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Your Favourite Ghost Story

escargot said:
It's a self-limiting genre innit; dead person returns from the grave, causes trouble. The only mystery might be how soon we find out who the ghost is.

When people tell me about a weird experience they've had I feel privileged to hear it. Much more interesting than any fiction.
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Yes and no, depends on your definition of a ghost. Some might be polts/spirits/"demons"/unknown things. There are many ways to vary the genre, though, generally it's conservative in terms of form: some kind of relatively mundane setting, with odd/weird/supernatural elements introduced subtly early on, ramping up to a climax. The spook may be vengeful or malignant, or may simply be weird or may even be ultimately tragic and inspire pathos.

There are also "stories that have ghosts in them" as opposed to "ghost stories" proper - as I roughly outlined above. MR James being the undisputed master here.

Some vary the form - both The Monkey's Paw and The Toll House by WW Jacobs spring to mind here. Everyone is no doubt familiar with the former.

https://americanliterature.com/author/w-w-jacobs/short-story/the-monkeys-paw

https://americanliterature.com/author/w-w-jacobs/short-story/the-toll-house
 
catseye said:
That's when the doubts start to creep in when someone has told me a 'true' ghost story - if there's a narrative. The most compelling stories are those on which nobody has tried to impose structure. As soon as we get to the 'it is said....' bit, I switch off.
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Or very little structure - this happened a few years ago/when I was 8 or 9/one June in the seventies, a brief description of setting and context (occasionally more involved if necessary - such as the layout of a building) followed by a brief description of the incident or incidents, again sometimes these might be longer if the event demands it. There might be some follow up comments or concluding thoughts.

Stories that sound too poetic or like a good yarn are read flags. The Roman soldier made of spheres comes to mind, or the women on her own in an unfamiliar isolated house with "something in the woods come to mind immediately.
 
catseye said:
That's when the doubts start to creep in when someone has told me a 'true' ghost story - if there's a narrative. The most compelling stories are those on which nobody has tried to impose structure. As soon as we get to the 'it is said....' bit, I switch off.
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Spot on. It is usually quite easy to spot the fiction amongst 'true' Reddit and Facebook paranormal experiences as the post is more about them and their lives than the actual event. That and the convenient ending @Steven alludes to, the "I was later told a Victorian maid had got pregnant from an affair with the squire and killed herself on the landing"-type ending that completes the fake narrative.
 
Ogdred Weary said:
Written jump scares? The barbarians are no longer at the gates, they are here and we are them.

Truly the End of the World cannot come soon enough.
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It can be done. :nods:

Very rarely, I've read a passage that's so shocking I've had to put the book down and think what the... for a minute.

This happened after one particular sentence in Catch-22. After a certain incident time almost stands still. Masterful writing.

The incident sets off another and it's all very traumatic, which is, you might eventually realise, ironic in the overall context.

I sometimes see customers reading Catch-22 and will congratulate them on their good taste, and ask them if they've had a shock yet.
No spoilers of course. :wink2:
 
Ogdred Weary said:
Yes and no, depends on your definition of a ghost. Some might be polts/spirits/"demons"/unknown things. There are many ways to vary the genre, though, generally it's conservative in terms of form: some kind of relatively mundane setting, with odd/weird/supernatural elements introduced subtly early on, ramping up to a climax. The spook may be vengeful or malignant, or may simply be weird or may even be ultimately tragic and inspire pathos.

There are also "stories that have ghosts in them" as opposed to "ghost stories" proper - as I roughly outlined above. MR James being the undisputed master here.

Some vary the form - both The Monkey's Paw and The Toll House by WW Jacobs spring to mind here. Everyone is no doubt familiar with the former.

https://americanliterature.com/author/w-w-jacobs/short-story/the-monkeys-paw

https://americanliterature.com/author/w-w-jacobs/short-story/the-toll-house
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If we're talking about hearing acquaintances' personal accounts of weirdness, there's no need to impose a taxonomy of supernatural beings. They had a strange experience which they kindly share, I gape admiringly in the hope of eliciting more details and we agree that the world is a rum old place.
 
escargot said:
It can be done. :nods:

Very rarely, I've read a passage that's so shocking I've had to put the book down and think what the... for a minute.

This happened after one particular sentence in Catch-22. After a certain incident time almost stands still. Masterful writing.

The incident sets off another and it's all very traumatic, which is, you might eventually realise, ironic in the overall context.

I sometimes see customers reading Catch-22 and will congratulate them on their good taste, and ask them if they've had a shock yet.
No spoilers of course. :wink2:
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I read it a little over 20 years ago, loved the book. Can't recall that moment I'm afraid.
 
escargot said:
If we're talking about hearing acquaintances' personal accounts of weirdness, there's no need to impose a taxonomy of supernatural beings. They had a strange experience which they kindly share, I gape admiringly in the hope of eliciting more details and we agree that the world is a rum old place.
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I was talking about fiction only.

I'm weary of imposing a taxonomy on anomalous phenomena too, who is to say where one ends and another begins?
 
Ogdred Weary said:
I was talking about fiction only.

I'm weary of imposing a taxonomy on anomalous phenomena too, who is to say where one ends and another begins?
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Yup, exactly.
Where I live there's no demand for demons. We do hear about the other stuff though, like polts.
 
escargot said:
Have to say that no ghost or supernatural novel has had that effect on me.
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Is this an apples/oranges comparison? The affect of supernatural fiction is distinct, I would not expect the same from a literary novel. taking place, largely, in our reality, however heightened or exaggerated.
 
escargot said:
Yup, exactly.
Where I live there's no demand for demons. We do hear about the other stuff though, like polts.
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Americans are very fond of the term, reflecting their country's Christian fundamentalist roots perhaps.

I suppose it's a way of categorising spooky entities that were never "alive" and therefore are not "dead". I'm not keen on the term at all.

NB - whatever ghosts are, I personally don't think they are the dead, but the term "ghost" is convenient and widely used.
 
Ogdred Weary said:
Is this an apples/oranges comparison? The affect of supernatural fiction is distinct, I would not expect the same from a literary novel. taking place, largely, in our reality, however heightened or exaggerated.
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Perhaps we should ask @Steven to clarify whether they meant fictional or anecdotal ghost stories.
From their first post it's evident that they mean the second sort, i.e. people's personal accounts, rather than literary ones.
 
escargot said:
Perhaps we should ask @Steven to clarify whether they meant fictional or anecdotal ghost stories.
From their first post it's evident that they mean the second sort, i.e. people's personal accounts, rather than literary ones.
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I agree that Steven was seems to be asking about non-fictional ghost stories, just the discussion seems to have moved on.

I have often enjoyed many real or IHTM type stories, whether they be ghosts/cryptids/UFOs etc in much the same manner that I enjoy fiction. I'm not casting aspersions on (most) of these stories, just that there is an intersection and it is interesting.
 
Steven said:
Whatever's gone wrong with the thread, it's my fault. :D I struggle to make myself clear much of the time, unfortunately. In this instance, I was hoping for both kinds of story, but failed to mention this. :(
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Anything that gets people talking is a good thread. The worst ones are the ones which ask a question which only have one word answers. Dialogue is what a good forum thread should evoke.
 
catseye said:
I'm with @escargot I love made-up ghost stories of the Classic Era (M R James, et al) but find modern ghost stories can be a bit too 'try hard'. Not enough weirdness and too many jump-scares or too much gore. Sometimes less is more. But real ghost stories, in all their mundanity, are far more frightening.
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I like L T C Rolt's ghost stories 'in the style of' M R James, but I'm not sure I'd call them pure ghost stories - supernatural or occult seems a better description of most of them. A ghost to me needs to be a manifestation of a deceased human.
 
As for IHTM tales my clear favourite - and I've name checked this before on some other thread, so apologies for the dejavu - is the one from a one-off poster who related a tale of when he and a few recently graduated friends were touring the South West of England. They were all staying in a hostel and were sharing a room. They were chatting away and getting ready to kip one night and someone switched off the light. Then, almost immediately, there was a stunned cry from one of the party and they noticed a sillhouette in the middle of the room - but when thery switched the light on there was no-one there.

There was some speculation, from the ensuing discussion that maybe this was a known local sex predator whose modus operandi was entering people's homes and who was active in the area at that time - and who maybe had been hiding under the bed the whole time previous to being seen and fleeing....

As for fictional stories, well this is a little harder as there are so many contenders..

H.G Wells;'s The Red Room is a real classic of ambience - and it's not the sort of thing one usually associates the supposed rationalist-technician Wells with either.

Then there is Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. James has a notoriously circumloqatious writing style that is all too easy to mock - but when used in the service of psychological horror (which is what this is) really redeems itself. The scene where the governess slowly becomes aware of a figure standing and watching her on the bank of the other side of a river is a masterpiece of slow-burn dread.

Then there's a short story by L.P Hartley (of The Go Between fame) called Daddy in the Lift. This is more a bit of weird fiction, than an obvious ghost story really. A child is staying with his parents in a London hotel one winter and he dreams of his father returning in a lift.... Well, you just have to read it. it's a sustained exercise in dreamlike creepiness. (I came across this in a collectiion called Great London Tales of Terror).

What all my stories, non-fiction and fiction, have in common is that they all tease you with a possible psychological way of deciphering what's going on, but lose none of their eerieness for all that.
 
Zeke Newbold said:
What all my stories, non-fiction and fiction, have in common is that they all tease you with a possible psychological way of deciphering what's going on, but lose none of their eerieness for all that.
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Atmosphere used to build tension. That's also my favourite kind of fictional ghost story.
 
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