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Ghost stories

Cainkane1

Philosopher
Cainkane1
Joined
Jul 16, 2005
Messages
9,011
Location
The great American southeast
Ghosts. What are they? Do they really exist or are they only figments of our imagination? If they do exist what do they want? Are they our friends? Our enemys? Do they even care about us? Why do we only see them from the corner of our eyes?

Several years ago I said those words around a campfire in my backyard to several wide eyed children. I told them the story of room 202 from Steven Kings book "The Shining". It scared the crap out of them They went home and had nightmares.

I can't tell this story anymore. I can say the words but I believe in order to tell a good story like this you have to be afraid yourself. I let go of woo forty years ago and thats when i told the neighborhood children this at the time very scary tale.

Anyone have a similar experience?
 
My mother was an atheist and a professional storyteller. She managed to tell some pretty scary stories without believing them. That's because the storytelling was for fun, and being mildly scared can be fun when you're a kid and you know you're actually safe and not in danger, like while camping or running around the neighborhood in the dark. If you have to believe every story you read or tell, it must be pretty sucky to read pretty much anything.
 
Story telling is an art. If you lack the skills, then yes, believing your story makes your telling better. If you have the skills, a good artist can make any story gripping.
 
HP Lovecraft probably didn't believe Cthulhu was really waiting and dreaming beneath the sea. It's still a great story. Isn't that kind of the point of fiction?
 
I liked The Amityville Horror (the book, not the film)

I first read it when I was a kid and my mum showed me the serialisation of it in one of her magazines. I found it very creepy and scary.

Many years later I was in a small store with some friends and there was a revolving rack with paperbacks. I started looking at them and suddenly came across the Amityville Horror. So I bought it.

Loved it. Told everyone about it.

Then, when I was older (probably late 20's) I started thinking about the story again and how people will lie and make up incredible stories to cover up their own misdeeds (alcoholism, drug taking, financial troubles).... so I re-read the book and became extremely critical of it. Where were the pictures of the events described? Where was the verification?

Then some more years later, driving home from work there was a small feature on a radio news programme where the author was said to have made it all up.

I felt quite pleased actually.
:)
 
Cainkane1 said:
Ghosts. What are they? Do they really exist or are they only figments of our imagination? If they do exist what do they want? Are they our friends? Our enemys? Do they even care about us? Why do we only see them from the corner of our eyes?
Click to expand...

The answer to the first questions is no; the answer to the second question is yes. The other questions are therefore moot.

Cainkane1 said:
Several years ago I said those words around a campfire in my backyard to several wide eyed children. I told them the story of room 202 from Steven Kings book "The Shining". It scared the crap out of them They went home and had nightmares.
Click to expand...

That's just mean! Seriously, since most kids under a certain age lack the faculties for critical thinking, it's probably best not to fill their impressionable minds with irrational bogey-tales.

That said, I love The Shining (book and 1980 film), and if were to select a tale that was certain to scare the bejeebus out of a campfire-full of impressionable minds, Room 202 would be at the top of a very short list.

Cainkane1 said:
I can't tell this story anymore. I can say the words but I believe in order to tell a good story like this you have to be afraid yourself. I let go of woo forty years ago and thats when i told the neighborhood children this at the time very scary tale.
Click to expand...

That's silly. Stephen King doesn't believe in ghosts, nor did he when he wrote any of his sometimes terrifying novels and short stories. I'm currently writing a horror novella, and I have no belief in vampires or the supernatural; still I think (hope!) that it's a good, spookifying yarn.

I think it's your guilty conscious blocking you: you scared the living bejeebus out of those kids, as alluded to above, and you feel so bad about it you can't spin a good spooky yarn anymore. ;)

Cainkane1 said:
Anyone have a similar experience?
Click to expand...

Not really, except in reverse: When my mother let me watch the edited-for-television The Exorcist when I was 8 or 9, it scared the living bejeebus out of me, and I proceeded to live in mortal terror for my body and soul for the next several years. My mom has always thought the Exorcist is amusing, and as an atheist/agnostic she never dreamed it would have such a foul affect on me... especially since I was into horror movies from a young age.
 
UK-Dave, I had a similar experience with both The Amityville Horror and most especially, as I mentioned above, The Exorcist.

Because of my revulsion/fascination with the movie The Exorcist, the novel version became the first adult novel I ever read, at about age 10 or 11. In some ways reading it cured me of my fear of the movie, but in others it increased and deepened my fear of the "Regan-thing" described in the novel.

Later as a teenager, when I became an atheist, I re-read the book and became critical of the author's rather credulous stance on psychic powers (which he describes in the novel as proven by experiments) and religious/supernatural phenomena.

Finally, years later, I met the author/producer, William Peter Blatty, and spoke with him at some length about the novel and the film, which remain among my favorites. As it turns out, Blatty never himself believed any of the stuff in his novel or screenplay, except perhaps when he was a young man first interested in the story (during the 1950s) of a possessed boy, on which he partly based the novel. His seeming credulity was only a function of the fiction.

Kudos to him for lying so convincingly on the written page. :D

As to Amityville, I had a similar experience but not as intense. I read it around the same age as I read The Ex., kinda/sorta believed it, then came back to it years later with a more critical eye. Today it reads like a children's book or an extended tabloid article, and the film is one of the worst ever made, IMO.

uk_dave said:
I liked The Amityville Horror (the book, not the film)

I first read it when I was a kid and my mum showed me the serialisation of it in one of her magazines. I found it very creepy and scary.

Many years later I was in a small store with some friends and there was a revolving rack with paperbacks. I started looking at them and suddenly came across the Amityville Horror. So I bought it.

Loved it. Told everyone about it.

Then, when I was older (probably late 20's) I started thinking about the story again and how people will lie and make up incredible stories to cover up their own misdeeds (alcoholism, drug taking, financial troubles).... so I re-read the book and became extremely critical of it. Where were the pictures of the events described? Where was the verification?

Then some more years later, driving home from work there was a small feature on a radio news programme where the author was said to have made it all up.

I felt quite pleased actually.
:)
Click to expand...
 
Vortigern99 said:
The answer to the first questions is no; the answer to the second question is yes. The other questions are therefore moot.



That's just mean! Seriously, since most kids under a certain age lack the faculties for critical thinking, it's probably best not to fill their impressionable minds with irrational bogey-tales.

That said, I love The Shining (book and 1980 film), and if were to select a tale that was certain to scare the bejeebus out of a campfire-full of impressionable minds, Room 202 would be at the top of a very short list.



That's silly. Stephen King doesn't believe in ghosts, nor did he when he wrote any of his sometimes terrifying novels and short stories. I'm currently writing a horror novella, and I have no belief in vampires or the supernatural; still I think (hope!) that it's a good, spookifying yarn.

I think it's your guilty conscious blocking you: you scared the living bejeebus out of those kids, as alluded to above, and you feel so bad about it you can't spin a good spooky yarn anymore. ;)



Not really, except in reverse: When my mother let me watch the edited-for-television The Exorcist when I was 8 or 9, it scared the living bejeebus out of me, and I proceeded to live in mortal terror for my body and soul for the next several years. My mom has always thought the Exorcist is amusing, and as an atheist/agnostic she never dreamed it would have such a foul affect on me... especially since I was into horror movies from a young age.
Click to expand...
Stephen King said he believed in ghosts. He stayed at the Stanley Hotel in the room where a woman either committed suicide or was murdered in a bathtub. The room was supposed to be haunted.
 
Hannibal said:
No-one EVER crafted a better tale than Lovecraft
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Except for M.R. James, in the field of ghost stories specifically. Lovecraft could wander all over the place sometimes, and get lost in his own efforts to convey Cyclopean abyssal dread. Not everything has to be the worst cosmic horror ever. James's stories are much tighter, and scarier because he could make the commonplace frightening whereas Lovecraft needed a cast of thousands and alien gods and all sorts of things.

Sheridan le Fanu is almost as good as James, but much too wordy. But that was the style of the time so it's to be expected. And I like him for having a demon monkey in one story, that would perch on the open pages of a Bible and gibber at the guy trying to read it, while remaining invisible to everybody else. It's like he knew exactly what sort of thing I'd like to do myself, when I am a demon monkey.

