In the context of storytelling, a character’s ghost is something from their past that haunts them in the present; that affects how they live their life, makes them see the world in a certain way. It’s often a loss, or a trauma. But it can be any event that has changed the character fundamentally.
A ghost can be a lot of things. A memory, a daydream. A secret. Guilt, grief, anger. But in my experience, most times they’re just what we want to see… Most times, a ghost is a wish.
The Haunting of Hill House 01.01, Mike Flanagan
So, a ghost affects how the character sees the world—often, the character believes something untrue, and a positive character arc would involve them learning the truth of this lie.
In my book on submission, one of my main characters is haunted by the ghost of her family abandoning her; this leads her to believe a lie, that getting revenge on her family will make her happy. The truth she learns over the course of the novel is that revenge won’t make her happy, but finding a new family might.
I think real people have their ghosts, too. Things in their history that have repercussions throughout their life. I think of the death of my grandmother, affecting how I think about myself to this day. I can’t pin down what lies this has made me believe, nor can I say with any certainty that I have completed any positive character arc. Real life is not so easy to analyse as stories, I fear. Still, there’s a reason therapists always ask about your childhood.
The horror genre is rife with literal ghosts which double as metaphorical ghosts: Henry James’ Turn of the Screw, its ghosts doubling as a representation of the children’s trauma (heavily implied to be a result of abuse); Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, with three separate ghosts representing different things Scrooge must face; Alison Rumfitt’s Tell Me I’m Worthless, a house haunted by the rising wave of fascism in England. I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on Greek Tragedy and horror movies, and one of the key points of overlap was the way a literal haunting could mirror a more spiritual one; more often than not, a ghost in a literal house was a proxy for a generational trauma in a familial house.
I’m writing a sort of ghost story at the moment (don’t tell my agent), and hoping to read a lot of horror in October as inspiration. My tentative reading list is:
Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (reread)
Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca (reread)
Bill Woods’ Let’s Split Up
Brooke Archer’s Hearts Still Beating
If you have any more recommendations, let me know. Or why not tell me what it is from your past that haunts you? After all, ghost stories are best when they’re shared.
