‘In the first act get your principal character up a tree; in the second act, throw stones at him; in the third, get him down gracefully.’
Anonymous, writing in the BRIDGEPORT HERALD in 1897, but subsequently attributed to numerous writers, including George Abbot, George F. Kaufman and Vladimir Nobokov
Weaving a Ghost Tale Plot
Most stories begin with some kind of change that alters the status quo, creating a problem, or exacerbating one that’s already there. And this story theorists call the ‘catalyst event’. In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet it’s the arrival of a ghost that upsets the apple cart, but the trigger for action, or inciting incident to use theorist language, comes specifically when the ghost says to Hamlet, “If thou didst ever thy dear father love… revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.” Now Hamlet has an action: vengeance. In Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit it’s the séance which puts the cat among the pigeons, for it results in the return of Elvira, Charles’ first wife, who died seven years previously. The ghost of Elvira, not surprisingly, takes an instant dislike to Charles’ new wife, Ruth, and does all she can to mock Ruth’s dowdiness and lack of sexual allure. Two competing actions result from all this: for the newly married Charles it’s to get rid of Elvira and for Elvira it’s to keep Charles all to herself and the only way she can do this is by bringing about his death. In other words, she’s intent on becoming an abducting ghost. And spiriting you away is an action that can found in many a spooky tale.
Tales of ghostly abduction allow a writer to explore the theme of obsessive passion and jealousy, and how that can turn malignant and deadly, which is certainly the case in Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s The Cold Embrace (1860). The abduction in Rosemary Timperley’s Harry (1955) is particularly disturbing because it involves a child, but the brilliance of that tale is how the writer creates sympathy for all the characters, including the ghost abductor. A curious take on the ‘I’m-coming-to get-you’ scenario, and a particular favourite of Roald Dahl, is L.P. Hartley’s W.S. (1954), in which a novelist, Walter Streeter, receives a bizarre series of postcards from someone who claims to be a character from one of his own stories and with each delivery the postmark gets closer and closer…
The idea of a siren ghost, one with mesmeric powers of attraction, features in Robert W. Chambers’ Passeur (1897), Grant Allen’s Wolverden Tower (1896), F.G. Loring’s The Tomb of Sarah (1990) and Sir Thomas Graham Jackson’s The Lady of Rosemount (1919) – ‘On his ears fell the words, “You are mine, you are mine,’ and he was helpless to resist the spell that drew him on and on farther into the gloom of the ruined nave.’ Perhaps you might also include here Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1883 tale The Captain of the ‘Polestar’, where the name of the ship foreshadows the nature of the ghost’s purpose. Other notable abduction ghost tales include E.F Benson’s The Face (1924) and, in it’s own way, Mary Wilkins Freeman’s The Lost Ghost (1903). As said, the motivation of the ghost in Hamlet is revenge and this too is a popular action of the ghost tale. Vengeance is central to Edith Wharton’s Afterward (1910), Vincent O’Sullivan’s My Enemy and Myself (1896), W.W. Jacobs’ The Well (1902) and Ellen Glasgow’s The Shadowy Third (1916), a reading of which occurs in ‘I Was Once a Haunted House’. In these tales it pleases fate that events conspire to put the guilty in a place where their wrong doing can be uncovered and thus punished. Ghost stories featuring supernatural redress are popular perhaps because they offer a sense justice that’s not always there in the real world, where far too many people, often the rich and powerful, get away with their crimes.
More in the tormenting mode of the Gothic ghost we have Eveline’s Visitant by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, first published in 1867, where a dying man warns his killer, “My ghostly hand shall drop a poison in your cup of joy.” The killer, the narrator of the tale, doesn’t take the threat too seriously, for ‘if men had power thus to avenge themselves, the earth would be peopled with phantoms.’ Oh dear, that’s a foolish thing to say in a ghost story and of course he will live to regret it. Vengeance’s sibling is retribution, but the distinction is that retribution comes from a higher authority and is exacted as a recompense for the crime. In this sense The Ghost Light is a tale of vengeance, whereas The Final Fake is most definitely one of divine retribution.
Of course there are many reasons why a ghost goes a-haunting, but the key point from a narrative perspective is that a plot needs an action, and indeed counter-action, as with Elvira and Charles and the internal struggles within Hamlet. And action requires a plan. As MacShaugnassy says in Jerome K. Jerome’s The Man of Science, “If one admits the possibility of spirits retaining any interest in the affairs of this world at all, it is certainly more reasonable to imagine them engaged upon a task such as you suggest, than to believe that they occupy themselves with the performance of mere drawing room tricks.”
