Hi. I'm trying to write a ghost story, just as a casual thing, and I've just plain run out of ideas. It's set in a small village (in Britain) during the Second World War - I thought this would be good because they'll be trapped in the house because of the blackout, then there'll be the fear and paranoia already caused by the war - and follows a private detective and her assistant called in to help a woman and her children who think their new house might be haunted. The ghost turns out to be the wife of a former owner (18th century) who killed several husbands, but was eventually discovered and murdered in turn. She makes her presence known by... I don't know. I've just plain run out of ideas. I honestly cannot think of anything that can happen to the family and detectives that hasn't been done to death (no pun intended). I have considered killing off the mother (and letting the war see to the dad) but I don't want to rely on loads of bloodshed to be scary - I want variety, starting small and then growing. I did have the idea that she's killed other residents, so you've got other ghosts running around doing her bidding to throw the detectives off. But other than that, I got nothing. Can you help me? Edit: I'm so sorry, this is supposed to be in Plot Development, but it isn't... It's late at night. Sorry.
Esther, For horror, I think in terms of sensations. Sound: A strange knocking. Smell/taste: A foul odor. Sensation: Feeling rain drops fall on you despite being inside your house. Visual: Hordes of rats, insects, etc. My point is, don't have a ghost that goes 'boo' and jumps out. Have the ghost affect the environment in very extream and negative ways.
Things moving spontaneously. Being awakened by something shoving/touching you that isn't there. Hair lifting off your neck as though there were a breeze when there isn't. Hearing footsteps that aren't there. Smelling perfume/blood/dirt - whatever works. Spontaneous fires. Always catching something just out of the corner of your eye. Waking up to pennies falling on your chest (presumably from the ceiling). Pictures coming off the wall, but being placed on a dresser. Almost anything that shouldn't be happening - but is. Yes, many of these have been done to death - it's the way you combine them that's important.
She could poison them too.. with mold or other fungi. They could hear her humming. Weird stains on the walls.
For the question of how she makes her presence known, base it off her character. Have whatever she does flow from that. Did she used to play the piano for her husbands? Have piano music playing. Could she not cook? Have a burning scent fill the house. Etc.
Maybe it makes contact with the children--they talk about the funny lady who tells them bed-time stories about the princess and the five princes (who turned out to be monsters), or doodle a happy wedding day.....but why is the groom's face that shade of green? Or perhaps the protagonists have strange dreams or premonitions about their significant others, or find their waking actions being strangely influenced. For example, maybe the mother has a nightmare about her husband being shot on a battlefield somewhere--but she's the one shooting him, and telling him he deserved it. Maybe she's preparing dinner, making that hotpot that her husband always liked, and reaches for the condiment.....and realises that she was about to sprinkle rat poison over it (but she was sure it was salt!) In general, anything you can think of probably has been done before, so focus more on doing it well. Oh, and this might help in getting the mood right.
I generally like my horror to be psychological. What went through my mind was maybe there is no ghost. Maybe the fears of war, blackouts, etc, all lead to a fear of the dark for the family. The more they stay up waiting and worrying, the more their minds go.
Your ghost lady murdered her husbands with poisoned deserts and late one night the mother wakes to find the smell of raspberry tart wafting through the hallways. This goes on several nights until the mother works up the courage to go see where it's coming from only to find the images of several men sitting around the kitchen table, blood frothing from their mouths. She is even further horrifies to see one of them looks remarkable like her husband who's still at war.
@The Dapper Hooligan Ace, flesh it out! I'm seconding the psychological aspect as well. @surrealscenes Ghosts (or not ghosts (that is the question?)) that needle a character's insecurities, invoking paranoias, extreme paranoias that destroy rationality and manifest as a material psychosis—birthing a monster into our world.
How about have it not be a ghost? Horror is pretty saturated with straight-up ghost stories - I don't buy them anymore unless it's from a favourite author. I think, to make it something interesting, there has to be a twist. Maybe it could be the living mother, who's become obsessed with reading about the old murderess wife and starts to believe she's possessed by her ghost. Maybe it's an enemy of the family's, playing tricks on them. Maybe it's the family trying to dupe the ghost hunters for fame/fortune/whatever.
