Where do ghost stories rate on your personal scare-o-meter?
I've always been a fan of ghost stories. What lies beyond death is largely shrouded in mystery. Many basic universal questions try to find meaning and purpose to life.
Where did we come from?
Why are we here?
What happens when we die?
Religion, mythology, philosophy, and science all take turns supplying answers while approaching these ageless inquiries from different angles. Ultimately, the answers you choose to accept hinge on where you place your faith and belief.
Ghost stories are as malleable as wet clay. They can be scary. They can be funny or satirical. They can conjure deep thoughts on philosophical matters. A well-written ghost story speaks to the human condition and death becomes a medium through which author and reader alike explore life.
Shaping My Ghost Stories
I lived in Texas and Louisiana for two years near the turn of the century. My experiences while serving as a missionary there informed a few stories and characters I'm still creating two decades later.
Suffering a serious car accident on a foggy street in Houston inspired me to write the original draft of my short story In Hell's Shadow over a two-week period. I was only 20 years old when this brush with death left me bemoaning a totaled car and pondering the afterlife.
Kate’s experiences during In Hell’s Shadow offered me a chance to craft a ghost story that simply goes beyond a ghost terrorizing the main character inside a haunted house. Emotional scars from a lost love haunts Kate much more deeply than any malevolent spirit. The hell referenced in the title is drawn from episodes earlier in her life and how they tie into her present circumstances following her car accident.
Hiding From Shadows, my first Substack serial, tackles ghosts from a philosophical angle as much as a tangible spooky one. Fears consume Ellen long before any ghost shows up on the scene. She is haunted by a road not taken. Her regrets at not pursuing former dreams and a desperation to escape from an unwanted path foster enough torment to cause Ellen to abandon any semblance of normal life in her rural Louisiana home as she surrenders to unending paranoia.
A Haunted Path
Ghost stories have staying power because they play on common fears related to loss. It isn’t just a loss of life. Restless spirits can be a medium for exploring lost love, missed chances, regrets over life choices, and other emotional touchstones. Ghosts are stock characters within the horror genre, but they can haunt diverse stories from sword and sorcery fantasies to contemporary romances because of their emotional impact in how a story moves forward.
Science fiction is one genre where I haven’t really dabbled with including ghosts in my stories. I suppose that’s the next great experiment in my writing. An intersection between sci-fi elements and the supernatural does occur frequently in the science fantasy realm. Star Wars treads deeply on that ground with elements like the force, force ghosts, Jedi, and Sith.
Science fiction blended with ghosts offers some unique storytelling possibilities. Aliens haunted on a distant planet by ghosts? A time traveler who is compelled by a ghost to travel to the past and solve a problem preventing that ghost from finding peace after death?
It would offer a new unique avenue to search for answers to those universal questions about life and death.
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