Ghost haunting a house…
What is a ghost?
Something that has the visual semblance of a human being, but not all aspects. Sometimes it can create sound. Not fully formed visually. A ghost can manifest as a visually present enough version of a human being.
Ghost stories are often in houses. House is a central human symbol of comfort. The ghost is a disruption to the norm.
Why does the ghost scare people?
The ghost represents the prior existence before the current occupants. This represents a cycle of life. The ghost’s presence connotes a sense of vulnerability for the living in its appearance in less frequented places (attic, basement) and in the evening often, when the character is alone.
And then the fear is premised on the question of whether the ghost is a good or evil presence.
The ghost can show the dweller their own mortality.
The ghost is a representation of impermanence. Or in the reverse, what’s scary about the ghost is the lack of impermanence.
There are other kinds of ghost stories.
The haunting approach is one approach particular to this epoch.
1824, William Austin is the author: “Peter Rugg, The Missing Man”
A consideration of the story without giving away the central intrigue. The character Peter Rugg is ghost-like, though not necessarily a ghost.
Displacement from a living existence filled with relevance. There was a time when the ghost occupied the house, or when Peter Rugg occupied a life of relevance. Peter Rugg’s lack of direction is literal but also symbolic.
To what extent is the ghost conscious of our presence? Connect this back to displacement. Ghost as oblivious to human life.
Stories where we have the sympathy for the ghost-like character. Or the more conventional or known approach is that we are afraid of the ghost and of what the ghost represents.
A ghost story is a story in which you have a character whose placement in this world is somehow out of order. The ghost character has a part of their embodiment someplace else, or sometime else.
Place is important: where the ghost appears and what they’re doing.
We often see ghosts looking to repeat the same thing. There is something that is not reconciled for them. They are often held back from the completion of a reconciliation.
For some ghosts, they are in a doomed scenario.
Consider the ghost in Hamlet.
The ghost story as a testament of the skill of the storyteller.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, “The Ghost in the Mill”
“Peter Rugg, the missing man” by William Austin:
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/73141/pg73141-images.html
“The Ghost in the Mill” by Harriet Beecher Stowe: