Lesson 6: Ghosts
Ghosts are closely connected to the human fear of death. Much of this fear is founded in fears regarding the meaning of life and religion. Thus religion, salvation and abjection are explored in relation to ghosts. The work of Edgar Allan Poe and Clive Barker is discussed here.
Lesson Introduction
Lesson Objectives
Discuss ghosts as representation of the fear and desire of death.
Consider ghosts as the other and the self.
Discuss the use of ghosts in fiction by Edgar Allan Poe.
Consider the damnation and salvation of ghosts.
Recommended resource referred to: King (page 257), Clemens (Chapter IV).
Please note: Books are recommended but not mandatory.
Ghosts are probably the most archetypal form of horror literature. Of all creatures, these spectres are perhaps most representative of human consciousness and fear when it comes to death. The ghost is closer to the self still than the vampiric other. The ghost as other reflects the self in death. The ghost represents everything we fear about death. The fear of death is a very primal and instinctive fear and this translates to the fear of ghosts. The restless grave imprints itself upon the consciousness with a force that is matched by few other horror entities.
I remember when I as younger. My father was going to buy a house at a river side. The house was large and beautiful. In daylight. I once spent the night there with some friends, but I kept feeling that something just outside the door was watching me. But as soon as I looked, it is as if the thing quickly hid from view. The next day I heard that the previous owner of the house had committed suicide in the room where we were sleeping. Dad never did buy the house.
Dit you see the movie "Sixth Sense"? The dead people. The scariest scene in the whole film for me was when the first dead person manifested itself in the form of a nightgown-clad shape passing an open doorway. Some winter mornings, when I have to get up and it is still dark, I would imagine the nightgown passing doors just out of my view. A delicous thrill would then run up and down my spine.
Another story, associated specifically with South Africa (where I live), is the ghost of Uniondale. This is the restless spirit of a young girl who died in a car crash. It is said that she was asleep when she died, so she does not know that she is actually dead (almost like Bruce Willis in "Sixth Sense"). This ghost then hitchhikes at night, trying to get home. Every person who picks her up hears a bloodcurdling scream just as they reach her house, and she vanishes from her place in the car.
A ghost is an unhappy spirit. A person who died in a state of discontent of some form becomes a ghost until whatever is wrong is made right again. Ghosts give us as human beings the ultimate feeling of the uncanny. A thrill of fear, which is also somewhat exciting, accompanies the appearance of spectres. In this way ghosts represent both the human fear and the human desire for death, or nothingness, or reconciliation with the other.