Some kind of denouement where the kindly, articulate author next door, she raises all our suspicions with her jam and cats, and the hero in chapter eleven throws a tomahawk straight through her head. We're all thinking 'thank god,' and breathing easy, but she was the good guy all along. Now she's dead. The psychotic fat cop, he was obviously just a cop, but really Detective Steinberger was actually the one, The Satanmaster as revealed by the clues in that book. He commanded a dungeon vat of walking corpses. In front of our eyes, all along doing the homebrew course in that basement. The image of the old lady haunts my eyes.
I would highly recommend that you read some non-fiction stories about 'real' ghosts and 'real' hauntings. That is, read about the places which some folks believe are haunted, and where people claim to have seen certain spectral presences—and what the origins might be. Sometimes people have taken what they claim are photos of ghosts. Somehow, I think these 'real' stories might give you more ideas that won't be clichés, than reading horror stories or seeing horror movies. The reaction you get might be either extremely chilling, or the opposite. Often people claim that a ghostly presence doesn't scare them, but makes them feel extreme pity.
Here's one I have had personal experience with. A friend of mine and I visited this place in the evening, in midsummer, in 1982. We were carrying camping gear, so we sneaked into the main site, and bedded down in front of the lighthouse, under the stars. The night was wonderful, and there were whales playing in the little bay just below the lighthouse. However, when we tried to get to sleep, we kept hearing inarticulate screams coming from what we assumed was a campsite or something rather close behind the lighthouse. They weren't the kind of screams that sounded like somebody was in danger, but more like the kind of screams people make when they're angry or upset. We just assumed some drunken get-together was ongoing and tried to ignore it. It went on intermittently all night long and kept waking us up. We considered leaving, but there wasn't really anywhere else to go, so we just stuck it out. When it got light, we packed up to leave ...and noticed there was no campsite, or anywhere anybody could have been camping, because it's basically a cliff behind the light and the house. We shrugged it off, and continued our journey. Later on, a couple of weeks later, an article appeared in People magazine, about how the lighthouse was haunted. !!! When I showed my friend the article, we just looked at each other and went 'wow.' We didn't know anything about a ghost or haunting or anything when we stayed there ...which, in retrospect, is probably just as well. We might well have ended up playing with the whales. http://www.creepyghoststories.com/list/heceta-head-lighthouse-haunted
*claps hands* For a while I lived in a house in Augustine Beach, DE. The house had been a Civil War Infirmary on Pea Patch Island before being moved to the location it currently resides in. Every morning around 10 am you'd hear the back door slam and two little kids would run down the hall laughing and giggling (you couldn't see them) and then the front door would slam. (neither door ever moved). If you got sick, you would awaken in the middle of the night to a woman whispering your name and the feeling of a stethoscope on your chest as well as a cool sensation on your forehead (a cloth?). (One roommate literally moved all of his shit out at 3 am when he got the flu) Also, there was a ghost (we called him the prankster) who would turn on faucets (and shut them off right before you got to them, then turn them on again when you were almost back to where you started) and would obsessively change the channel if you didn't keep it on History. If you yelled at him, he would throw things at you. Seriously. That's just the one house though. My current home is also haunted I kinda love it.
You don't sound as if these things intimidated you, which I suspect is the correct response. Apparently ghosts often want to be noticed, and maybe to communicate, but they can't quite make a strong connection. And maybe they get frustrated (and throw things?) How did living there make you feel? I think it's a shame that people are frightened of ghosts (I probably would be) because I don't think they mean any harm. They just aren't able to let go, for some reason. I wonder why.
Nope. It didn't bother me then, and doesn't bother me in my current home either. I felt fine. You kind of adjust and learn to accept it. It was their house first and the only one that was around all the time was the prankster. You'd be sleeping and pennies from the dresser would plop on your chest, he'd hide things. He'd pull thumbtacks out of posters so they'd fall in the middle of the night and startle you awake (and you knew it was him because the thumbtacks would be perfectly piled on the dresser instead of on the floor). He seemed lonely, and bored. And he didn't throw things at you to hurt you - unless he really didn't like you. The dogs loved him, so I figured it wasn't anything to worry about.
Any idea who he might have been, or what he wanted? Was there anything you did that seemed to please him?
