonist’s own despair or sadness is brought to the fore by encounters with a ghost, until they experience it as a manifestation of their own inner world. The ghost still exists to embody (in a ghostly, disembodied way) supernaturally-distorted human qualities, but as much as the protagonist is haunted by the ghost, they’re haunted by something inside themselves too. The ghost and the protagonist’s inner life become entangled to the point where they’re indistinguishable. This is the type of story where the ghost needn’t exist at all — or it can exist in that Tzvetan Todorov hinterland where the story never makes it clear whether the ghost is a ‘real’ ghost or is just an externalisation of the protagonist’s own mental state. Listing examples, I find all my favourites: The Haunting of Hill House, The Influence, The Turn of the Screw.

It has to be said these three types have permeable walls. (Ghosts being ghosts, they’re not going to be stopped from wandering through walls anyway.) Jonathan Miller, after all, turned M R James’s ‘Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You’ from a ghost story of the first type to the third, by emphasising how the basic character-type of so many of M R James’s protagonists (academic, reserved, distant and somewhat disapproving of lesser human beings) is exactly what makes them so vulnerable to the terror of an isolating ghostly visitation.

Woman in Black 2012Overall, I tend to like examples from the first and third types. The first work best as short stories — shocks work best when kept short. (Cinematic ghost stories, more and more, tend to be overlong examples of the first type, with nothing but shock after shock after shock. I ended up fast-forwarding much of the second half of the 2012 Woman in Black, searching for morsels of story, because I got bored of being supposedly shocked.) The third type mixes the supernatural with the psychological, which is how I prefer it, and this tends to be best when done at length, with plenty of build-up to establish both the protagonist’s psychology and the ‘normality’ of their world.

The trouble, for me, with the second type, is it’s basically disapproving. It’s about marking certain humans (undead ones, admittedly) as separate from ‘us’ (as represented by the protagonist and the rest of a quietly-ordered, functioning society). It seems to be saying that most of us don’t experience extremes of emotion, particularly negative emotion, so we can safely regard those who do as alien, other, horrific. But saying this is also saying that as soon as we experience such extremes, we have to regard ourselves as now separate, alienated, and horrific, too. This is perhaps a very English thing, where reserve and social propriety can make for a ridigly-defined norm, where extreme emotion is met with an embarrassment and disapproval close to horror — meaning you have to repress such emotions, to the point of being haunted by them. Perhaps that’s why the English write so many ghost stories.

Comments (5)

  1. So in summary would your argument be that a ghost story should be one thing or the other? The ghost should either be other-worldy or connected directly to the ‘real world’ of the story?

    Its an interesting point of view. But isn’t the ‘Ring’ films an example of type two? We get to learn more of Sadeko’s origins and motivations as they go on (though its somewhat chicken-and-egg whether circumstances made her into an evil spirit or she started out that way), but she remains resolutely ‘foreign’ to the characters.

    ” Cinematic ghost stories, more and more, tend to be overlong examples of the first type, with nothing but shock after shock after shock.”

    I am half-seriously wondering if the disappearance of ghost trains from funfairs is because horror films have now usurped their function. They’re rides where shocks are repeatedly sprung at you, until you end up in the outside again. Now they have 3D they can even do the springing literally.

  2. Murray Ewing says:

    I suppose my main bugbear was that The Woman in Black seemed to be treating a distinctly human ghost as utterly monstrous, without any possibility of sympathy, and I wondered if that was part of the basic type of ghost story. Now you mention Ring… The first film is utterly one of my favourite films, but I only watched the sequels once and didn’t take to them (perhaps they’re due a re-watch). You’re right, Ring is, by my taxonomy, of the second sort, though one of the scenes I like in the film is of when the female reporter finally finds Sadako’s body in the well, and she caresses it, almost like a mother with a baby. That certainly implies sympathy, which was so lacking in The Woman in Black. Sadako, after all, was abused to a certain extent by parental figures (by putting her on show, exploiting her psychic powers, and so on), and the female reporter has (unwittingly) ‘abused’ her own child by exposing the boy to the haunted video. Perhaps I’m trying to plead the case for Ring to be more of the third type!

    Nice thought about ghost trains. I can imagine modern day teens sitting their way through a ghost train ride, eyes glued to mobile phone, ending the whole thing with a ‘Whatever…’

  3. ” You’re right, Ring is, by my taxonomy, of the second sort, though one of the scenes I like in the film is of when the female reporter finally finds Sadako’s body in the well, and she caresses it, almost like a mother with a baby.”

    Ah, but… with apologies for the SPOILERS should anyone be reading who’s yet to see the film, the scene’s misdirection. You’re led to believe at that point that Sadeko is a redeemable ghost, that once given a proper funeral her spirit can then be laid to rest, her malevolence spent. And yet then…

    ” The first film is utterly one of my favourite films, but I only watched the sequels once and didn’t take to them”

    ’Ring’ was a classic example of how anything any good which comes out in modern times is immediately copied to death. While I’d defend ’Ring 2’ and perhaps even ’Dark Water’ Nakata himself, was soon reduced to the ignoble fate of directing his own Hollywood remakes, essentially providing his own pastiche. ’Pulse’ was good and perhaps even ’The Eye’ (despite being a blatant mash-up of ’Ring’ and ’Sixth Sense’). But overall it was a case of “if I see one more slo-mo look-around to a ghostly woman or child…” Perhaps the chief thing about ’Ring’ was its style, which lent it to copycat crimes.

  4. Murray Ewing says:

    True, about the scene being misdirection, but the sympathy is at least directed towards her. I’d say it’s probably true of traumatised people (let alone psychic killer ghosts) generally that initial sympathy may not be met with instant redemption, so in that sense at least there’s some realism there.

    I seem to remember enjoying Dark Water. The one I keep meaning to re-watch is A Tale of Two Sisters.

    1. Not seen ‘Tale of Two Sisters’, I’m afraid!

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