A Christmas Carol: Nature of the Ghost

Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is an enduring classic, of course, and the definition or nature of the ghost I think appeals to most people’s definition of one.  Jacob Marley’s ghost describes what it means to be a spirit on page twenty: “’It is required of every man…that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death.  It is doomed to wander through the world – oh, woe is me! – and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!’”  I think this fits the typical definition of a ghost, because it’s the idea that spirits that have some kind of unfinished business must remain on Earth.  According to Marley, a spirit’s job is to travel the Earth and share its happiness with others, but if it doesn’t, then it must tour the Earth forever in death, watching it all, forced to miss out on the happiness it could’ve had.  The only part that seems different to me than the common definition of a ghost is the fact that the spirit must tour the Earth.  In some of the ghost stories we’ve read, like The Amityville Horror, The Shining, etc., spirits have been confined to the house or building they haunt, and I think that tends to be the case for the typical ghost.

            I really like the idea that ghosts are forced to wander the world, but I feel like it wouldn’t necessarily apply to all ghosts.  It does to Marley, and would to Scrooge, based on their lives, though, of course.  The reader learns Marley’s life was a lot like Scrooge’s on page twenty-one: “…My spirit never walked beyond our counting-house – mark me! – in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me!’”  Because Marley was so confined in his life – so obsessed with money – it makes sense why he would have to wander the Earth – to see what other parts of life he missed out on.  But I feel like there would be other types of people in which that punishment wouldn’t make sense.  My initial reaction as I read this part was, What about the people who are too worldly?  Surely they exist.  I’m thinking about the people who get too swept up by everything – they travel the world and get caught up in every little thing it offers to the point where they miss out on important interpersonal relationships, or intimacy with family or even spouses.  These people shouldn’t be doomed to wander the Earth forever, as that’s basically how they spent their life and it didn’t help them with their particular plight.  Instead, they should have a more “confined” afterlife.  Perhaps be destined to follow their spouse or family members around, or be stuck in a regular family household or something.  Something that enriches their depths with people rather than a broad awareness of Earth.  Just something I thought of as I read.

            Another idea in A Christmas Carol that ties into the nature of the ghost is on page twenty-five.  After Marley’s Ghost leaves, Scrooge witnesses phantoms drifting outside his window, all moaning and full of misery.  I found it interesting how Scrooge realizes why they’re so full of misery on page twenty-five.  “The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power forever.”  In ways this also sounds like a typical definition of a ghost.  The idea that ghosts try to contact humans, but always have difficulty doing it, or can’t at all.  What I find interesting about this definition, though, is that the ghost tries to do it for good, to benefit people.  In most of the stories we’ve read for this class, the spirits tried to antagonize or hurt the living, although there were a couple exceptions, like in Grave’s End (well, we don’t know for sure if the spirits were benevolent or not, but they appeared to be) and The Lovely Bones (Susie, as a spirit, wants to contact people to comfort them).

And, there you have it, a common take on the ghost with a couple tweaks that makes it different.  Probably a good idea for writers of the ghost story – take an old or “regular” definition and add your own twist.

SOURCE:

Dickens, Charles.  A Christmas Carol.  New York: Penguin Group, 2008.

Paranormal Activity: The Camera Technique

I love this movie.  Probably one of my all-time favorites.  Loved it the first time I saw it, and even though I knew what happened the second time, I still enjoyed it.

I think I like this movie so much because it feels real, like it could actually happen.  This mirrors what Scott said about what makes people enjoy a horror story: the realness of it, as if it could happen to them or somebody they know.  It’s that realness that freaks them out and makes them want to read or watch more.   I definitely got that feeling with Paranormal Activity, and I think a big part of that is because of the camera technique – the idea that it’s being filmed by somebody who’s part of the story.  I think this technique works so well for horror, because it makes the action feel real, like it was really caught on tape by somebody.  And this movie puts that to great use.

Of course, it also can be a bit of a detriment at times.  There were moments (I’ll point one out in a moment) when it seemed odd to me that they’d be filming, but I think it definitely works overall, since the character Micah films because he wants to capture the paranormal activity that has been plaguing him and his girlfriend, Katie, so to speak.  Therefore, when Katie screams off-screen at one point, it didn’t bother me that he picked up the camera and ran to try to film any kind of ghostly action that may be occurring.  Of course, it turned out to be a spider at that moment, but the scene was a nice reminder that they’re filming for a very good reason.

