Sunday, October 28, 2012

31 Days of Halloween: Favorite Ghost Stories by Eileen Wiedbrauk





Today's Halloween guest-post is brought to you by Eileen Wiedbrauk, Editor-in-Chief of World Weaver Press as well as a writer, collegiate English instructor, blogger, coffee addict, cat herder, MFA graduate, fantasist-turned-fabalist-turned-urban-fantasy-junkie, Odyssey Workshop alumna, photographer, designer, tech geek, entrepreneur, avid reader, and a somewhat decent cook. She wears many hats, as the saying goes. Which is an odd saying in this case, as she rarely looks good in hats. Find her at eileenwiedbrauk.com.

I have to admit, I’m the kind of person who hates scary stories until I love them. I swore I’d never see The Exorcist or Silence of the Lambs or The Omen, but as soon as I did, I was enthralled. I can’t stomach the thought of reading a truly scary tale until I’m there on the page, sucked in and captive, and by then my stomach has nothing to do with my decision making: I need to finish the story. I need to know what happens next. The pleasure of knowing overwhelms the pleasure of feeling unruffled and composed. These thrilling, fear-filled stories provide one of the greatest pleasures fiction can: transporting you to a place that scares you senseless while you remain in your perfectly safe, unscary reading chair.

And yet my favorite ghost story of all time isn’t terribly scary. But what can I say? I’m fascinated by the ghosts of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  Although the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is pretty damn creepy, if I do say so myself.

I’ve rarely seen an adaptation of A Christmas Carol that I didn’t like, from Patrick Stewart to the Muppets, from Scrooged to that musical version where they sing something like, “Thank ya very much, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s every done for me” when Scrooge dies. I’ll watch as many of them as I can every Christmas season. But the ghosts—now that’s what’s fascinating.

We generally think of ghosts as the spirits of the dead. That is, they were once human. But the ghosts of A Christmas Carol never were human. Their precise origins aren’t terribly important but we understand that the Ghost of Christmas Present is born the morning of Christmas Day and dies that night, that each year there is a new one. This is the idea that intrigues me. The notion that there are spirits out there frolicking about (or at least frolicking in fiction) such as boggarts and wil-o’-the-wisps, who’ve never been human but are always, always ghosts.
Perhaps this fascination started as a child when I read Susan Cooper’s The Boggart, whose titular character is a grumpy if loveable spirit who spends some decades accidentally trapped inside a roll top desk.

While editing Specter Spectacular: 13 Ghostly Tales (available now), I searched for a range of ghost stories. Many are tales of humans who’ve crossed the grave, but not all of them are. Some are funny, some even have musical elements, and some scared the pants right off me.



5 comments:

Jeremy Bates said...

Hey, sounds like a real fun read. Are you into real ghost stories? I don't mean this junk one sees on TV, but rather real haunts of houses, prisons and ship.

Andrea Janes said...

Absolutely, Jeremy. The prison ships especially haunt my imagination. I love all NYC ghost stories, true and apocryphal. Have you seen my book, BOROUGHS OF THE DEAD? It is all fiction but based on NYC legends and local lore. If you have a Kindle you can nab the e-book for only 99 cents until October 31st! I also give guided walking tours of haunted spots in the city.
http://boroughsofthedead.com/

DarcNina said...

Sounds like a great read! It's interesting, but I've never associated A Christmas Carol as a ghost story, but you are right, it actually is. :)

Unknown said...

I love sea ghosts, ship ghosts, sailor ghosts -- romanticism of the sea + romanticism of the ghost = truly awesome.

I find the "real ghosts" of TV to be a drag, but the real ghost stories of real life are chilling and wondrous!

Andrea Janes said...

Agree, Eileen! The more watery sea-ghost stories out there, the better! Let's keep 'em coming...