Ask any twelve year old what they’re afraid of the most (and after they’re done bravado-ing that they ain’t afraid of nuffin’ – save grammar) and eventually they’ll probably say ghosts. Why? Because ghost stories are perhaps the first tales we’re told around the campfire. No one’s going to tell stories about the English Patient under a spooky fully moon. And we’re endlessly fascinated.
This is not a new trend either, ghost stories shot to fame during Victorian England and not all in some terrifying rip-your-face-off modern horror way either. Some were laments on the horrors of the day, some were morality tales about changing your ways or ending up eating turkey on Christmas day alone. I don’t honestly know whether it’s the turkey or the alone bit which I’d fear more.
And don’t even get me started on Pliny. That guy was writing down spooks on paper when the Romans were still enjoying a little caged-lion-Christian-death-match between Coke -I adverts.
So how do we, two thousand years later write about ghosts with anything approaching originality? Here’s an idea – don’t even try!
Only Boo-man After All?
But first, what are they? Ghosts are a comforting thought, right? Even the scary ones with chains and shit are still some kind of a proof of life after death. I mean, get right down to it and would you rather think that someone switches off the lights and you’re just snuffed out like a candle – or that somehow you can whizz around space and time and the universe in a lil ghost body (sometimes in whatever form you wish – I’m voting cat) and get up to all kinds of shenanigans.
I mean, it fills a pretty specific human desire, right? Fear of death.
But what about the idea that it’s not conscious? Take for example, stone tape theory that suggests we’re simply viewing recorded bits of old emotions played out like some astral projection. In this instance, we’re witnesses, passively seeing what came before.
Then there are plenty of stories of conscious ghosts – ones who seem to interact with the living. Granted, why Margaret who died three years ago from a raspberry scone related anaphylaxis would spend her afterlife knocking on your backdoor and flinging your nick nacks across the living room is beyond me. But the tellie is full of stuff like this. So much so, Yvette Fielding is probably still clinging onto the chandelier for dear life like a U-Tv Sia.
And are ghosts here to do specific jobs or are they here just to cause chaos? Some ghosts seem benevolent, saving people from frightening ends by acting like guardian angels – bringing paramedics to the scene of a crashed car in the woods. Some seem to be malevolent – the story of a guy in a Mexican apartment block that was throttled by disembodied spectral hands night after night once caught my attention.
Jeez, how do we write about something so widespread and so heterogenous? (Yes, word of the day toilet paper)
Writing About Ghosts
The way I decided to approach it was to boil things down to a few simple and broad rules. First, I decided whether or not ghosts were a thing in my big ol’ universe. And, since I write in the supernatural field, of course there were going to be a thing.
Then I had to decide how I was going to approach the idea of spirit. And this is where it comes down to a matter of preference. I don’t prescribe to any kind of specific religion, Christianity included, so the idea that the afterlife itself was some big paradise with a big white guy sat on a throne was out. Instead, I wanted to play into the idea of there being things well beyond our knowledge.
So it came down to this – there is a genuine unknown threshold over which we cross. But not all spirits go there first time. Instead, spirits can hang around in one of the many realms of existence, until they’re ready. When they cross into the Beyond, then all bets are off. After that, spirit bodies zipping around was just the next logical step.
And from there, everything else can flow. Because if you think about it, if human beings can be diverse enough that across eight billion people you can have almost infinite diversity of experience, then the same with ghosts. We’re just spooky people, right?
So in the Rawesian universe, you can absolutely have psychic imprints left on homesteads. You can have spirits with intent visiting the ones they love – or the ones they love to torment. You can have crisis apparitions – where spirits may appear to loved ones – or ones they love to torment – before they actually die in real life. You can have things that look like spirits, but aren’t – and ain’t they the biggest buggers of them all?
And yes, maybe somewhere, one Christmas Eve someone’s about to be visited by a pair of muppets. Who knows?
Get to the Point
Yes, okay, you got me. The point isn’t ‘write about ghosts in one specific way’. It’s more like, if there are an infinite number of ghost stories stretching back into the annals of history. So much so, that if Bob the Babylonian can scratch a man in a white sheet on a tablet while the pyramids are being built, and the writer of Ghostbusters can use Dan Akroyd to make an oral sex joke – then perhaps diversity is just a fact of their after-existence.
So write ghosts if you wish, but don’t worry too much about the time-y wime-y spooky wookie of all it. If you can think of it, there’s probably still a folktale told in some timeless Bavarian village where it’s already being told to get the kids back into their bunk beds at night. So go for it, enjoy it – and if someone says ‘ghosts don’t behave like that’, tell them that you’ll sick Casper on them.
But just remember what the most important point of a ghost story is. It’s imagination. It’s the humanity underneath it. We may have at some point in our distant past clung to the story of someone seeing a loved one wandering by the hunting grounds and thought – damn, I wish that were true. And maybe it is true. And maybe baked into the story of ghosts is heart, and hope, and love.
And yes, more than a little bit of fear.
So write that, in some spectral shape or form. You can. That, my friends, is one of the great things about being alive.
‘til the End
Rick Rawes
Leeds, West Yorkshire
2nd October, 2026
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