Unfinished Business

This is a strange confession to find myself making, but I’m obsessed with fictional ghosts.

Not, like, as a reader and viewer, though I do enjoy Truly, Madly, Deeply, Casper’s wacky adventures, and the series of MG mysteries by Dian Curtis Regan about dead twin siblings and their equally dead dog. No, I’m obsessed with ghosts as a writer as well.

Our Man Tom, the first novel I wrote and revised seriously, has a pair of ghosts who make the plot go; two of the novels I’m working on now have important characters who’ve come back from the dead. My first published story was about a woman being haunted by her late husband over the High Holidays. And, making this blog somewhat timely, my play The Dark Room, a collage of ghost stories in different styles, is being produced by Socratic Theatre Collective in two weeks. (Come see it!)

But that’s not all. A significant amount of the entertainment I get from other people’s stories comes from imagining what would happen if you added ghosts to the mix. When I find a group of fictional characters whose dynamic I like, often one of the first things I think is: how would the others react if one of them died? And then, how would they react if he/she came back?

I’d pretend this isn’t because I’m a sadist, but let’s face it: when it comes to fiction, we all are. It’s our pleasure to see characters suffer as much as possible for as long as possible, provided they also struggle as they suffer and we can trust that in the end, all that struggling and suffering will lead somewhere meaningful.

But there are other ways to make characters suffer for our amusement (just check out the frequency of fictional abuse, terminal illness, and straight-up torture on fanfiction.net), so what’s my deal with ghosts?

Well, in part, it’s because they allow writers to get out of annoying situations while still maximizing emotional effect. Does your plot rely on Amala talking with Betty, but not with Clarissa who is also her friend? BAM! Amala’s a ghost, and only Betty can see and hear her. In real life, if Quan and Rick tried to work out their interpersonal problems, would mutual friends, support networks, and possibly the police become involved? BAM! Not if Rick is dead, and anyone Quan tries to enlist to help him thinks he’s crazy. Do your story’s fireworks sizzle whenever Yolanda tries to reconcile with Xavier, but the bad blood between them is so thick that there’s no way in hell Xavier would ever agree to see her again? BAM! Now Yolanda’s a ghost, and good luck getting a restraining order on the Headless Horseman!

Okay, that’s glib, and obviously I think ghosts are more interesting than just a one-size-fits-all solution to narrative problems. At the bottom of it, there’s something I find evocative about the way death changes fictional relationships, and about the kind of relationships to which ghosts apply: you don’t come back if your emotional life wasn’t screwed up while you were alive, because then there’d be nothing to fix. But at the same time, you’ve got to care an awful lot to sacrifice eternal rest just to tell your ex that you’re sorry or your friend that you really do love her.

This is another point where I should clarify: although, like many, I enjoy the ooh-creepy-arg kind of ghost story in which the spirits of the dead are interesting only because they’re dead, the kind of story that obsesses me is the kind where the ghosts are interesting because they’re interesting characters, not because they’re ghosts. Being ghosts can help interesting characters to be more interesting; much like writing one of your characters into a hospital bed or jail cell, making a character die or making a character’s ability to communicate restrained by supernatural rules builds the tension. But I prefer ghost stories where what’s interesting is the relationship between the ghost and the living, not just the fact that the ghost is a ghost.

Perhaps that’s why I find ghosts intriguing: I’m a sucker for characters who can’t communicate their emotions, and ghost stories of this second type seem like they’re custom-built for the purpose. Not only do ghost characters suddenly have a reason they can’t ignore to communicate their feelings — the whole being-able-to-move-on thing — but depending on how these particular ghosts work in this particular story, writers can tailor the “rules” of being dead to force characters to confront specific psychological hurdles.

For example, think of a character who’s unable to tell her best friend how much she cares. Maybe it’s because this character’s afraid of being rejected — well, then the writer can make it a “ghost rule” that the living person on whom a haunting is centred has the power to exorcise that ghost to hell. Maybe it’s because this character’s uncomfortable with feeling something so strongly — then the writer can decide that in this story, ghosts have to interact with the world of the living by channelling the strength of their own emotions. Or maybe this character just can’t figure out how to put the words and ideas together — then maybe her ghost not only has to struggle with communicating what she couldn’t say but also has to figure out how to do it without being able to speak or write.

But what do ghosts have over other ways of putting the same tension into a story? Well, maybe there’s something to those ooh-arg-creepy stories I glossed over above. See, if there’s one thing I love more than type-two ghosts, it’s the climactic moment when the living protagonist realizes that what he thought was an ooh-creepy-arg ghost that he wanted nothing more than to chase away is instead the wandering spirit of someone whom he wanted nothing more than to see again.

That’s because ghost stories — of both types — are about setting up clear expectations and then springing a contrasting surprise, whether that surprise is the creepy kind (his bride was dead when he married her!), the emotional kind (she really did love him!), or both. So allow me to finish by sharing a ghost story that cuts right to the meat-and-potatoes twist. Here, in its public-domain entirety, is I. A. Ireland’s genius 1919…

“Climax for a Ghost Story”

“How eerie!” said the girl, advancing cautiously. “–And what a heavy door!” She touched it as she spoke and it suddenly swung to with a click.

“Good Lord!” said the man. “I don’t believe there’s a handle inside. Why, you’ve locked us both in!”

“Not both of us. Only one of us,” said the girl, and before his eyes she passed straight through the door, and vanished.