Why ghost stories? It’s a fair question. The first wave of ghost stories were buoyed up by the spiritual angst that followed the American civil war.  These tales flourished within a culture dominated by religious belief, but spiritualism wasn’t exactly a mainstream genre. Ghost stories were subversive, flouting church orthodoxy—and in particular, affording women a way of raging against the stifling condescension of the patriarchy. A wide range of women’s anxieties and complaints were dismissed back then as ‘hysteria’, a term that was as widely accepted in the medical profession as it was in the wider Victorian and Edwardian culture.

So why now? Why write stories in a genre as old and established as the detective story or the western? Can you write ‘serious’ ghost stories for modern, critically aware readers?

It may be that our ‘spiritual’ crises have evolved of late. Since western religious orthodoxy is on the downslope maybe we need a new word for spirituality. 

Have you noticed how often people talk about ‘existential threats’ these days? I doubt that these people are referencing Sartre, but so much of our frustration and bewilderment does go back to the nature of our existence in the universe and in society. There are still plenty of people who base their sense of self on their particular faith and allegiance to a church, temple or mosque, but scientists and thinkers generally are groping for some notion of rational humanity. 

The trouble is, every day we’re learning more about our origins as a species and our place within an unfathomable cosmos. I heard someone explain life as the heat from the brakes as the universe slows down, losing energy. In a similar way, gravity could be no more than the tendency of all things, fleeing energetic chaos, to settle into places where time passes most slowly. 

Current research notes heightened activity in parts of the brain associated with conscious awareness during the process of dying. The point is, there is plenty of room for rational speculation about time, consciousness and the nature of being.

The ghost story provides a vehicle for wondering. 

Of course a contemporary author can’t just trot out the old tropes about tunnels of light and purgatory, especially since ghost hunting has been reduced to comedy or reality TV farce. If you’re taking the ghost genre seriously, one thing you can do is borrow from science fiction, or at least from what some people call ‘hard’ science fiction. Hard science fiction involves speculation based on the current scientific understanding of space, time and technology.

It’s not an easy fit. Science fiction is anathema to many readers who enjoy ghost stories. Mind you, there are places where the genres overlap. Instead of imagined alien monsters, ghost stories sometime offer undead terror. If you want to experience this kind of beast, have a look at Requiem for Noah. The monster there is a wraith—a psychic projection of a dying man.

Of course the primary reason an author leans towards a particular genre may be because he or she has found pleasure there. Writers of ghost stories love the frisson of fear and awe that goes along with a well told ghost story. It’s hard to pull that off in a modern novel because readers are admirably skeptical. The thing is, they’re often on your side, hoping you can beat the odds and raise their neck hairs.