And for those who like modern ghost stories, one of my favorites is Julian's House. It's rather obscure, but can be found in libraries if not in the bookstores. Ironically, the protagonists are paranormal investigators studying a haunted house, only the ghost is real and so is their pseudoscience. Directly opposite of reality (and quite against JREF culture!) but nevertheless a good story.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Except for M.R. James, in the field of ghost stories specifically. Lovecraft could wander all over the place sometimes, and get lost in his own efforts to convey Cyclopean abyssal dread. Not everything has to be the worst cosmic horror ever. James's stories are much tighter, and scarier because he could make the commonplace frightening whereas Lovecraft needed a cast of thousands and alien gods and all sorts of things.

Sheridan le Fanu is almost as good as James, but much too wordy. But that was the style of the time so it's to be expected. And I like him for having a demon monkey in one story, that would perch on the open pages of a Bible and gibber at the guy trying to read it, while remaining invisible to everybody else. It's like he knew exactly what sort of thing I'd like to do myself, when I am a demon monkey.

And for those who like modern ghost stories, one of my favorites is Julian's House. It's rather obscure, but can be found in libraries if not in the bookstores. Ironically, the protagonists are paranormal investigators studying a haunted house, only the ghost is real and so is their pseudoscience. Directly opposite of reality (and quite against JREF culture!) but nevertheless a good story.
Click to expand...
Who authored Julien's house?
 
Cainkane1 said:
Who authored Julien's house?
Click to expand...

Judith Hawkes.

eta: She seems like a fun author. The copy I have has her photo on the back jacket flap. It took me a long time to notice what was odd about the picture: she's holding a fake arm, but in a subtle way, so it looks like she has three arms but it doesn't jump out at you.
 
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Cainkane1 said:
Stephen King said he believed in ghosts. He stayed at the Stanley Hotel in the room where a woman either committed suicide or was murdered in a bathtub. The room was supposed to be haunted.
Click to expand...

Yes, King did stay in the supposedly haunted hotel room, and conceived the idea for his novel there, but he did not experience anything paranormal there. King was inspired to write by a childhood love of HP Lovecraft and EC Comics, and an adult appreciation for the works of Richard Matheson, not by a personal belief in supernatural spirits.

You're clinging to an unsupportable contention, that good horror writers have to somehow "believe" in the things they are writing about. This simply is not the case.
 
Stephen King:

"The gunslinger takes the speaking-demon as a matter of course. It's something that's there to be used. He's really matter-of-fact about how some houses are bad houses and you have to steer clear of them and the rest of it, so we take it for granted, too. Whereas in the present world, if my secretary came in from the storeroom now and said, "That damn ghost of General Webber is back there again,' I would not simply say, 'Well, okay, I'll go toss the clefferdust at him and he'll go away.' We'd all look at her and our first reaction would be that she was crazy, not just because she said she saw a ghost, but because she took it as a matter of course."​
 
King's The Shining was the only novel that actually scared me. Before that it was my step-dad's awesome collection of EC comics. Vault of Horror, ShockSuspend Stories, and quite a few of the stories found in Weird Science & Weird Fantasy.

The art was superb (Wally Wood's work is gorgeous in the SF stuff, especially disturbing for horror.) and the stories were unrelenting. Step-dad was very protective of these collector's items, it was an honor to be trusted with them. I had to wash my hands before reading them and turn each yellowing page very carefully. To a 10 year old's mind, this translates to something sacred. Especially since the common theme in all the collections was justice, revenge, compromised morals and comeuppance.

Reading them felt like being allowed into some dark grown-up world of mystery. They were more "real" than the Stranger Than Fiction-style books, I could get at the library.

It made such an impression that I can still get a fun little shiver from re-reading them. (In the hardbound reprints, sadly. It's not quite the same.)
 
Vortigern99 said:
Yes, King did stay in the supposedly haunted hotel room, and conceived the idea for his novel there, but he did not experience anything paranormal there. King was inspired to write by a childhood love of HP Lovecraft and EC Comics, and an adult appreciation for the works of Richard Matheson, not by a personal belief in supernatural spirits.

You're clinging to an unsupportable contention, that good horror writers have to somehow "believe" in the things they are writing about. This simply is not the case.
Click to expand...
if I've given you the idea that I personally believe in ghosts then you need to think again. There are no ghosts, no angels, no gods. The world would be more exciting if there were but there are not. Stephen King did say he believed in the supernatural but I personally do not and would not be afraid to stay alone all night in a so called haunted house. At least i wouldn't be afraid of the ghost. I might be afraid to stay all night in an abandoned house because of transients.
 
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