An obvious task for a spook is to deal with unfinished business and you’ll find this in one of Britain’s oldest ghost stories, The Apparition of Mrs Veal, published as a pamphlet in 1706 and usually attributed to Daniel Defoe. Another ghost task is to make some sort of reparation and this features in Lady Cynthia Asquith’s The Corner Shop (1926), sometimes published under the pen name C. L. Ray, which tells the story of an antique dealer who comes to realise his wealth was based on theft and in death wants to make amends. Then there’s the protective territorial ghost, as in E.F. Benson’s Naboth’s Vineyard, and, related to this some sort of guardianship. The duty of the pursuing spectre, for example, in M.R. James’ A Warning to the Curious is to protect the last of the holy crowns and whatever creature it is that’s in his tale The Treasure of Abbot Thomas it exists to frighten away those who come near whatever treasure it is.
Of course there is that spook who by its nature is malevolent and just goes about killing people, as in H.R. Wakefield’s A Black Solitude (1951), where the destruction of man is its ‘delight’ and ‘orgasm’. Plus there are those ghosts who haunt more from a sense of duty and habit, as in Oscar Wilde’s comic tale The Canterville Ghost (1887). And the situation of the haunter at Canterville Chase brings us to the idea of the ghost’s ‘inner need’.
Need and want come from a sense that something within oneself is lacking or missing. Sir Simon de Canterville is a restlessness ghost, but through Virginia, the wise daughter of the Otis family, he is given release. What we have with Sir Simon is needful deliverance. And it’s a popular theme in ghost stories. It’s prominent in Margaret Oliphant’s The Open Door (1882), where the soul in pain cries out, “Oh, mother let me in! Oh, mother, mother, let me in! Oh, let me in!” Only when its plight is acknowledged and pitied, and the spirit of the boy is shown mercy by Reverend Moncrieff, can its soul be persuaded to go to its mother who’s now ‘with the Lord’. And in such stories the task is with the ghost seer rather than the ghost itself.
It’s worth bringing in here what story theorists call the ‘decision of surrender’. This is where a character gives up on something they once held dear, be it a belief, an object, a person or whatever was the initial desire and goal. What then follows is the character coming to an understanding and embracing of that which is truly needed in themselves – and it’s this self revelation which leads to their inner transformation. This is the key turning point in any character arc and it usually comes at the character’s lowest moment or crisis. A classic ghost story example of this is Scrooge at a gravestone just before he sees his own name carved into the stone where Scrooge says, “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach” – and it’s this relinquishing of his old ways at his moment of crisis which leads to his waking up in his own bed and his rebirth and reclamation – “I don’t know how long I’ve been among the Spirits. I don’t know anything. I’m quite a baby. Never mind. I don’t care. I’d rather be a baby. Hallo! Whoop! Hallo here!”.
And the casting off a belief that was once held true brings us back to Margaret Oliphant’s The Open Door.
The action of deliverance in Oliphant’s tale is by no means easy, for there is much resistance from the spirit of the boy, but, after a prayer to the Lord he departs (the surrender that leads to his own transformation). It’s a long scene and has within it what theorists call the ‘battle’ and the ‘climax’, where ultimately there can only be one winner. The climax in a story is the final turning point and the change that comes with it is absolute and irreversible. In the battle in Blithe Spirit between Charles and Elvira it looks as if Elvira will triumph, for she tampers with Charles’ car with the intention of causing a fatal accident to bring him to the spirit world, only the faulty car is unexpectedly taken by Ruth, his new wife, and so it’s she who is killed and returns as a ghost.
In Poetics Aristotle divided plots into what he called ‘simple’ and ‘complex’. In simple plots there is a gradual change of fortune across the whole drama, whereas in complex plots there’s what he called peripeteia – a sudden reversal of the expected outcome – which is often accompanied by anagnorisis – recognition or discovery of a truth – and it’s these together which bring about the change of fortune. In layman’s terms what we’re talking about here is The Big Twist, which is often a key element of any ghost tale. And the unexpected outcome of Elvira not killing Charles but instead turning Ruth into a ghost is a very clever one.
A good twist can also make you reassess all you’ve previously read or seen. Think here of movies such as The Others and Sixth Sense, which are so brilliantly constructed that viewers are eager to watch them a second time just to see what was always there in plain sight. And without intending to sound too highfalutin about all this, reassessing that which you thought was one thing but turns out to be the opposite is something we experience in life. Nothing is ever quite what it seems and the ghost story provides us with a lesson in that.
Many a ghost tale concludes with a letter or document that is offered to the reader as an explanation or as background to the supernatural manifestation. You’ll find examples of this in Bernard Capes’ An Eddy on the Floor (1899), Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The House and the Brain (1859) and Amelia B. Edwards Was it an Illusion? (1881). In E.F. Benson’s The House with the Brick-Kiln (1908) the dark deed that happened at the house is discovered in a local guide-book and in his hotel room tale The Other Bed (1912) a previous occupant’s suicide is read about in an American newspaper. What the letter (or whatever expositional device it is) often sets out is the history of the ghost, or what theorists call the ‘back story’. In its widest sense back story is all that happened before we first joined the tale, but in practice it usually refers to the traumatic incident from the character’s past that still troubles them. One story expert, John Truby, even refers to this aspect of story as The Ghost. Anyway, whatever you want to call it, the back story is essentially the emotional open wound of hurt that comes from somewhere in the character’s history. In The Canterville Ghost, it’s the tragic tale of Sir Simon’s wife, Lady Eleanor de Canterville, and in Margaret Oliphant’s The Open Door it’s the history of the prodigal son Willie who returned only to discover his beloved mother was dead.
A letter at the end of a tale can also act as the surprise twist, as in Mary Wilkins Freeman’s The Wind in the Rose-Bush (1903). Another type of twist is the sudden introduction of a second narrator, who takes over the storytelling from the original narrator and it’s that which brings about the reveal. You’ll find this literary device in Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White and I use it in The Return of the Handbag and to some degree also in The Strange Case of the Unaccountable Shadow. A further literary technique is to keep the twist or reveal until the very last line, and you’ll find this in Richard Middleton’s On the Road to Brighton (1912), E.F. Benson’s The Step (1926), Lady Cynthia Asquith’s The Corner Shop (1926), Henry James’ The Romance of Certain Old Clothes (1868), Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Body-Snatcher (1884), and more recently in Jeanette Winterson’s The Spare Room (2023).
Abrupt endings are popular in ghost tales, but a narrative sometimes requires a proper resolution or dénouement after the story’s climax (dénouement comes from the French word dénouer meaning ‘unknot’). What we’re talking about here is the wind-up, where all the strands of the plot are drawn together and loose ends are explained. ‘I Was Once a Haunted House’ is essentially a whodunit and so inevitably requires a scene where the one who unmasked the killer reveals how the ruse was achieved.
So there you have it. Catalyst event. Problem arising or exacerbated. Trigger for action. Inner need and want. Task. Counter action. Back story. Reveal. Battle. Surrender and transformation. Climax. Resolution. But is there a word for how all these elements are put and held together? Theorists talk about scaffolding, the frame and even the skeleton, but here I find the etymology of the word ‘text’ is useful, for it comes from the Latin texere meaning ‘to weave’. And that’s what story tellers do. They weave all the material of their tale together in such a way that we can enjoy the pattern without noticing how it was made. My own experience is that story structure in the actual writing is a largely unconscious act. Yes, you’re aware that you’re selecting and composing events – the task, the battle, the reveal and so on – and all with the intention of creating a response from those who will read your tale, but the story itself as you write it so often takes on its own life. Where exactly that life comes from is a bit of a mystery.
It should be said that not all ghost tales are an array of plot points and story beats and they’re none the worse for that. With the ghost tale there are those ‘simple’ plots, to use Aristotle’s term, where a presence slowly becomes a manifesting entity, as in several E.F. Benson stories such as ‘And No Birds Sing’, The Corner House and A Tale of an Empty House. But ‘simple’ doesn’t mean lesser, for these types of tale are often just as effective as those with big plot twists. Then there are those tales that wish to explore a curious situation, such as becoming a ghost, as in G.W. Stonier’s The Memoirs of a Ghost (1947), or a theme such as memory, as in Louis de Bernières’ This Beautiful House (2004). Such tales are not driven by action or need, but rather by anticipation and suspense and the pleasure in reading them can be found in the writer’s skill in creating tension and foreboding. The Whisper in the Woods, published anonymously in 1880 in ALL THE YEAR ROUND, the magazine founded and edited by Charles Dickens, is a tale that is pretty much pure atmosphere – and a very fine piece of writing it is too.