This movie also tackles the “Why don’t they leave?” question at least somewhat well, which is one I’ve been having problems with lately with a lot of the books we’ve been reading in our horror class.  It’s still not without holes, but I think the concept overall is pretty effective: they can’t leave (or at least there wouldn’t be any point in leaving) because the ghost isn’t in the house; it follows Katie wherever she goes.  I can buy this for awhile, but like I said, eventually it still became a bit of a problem for me.  I know Micah’s in love with Katie, but at some point I think they’d try the desperate measure of leaving – even if just for the blind hope that it really is something tied to the house.  You might as well give it a shot, right?  Things got so spooky, I figure they’d be running to friends’ for family, and surrounding themselves with other people, if not merely to feel more comfortable and supported.  But, of course, more people would make the story feel less creepy even if the strange activity continued.

By this time in the movie (towards the end), it also felt odd to me that Micah would still be filming.  I mean, they’ve caught so much activity by this time, what would be the point of any more, especially now that they’re lives seem seriously in jeopardy?  In particular, I’m thinking of the scene when Micah’s talking to Katie on the bed, and she’s speaking in an almost dreamlike state (overall, a very awesome, spooky scene).  By that point it’s obvious that she’s possessed, or at the very least something is horribly wrong with her.  Not only would I not have the camera running, but I’d be fleeing from the place like there was no tomorrow – or at least trying to get this woman to a hospital or something to be checked on (whether or I not even believed she could be helped by doctors).  No matter what, the last thing I’d be doing is filming her and then agreeing not to go anywhere, but to go to sleep, which would totally not be possible at that height of the freakiness.  Then again, that’s my opinion.  But the spook factor of the movie was so high in general that these scenes didn’t bother me that much.  I anticipate other people having differing opinions on that point, though.

Grave's End: Why Don't They Leave?

It was interesting and fun reading this book after The Amityville Horror, and although it’s of course perhaps impossible to know if it’s truly real, it certainly felt a lot more believable to me than The Amityville Horror.  I think it’s because it’s quieter: the things that happen in the house are stretched over a much longer period of time, and the events don’t really escalate in craziness like they did in The Amityville Horror.  They went more in cycles: a few creepy things, then nothing, then a few more creepy things, etc.  Also, even though lots of different things happened in the house (floating objects, “suffocating dreams,” balls of light, images of people, “the Mist,” etc.), for some reason it didn’t feel like it was too much.  Again, I think the reason is because everything was stretched out over time and the “hauntings” were a lot tamer compared to the ridiculous things that happen in The Amityville Horror (green slime, red-eyed pig, etc.).  Then again, the Lutzes thought a demon lived in their house, whereas Elaine and her family always thought they were just regular ghosts or spirits, not necessarily malevolent.  So that can supply a reason for the difference in the hauntings’ nature.  Still, like I said, I found Grave’s End more believable.

Again, something I found hard to believe – like in The Amityville Horror – was the family not leaving the house.  Sure, there were financial reasons and the hauntings weren’t as intense as in The Amityville Horror – at least for the most part – but in my opinion the events were still more than creepy enough that you’d think the family would run away as fast they could.  At least, that’s definitely what I would’ve done.  Like I said, even though Elaine had financial issues, there were still places she and her family could’ve gone and stayed.  So what if they’d be cramped?  A cramped living space is still head-over-heels better than experiencing those freaky things on a somewhat regular basis.  Seriously, how did they ever sleep in that house?  After experiencing only a couple of those things I don’t think I’d ever be able to sleep there again.  Even if I were in the same room with the other family members, like the family did sometimes.  Just doesn’t make sense to me. 

Plus, Elaine is, well, sort of a wimp (not that I wouldn’t be in her position).  At one point she explains how she feels bad about always having to run to a man when things get tough, she apologizes to her daughters for being too clingy and overprotective, she gets courage to ask for a divorce after twenty-two years, etc.  She also says how she was always more freaked out about the place than her daughters.  This is what made me think she’d leave in a heartbeat, so it was another reason I didn’t buy her and her family staying there that whole time.

However, I have to admit that Elaine does give at least one good reason for why they never left, in my opinion.  Her reason is that her daughters grew up in that place, so they became used to it and didn’t want to leave, whereas the hauntings always freaked Elaine out, because she had lived most of her life in regular, “non-haunted” houses.  This works well to convince me later in the novel, but there’s still the fact that these hauntings existed when they first moved in.  And, obviously, they didn’t run from the place even after the original hauntings.  It also negates the reason they give later for not leaving because they have so many friends.  They wouldn’t have had friends when they first moved in, either.  Like I’ve been saying, I just don’t buy that they wouldn’t run the hell away from the place after experiencing just a couple of those creepy hauntings.  And lots of them happened overall!

The Amityville Horror: Similar Elements to Other “Haunted House” Novels

I think what’s most interesting about this book is that even though it’s supposed to be real, it contains so many of the same “elements” as some fictitious “haunted house” books.  And in this post, I’d like to explore some of those elements.

One is the idea of a certain place in the haunted house that is “particularly haunted.”  What’s interesting is that this book has a few (rather than just one).  Strange things always seem to happen in the sewing room (flies accumulate, the window slams on one of the kids’ hands, etc.), and there always seems to be something odd affiliated with the boathouse and the red-walled room in the basement.  In Hell House, a particularly evil energy emanates from the chapel.  In A Haunting on Hill House, it’s the nursery.

Another is the object that keeps moving or shifting position.  In this book it’s the four-foot ceramic lion.  It reminded me a lot of The Shining with the lion-sculpted shrub (although all the shrubs moved and what not).

The house’s history also gives possible explanations for the hauntings, like in a lot of novels.  For example, on page 122 George unearths information about the house being built on land the Shinnecock Indians used to enclose the sick and dying.  He also uncovers information about the past owners of the house performing Satanic rituals in the red-walled room involving slaughtering animals, such as pigs.  The history of fictitious places in horror novels also offer possible reasons behind the hauntings, too, like the murders in the suite of The Overlook in The Shining, or the intense debauchery Belasco and his guests participate in in his house.

There are also lots of potential explanations for the hauntings in general, something I plan on exploring in my final project.  In addition to the histories of the house, the weather is sometimes a potential reason (they have frequent storms that could explain why the windows and doors are blown open).  Father Mancuso’s account of the hauntings (he becomes very sick whenever he even thinks about the house) is also called into question.  On page 255 Father Ryan “wanted to know if Father Mancuso thought the recurring affliction could be psychosomatic.  Wasn’t it possible that his emotional state could be influencing his rash of illnesses?”  George also experiences some things like being levitated or his wife levitating – all while he’s in a “dream-like state.”  So who’s to say he wasn’t just dreaming?  To draw the similarities to fictitious stories, The Haunting of Hill House offers a few potential reasons, too: not only a history, but also the odd architecture of the house might explain why doors open and close.  Not to mention the main character, Eleanor, exhibits signs of not being totally sane, which makes you wonder if you can even trust her account of what’s happening in the house at all (similar to Father Mancuso’s potential psychosomatic experience and George in his “dream-like state”).

Even though there’s no scientist in The Amityville Horror like there is in A Haunting of Hill House and Hell House, George states how he thinks it can all be explained by science on page 123.  When asked by his wife Kathy if the house is haunted, he replies, “’No way…I don’t believe in ghosts.  Besides, everything that’s happened around here must have a logical and scientific explanation to it.’”

The Amityville Horror also makes use of the “imaginary friend” concept.  The younger daughter, Missy, sees and speaks with Jodie, a pig who is supposedly her imaginary friend – until George and the rest of his family see the pig outside the window in her room.  George also sees the pig (or pig-related things) a few other times.  This type of thing is used a lot in fiction.  A couple movies I can think of are The Others, in which the young daughter sees a boy around the house, a sort of “ghostly presence.”  Even though we didn’t watch it for this horror course, The Exorcist also employs the same idea.  The main character, a young girl, has an imaginary friend who turns out to be Satan, who’s possessing her.

There’s even a similarity to the movie Ghostbusters in The Amityville Horror.  In the movie, there’s a green blob of a ghost that leaves slime on whatever it touches.  There’s no green ghost in The Amityville Horror, but green slime makes an appearance on page 226: “On every wall in the hall were green gelatinous spots, oozing down from the ceiling to the floor, settling in shimmering pools of green slime.”

Even though this post has been mainly comparing this supposedly true story to fictional stories, I find it interesting that there are also a few similarities between this book and another allegedly true “haunted house” account, Grave’s End.  Examples include the fact the houses were built over a burial ground, they both contain a well, etc.  So The Amityville Horror contains a lot of elements from both fictitious and nonfiction accounts, I guess.  Makes you wonder if it’s real after all or just a hoax.  Who knows?

Works Cited

Anson, Jay.  The Amityville Horror.  New York: Pocket Books, 2005.

The Lovely Bones: A Few Things

I hate to say I found this book kind of boring, but that’s personal taste, of course.  I think I find it so because there wasn’t much mystery going on.  We already know who the murderer is, so that mystery’s off the table.  I have to admit that as I read, I was hoping the main tension of the book was going to be how the murderer, Mr. Harvey, is discovered.  That would’ve worked fine by me (and would’ve been unique as far as I’m concerned).  I thought that author Alice Sebold would have him almost be caught many times, have us on the edge of our seats as Suzie’s family barely misses discovering an essential clue and what not – and then I imagined finally being satisfied when they nab that damn bastard in the end.  But, sadly, most of the book chronicled the disintegration of Suzie’s grieving family.  BOR-ING.  I wanted some more action and close-calls, but people who enjoy more of a quieter, emotional ride will find this book enjoyable.

I want to draw an interesting parallel between this book and the movie The Others.  Like The Others, the protagonist of this book, Susie, is a ghost.  The protags from both the movie and the book also share another similarity: they need to make a realization in order to be get peace and be set free.  In The Others, Grace Stewart and her kids needed to realize that they’re dead and that the “intruders” in their house are living people who have moved in.  Even though they eventually decide to fight for their house, the ghosts at least come to terms with the fact that they’re dead.  Susie, on the other hand, will be set free with a different realization, as Franny in heaven tells her on page 120: she needs to stop wondering why she was killed instead of somebody else, stop wondering what’s going on with her loved ones and how they’re feeling on earth, etc.  Once she lets that emotional baggage go, she can finally be set free.  I thought that was an interesting twist, but it makes sense when it comes to ghost stories, as a common “trope” of ghost stories are that ghosts have some kind of “unfinished business” or “emotional turmoil” they weren’t able to solve in life.

I thought the villain of The Lovely Bones, Mr. Harvey, was interesting, too.  He’s somewhat sympathetic, which I think is important for all villains in stories these days, so all us writers need to remember that!  Don’t get me wrong.  As readers we hate Mr. Harvey for the whole book, but he becomes more three-dimensional and human (perhaps making him even scarier) when we see how he hates killing people (even though he does it) and that he’d rather kill animals than people because they’re at least “lesser beings.”  Either way, he’s still killing, so obviously readers are going to hate him, but we can at least empathize on a small level with the fact that he hates doing it and would like to “minimize” his killings if at all possible.

The Others: A Pill of Trouble

            I really enjoyed this movie, especially the séance scene at the end.  What an awesome twist, and I have to admit I totally didn’t see it coming.

            During this movie a very small part stood out to me from the standpoint of a writer/storyteller.  It’s the scene where the housekeeper gives Grace Stewart (Nicole Kidman) a pill for her migraines, but this is around the time in the movie when the housekeepers are acting a bit odd.  Therefore, Grace is suspicious of this pill, presumably thinking the housekeepers are pulling one over on her, so we see her pour it out in the sink when the housekeeper is gone from the room.  For a horror movie, this little snippet kind of works double-time.  For one, it can offer or at least suggest a potential reason for the hauntings (something I want to write my final paper on – the different types of ways to suggest a potential reason for the hauntings in a horror story) – perhaps the housekeepers have been messing with Grace, giving her pills that muddle her mind.  Or perhaps they have something else in mind entirely.  However, it’s also just an example of regular old great storytelling that can be used in any story – a small hint of potential trouble.  At the end of the movie, I thought back to that moment and realized – “hey, that pill really didn’t have anything to do with anything.”  But what made that part so effective is that it got the viewer wondering if it did – if it all came down to those pills or if the housekeeper was purposefully messing around with Grace for whatever reason, even if it didn’t even tie directly into the hauntings.  Like I said, it was like a small “dose of potential trouble.”  I think this is something for us storytellers to keep in mind no matter what genre we write in.  Even if there’s a possibility for trouble, why not hint at it, even if it doesn’t wind up holding any water?  It will keep the viewer/reader guessing, not to mention intrigued about the possibility of trouble.  Like Michael Arnzen has told us many times, “Trouble is interesting.”  So perhaps it’s always a good idea to keep that in mind and add a little “pill of trouble” to our stories from time to time (I’m coining that phrase lol).

            I also wanted to add another point about this.  It’s also much better for these “pills of trouble” to be of action rather than a character’s internalization.  In a story I’ve been writing, I realized that I sometimes insert these “pills” via a character’s thoughts, which is not nearly as effective as action.  For example, it would have been far worse for Grace to have simply wondered to herself (though, obviously, it would be tougher to do this in a movie than a book), perhaps in a room by herself, “Hmmm…those ‘migraine’ pills – I wonder if they’re not what they seem.  Maybe they’re not really migraine pills, but something bad – some kind of poison the housekeeper is giving us!”  But that’s not nearly as effective as having her be suspicious when the housekeeper actually gives her the pill, and having Grace outwardly question them before dumping them into the sink.  It feels like much more of a real threat when it’s part of the action than when she’s just thinking it.  Plus, it makes the reader wonder about the nature of the pills – makes them think about what they could really be, which is far more effective than the character wondering.

