From the Archives: Harnessing Love & Fear: Ghost Stories
What haunts you?
Photo by Tandem X Visuals on Unsplash
“A haunted house but the ghosts recite the poems you wrote when you were sixteen.” ~Amber Sparks
“On the other hand, what I like my music to do to me is awaken the ghosts inside of me. Not the demons, you understand, but the ghosts.” ~David Bowie
Hi friends,
I am away, in lovely West Virginia, after running workshops for a writing retreat there. The post below is from October, 2021. It’s a fun one that was well-received when it was first published. I talk about why we’re drawn to ghost stories, then look at the skills required to write a good one. As always, I share a fun prompt toward the goal of honing those skills. I’ve also linked heaps of terrific flash ghost stories (from amazing writers Leonora Desar, K.C. Mead-Brewer, Sara Hills, Amber Sparks, Corey Farrenkopf, Ellen Rhudy, Cathy Ulrich, Hillary Leftwich, Todd Dillard, and more) for this week’s recommended reading. Enjoy!
I’m thinking of all things ghostly this Halloween month, especially from the writer’s perspective. It’s been said that Barry Hannah used to write “All stories are ghost stories” on the blackboard on the first day of all his fiction workshops. I think humans are driven to write and tell ghost stories because they speak to the two most basic human emotions: love and fear. We describe stories that are particularly resonant, that tap into deep feelings and linger long after reading them, as “haunting.”
When I was a girl, telling ghost stories at slumber parties was standard practice. And it was always the same stories, “Bloody Bones & Eyeballs” and the like. We’d heard the stories many times before, but somehow, all gathered in the middle of the night in our pajamas in somebody’s basement, jacked up on Mountain Dew, with only a flashlight illuminating our faces, we were terrified anew. We clearly wanted to be scared out of our wits. The scary stories tapped into emotions and fears we could not yet name. Once the story reached its climax and we all ran screaming up the stairs into the light, we could move on and attend to more pressing matters like making prank phone calls or playing Truth or Dare or hating (loving) boys.
I always say palpable, urgent emotion is essential to great flash fiction, and this is another reason why I love ghost stories so much. The feeling of being haunted arises from so many complex emotions. How about guilt, for instance? Or regret? What haunts you? Who haunts you? And why?
The ghosts swarm.
They speak as one
person. Each
loves you. Each
has left something
undone...from “Unbidden” by Rae Armantrout
Ghost stories provide us a fictional landing place for our dread, our existential horrors, our relentless grief, our deepest terror. What better way to tell a story of loss or emotional complexity or trauma “slant” than via a ghost story? Ghost stories are cathartic to write and weirdly, scarily comforting to read. They are a means of harnessing both love and fear.
Now let’s examine the skills required to write a good ghost story. Keep reading for this and a fun prompt to try, along with a whole bunch of links to flash length ghost stories that masterfully harness love and fear.