What Makes a Great Ghost Story
The great ghost story is a specific achievement quite distinct from horror in general. Where horror can use almost any means to produce fear, the ghost story works through a single, sustained atmosphere of unease that builds toward a revelation that retrospectively charges everything that came before with new, darker meaning. The apparition, when it comes, should be simultaneously unexpected and inevitable — we should feel, in retrospect, that the ghost was present all along. M.R. James, the master of the form, understood that the horror should arrive through the gradual accumulation of detail rather than through sudden revelation — the growing awareness that something is wrong is more frightening than the thing itself.
Essential Ghost Stories
The canon of great ghost stories: M.R. James — 'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad' (1904): The finest ghost story ever written; the BBC adaptation (1968, Jonathan Miller) is equally essential. Shirley Jackson — The Haunting of Hill House (1959): The finest ghost story novel. Henry James — The Turn of the Screw (1898): Maximally ambiguous — are the ghosts real or are they projections of the governess's psychology? The Stone Tape (1972, BBC TV play): An extraordinary piece of television horror that invented the 'residual haunting' theory of ghostly phenomena. Robert Wise — The Haunting (1963): The finest haunted house film.
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