            I wanted to bring up another part of the movie just because I was a bit confused by it.  It’s the part where the father comes home from the war.  This part seemed odd and kind of like it was just stuck in there to me based on the way Grace finds him.  She’s out in the woods near the house and randomly runs into her husband – all by himself.  As a viewer, I was like, “Oh – come ON.”  It just seemed way too random and kind of silly – how could he be all by himself so close to the house?  Of course, by the end of the movie I guess it makes sense, since Grace, her kids, and her husband (I think) are all dead, so theoretically their spirits (including his) can go and be wherever they want, but I don’t feel like the addition of the husband added much to the story.  Maybe I missed something, but instead it made me cry foul at that part, which is obviously not what you want to do unless you have a VERY good reason for it, and I don’t feel like this was a good reason.  Could be just me, though.  Did anyone else find that part far-fetched (even though it eventually did make some sort of sense) or kind of silly?

The Shining: Wasps, Wasps, and More Wasps

I enjoyed The Shining on the whole.  As with a lot of Stephen King books I read, I felt like it dragged for a good portion of the book, as he goes into excruciating (and sometimes seemingly needless) detail to the point where I just want the story to move forward.  But toward the end, I was all in, especially since the whole novel had built up to the moment when Jack Torrance would go insane and swing that sledgehammer around.  I was hungrily waiting for that moment, wanting to witness the steps that led up to it, not to mention the actual event itself.

However, despite all the supernatural and admittedly pretty cool stuff going on in this book, the part that “horrified” me the most wasn’t any of that.  Not to mention it happened early in the novel.  It was the part where Jack is ripping away the rotted shingles on the roof, gets stung by the wasp, and pretty much prays that that the rest of the wasps don’t swarm him.  Luckily, they don’t, but it’s the concept that Jack may have killed himself if they did that really stabbed fear into my heart.  After getting stung, he thinks about how he probably would have hurled himself off the top of the Overlook out of fear if the wasps were stinging him – how he wouldn’t even be really thinking, just reacting out of pure fear.  I found my horror at this point interesting for two reasons.  The first is that, like I said, this is such a normal thing.  There are no supernatural elements, it hits so close to home.  This could easily happen to me on the roof of my own house – like right now, if I happened to be pulling off rotted shingles.  The other thing is that this terrible demise doesn’t even really happen.  I was horrified purely based on the concept.  I have to admit that was pretty cool, and it taught me a lesson in horror and storytelling: sometimes you don’t even have to show something horrible happening.  Just the idea that it could happen or even the concept by itself can be horrifying.  Something to remember when trying to entertain those damn readers.  Interesting…

On another note, there are obviously lots of allusions to wasps in this book.  Not only does Jack Torrance discover a hive on the roof and get stung, but the wasps make a “magical” reappearance in his family’s suite, there’s a flashback to a time when Jack’s father killed a wasp hive, and the noises that things make in the Overlook remind Jack and Danny of a wasp’s buzz (such as the motor of the snowmobile, not to mention the machine looks like a wasp itself), among other things, probably.  Throughout the whole book, I tried to figure out what the significance of the wasps was.  I’m not really sure I was all that successful.  I think the idea behind them is how somebody can become overwhelmed by an emotion and, as a result, do something by accident without being aware of what they’re doing.  I think that goes back to the first scene on the roof when Jack is stung.  He thinks about how fear could have overcome him and, without even meaning to or realizing it, he could have fallen or even jumped off the roof.  Eventually, that’s kind of what happens to Jack at the end of the book, except it isn’t fear that overcomes him, but anger.  I kind of see the Overlook as a giant wasp’s nest.  It’s full of lots of wasps, or angry spirits, that just want to sting people.  Therefore, they all “sting” Jack, who then becomes enraged and tries to kill his family, all the while clearly unaware that he’s doing it, and obviously doesn’t really want to at his core (he is the flawed protagonist, after all).  A moment that convinces me of this is on page 494.  It’s a moment that’s kind of like the calm before the storm: it feels like the hotel is just about to erupt and go crazy, all its spirits coming out to play and wreaking havoc on Jack’s family.  On that page, Danny “hears” the spirits: “It was like the somnolent hum of summer wasps in a ground nest, sleepy, deadly, beginning to wake up.  They were ten thousand feet high.”  Makes it sound like Danny and his family are on the roof where the wasps are, and they’re just about to wake up and cause some serious harm…

Anyway, does anyone else have any ideas behind the whole wasp thing?

Source: King, Stephen.  The Shining.  New York: Pocket Books, 1977.