Horror Literature

Lesson 6: Ghosts

Death

All of life is about the avoidance of death. Human beings do not want to know or acknowledge their own mortality. This is a pressure point which horror literature frequently uses to evoke fear, but also to reach beyond what is termed by Clemens "personal repression" (Chapter IV). The knowledge of death is therefore repressed by most human beings. Through the relative safety offered by horror literature we are allowed to examine death from a variety of angles. Especially in the modern world, where a greater amount of sympathy is allowed for those who are "different" from the norm in some way, the ghost is also seen in a sympathetic sense. Death as experienced from the ghost's point of view is also explored, rather than merely living human fear as caused by its appearance.

Thus control is put back into human hands. Human beings in ghost stories such as the "Sixth Sense" movie are able to help the unhappy spirits to achieve peace. Just like the vampire hunters in Dracula, salvation lies in what was done by the living person involved. However, in the ghost story there is less immediate danger to the self, and also less brutality and violence. The ghost is after all already dead. It cannot do anything except scare in a psychological sense, nor can it be hurt. The salvation for the ghost exists in making right what is in its mind not right. Then it peacefully vanishes.

There is however also the malicious ghost, who seeks to possess the living. Such an example is the earlier mentioned "molo" from Gypsy lore. This is a spirit of a person who was once living, and seeks to live again through sex with a living person. There are certain ways to protect oneself against such a spirit, but there is no salvation for the spirit itself.

Thus death represents the ultimate fear of the unknown, and ghosts are the representatives of death and the harbingers of the uncanny. Ghosts are what we fear about our future. All human beings are destined to die at some point. Ghosts are ourselves and the other, with which reconciliation is inevitable. The thrill of fear when experiencing this kind of uncanny is a desire to explore the repressed truth about our own mortality.

Horror authors have used the archetype of the ghost in a variety of ways. Edgar Allan Poe of course uses the ghost theme and the uncanny in an unconventional way. In "The Tell-Tale Heart" he explores the way in which guilt and the desire to confess return in the form of the departed.

  1  2  3  4