8 Great Ghost Story Tropes

Ghosts. Like most paranormal entities, they are not just one thing. Yet, they are immediately recognizable. Many believe ghosts to be the spirits of the dead. Others think of them as projected energy mimicking human behaviors. They can be as simple as a floating white sheet or as complicated as a shape-shifting poltergeist. Their existence has never been proven yet many believe in them. And in storytelling, they can provide the perfect vehicle for everything from good-natured morality tales to horrific warnings for the living. Below are eight great ghost story tropes and the lessons that they teach their readers.

The ghosts who arrive to teach a lesson

Some believe that death instills us with knowledge that would have come in handy in life. There’s nothing we can do about righting our wrongs once we are dead. But those whose spirits linger between worlds in the afterlife can put that knowledge to use by helping the living to see the errors of their ways before it’s too late for them too.

A Christmas Carol is the perfect example of this type of story. Jacob Marley sends three ghosts to his miserly old business partner, Ebenezer Scrooge, on Christmas Eve in order to connect his hatred of Christmas and his crotchety old ways to his neglectful childhood and focus on greed as a result of that desire to prove himself worthy and successful.  It’s too late for Marley to atone in life, but he uses the clarity of death in order to help Scrooge before he dies miserable and alone and doomed to an eternity in chains.

An example of a ghost who is unsuccessful in attempting to help the living is Victor Pascow in Pet Sematary. His attempt to keep Louis Creed from utilizing the Indian burial ground to resurrect the living comes as a result of Louis trying to save him in his dying moments. However, he’s no match for Louis’ determination to make things right. It goes back to that old notion in Frankenstein of trying to cheat death and discovering that when are able to pull one over on it, death punishes you even more.

The ghosts caught in a loop

There is a school of thought that ghosts aren’t sentient beings but projections of energy left over after death. They repeat the same movements over and over again which is why you’ll hear children laughing in a hallway at a certain time of night or a Victorian woman repeatedly passing through a doorway. Or maybe they’re caught in a time loop, forced to repeat the last moments of their lives while they are still tethered to Earth and unable to change the outcome. They’re not necessarily evil spirits, but the creep out factor is the fact that they are stuck in these repetitive situations with no moving forward or back.

The classic ghost story, The Hitchhiker, comes to mind in this instance. In the story, an unassuming Good Samaritan picks up a hitchhiker and drives them to their destination only to have them disappear on them once they reach that destination. They later learn that the person they picked up was a ghost who had died at the spot where they were picked up and just want to go home. It plays into that fear of being so close to death and not realizing it and the idea of the afterlife being a kind of limbo rather than a release from the pressures of life.

The ghost with unfinished business

This trope provides a psychological reason for the existence of ghosts. In near-death experiences, people tend to shuffle through their regrets. So, it only makes sense that a large number of people die with those regrets and issues left unfinished which keeps them from moving on in the afterlife.

Even a children’s film like Casper explored the idea of unfinished business. At the same time, these ghosts are forgetful as to what that unfinished business was or even what their lives were like before they died, making it nearly impossible to resolve their unfinished business.

In a similar fashion, The Sixth Sense also explores this concept, adding in the fact that the dead don’t even realize they are dead. It can be difficult to wrap things up on Earth when you don’t even realize that your current existence is essentially rooted in ignorance.

This makes for some thought-provoking, entertaining, and poignant stories. It also sends a message to audiences to leave no stone unturned in life so that you can move on in death without the baggage that will leave you lingering in a foggy existence and scaring away the living in the process.

The urban legend

Ghost stories exist in every corner of the earth. From abandoned mine shafts to the tops of lighthouses, each region has their own “haunted places.” Some towns, such as Sleepy Hollow, NY and Salem, MA, even capitalize on it. These folk tales tell of a disturbing or tragic story which has been passed down over the years to become legends.

My hometown has its own local ghost story called The Green Man’s Tunnel. The simple story about a green-glowing ghost that haunts an old tunnel has a convoluted history that centers around a very real individual who didn’t even live in the area in which the story takes place. You can read more about The Green Man Legend here: The Green Man Legend: How Real Tragedy Became a Pennsylvania Ghost Story

The ghost hunters

Some ghost stories focus more on the paranormal researchers or psychics rather than the ghosts themselves. These ghosts need to be dealt with so that they don’t terrorize the living anymore. Whether that means reeling them in with proton packs and storing them in ghost traps or using your sixth sense to dodge their malicious actions until you can find a way to stop them, you have the tools to take on these hard-to-beat entities.

There’s something empowering about being able to overcome ghosts through technology, brilliance, or other supernatural means. Part of the appeal of ghosts is that it affirms that there is life after death, something that everyone, no matter what their beliefs, ponders. So to not only confirm their existence but also be able to control them is a comforting sentiment.

The invisible ghosts

We fear what we don’t see. And sometimes you can’t see ghosts. All we can see is the furniture moving across the room or hear the moaning through the castle at night. And that’s all it takes to freak us out. Because we don’t need ghosts to pop up on us in the shower (see High Spirits) or bring the shrimp to life at our next dinner party (see Beetlejuice). It’s funny when it happens in a comedy, but it’s not funny when it happens to us.

The invisibility factor is what keeps doubt in our minds about the existence of ghosts. There have been stories of fully-formed entities or flashes of spirits in the corner of a person’s eye. But more often than not, ghosts are at their worst when they are merely an uneasy energy in the room or the orchestrator of an unidentified noise or movement.

This brings on a series of questions such as,  “What was that? What do they want? Is something going to startle me when I’m not ready for it?” We seek these adrenaline rushes out on our own controlled terms, but when they come about uninvited, it’s no longer fun.

Ghosts that haunt a place (and people)

A haunted house is the ideal setting for an awesome ghost story. Large, drafty, cobweb-infested dwellings are always a hit. A spooky setting does half the work for the ghosts and creates an atmosphere for a lot of running and screaming from spirits Scooby-Doo style. See my post,  Haunted Houses: How the Victorian Home Inspired Classic Ghost Stories, for more on this.

Some stories have taken the idea of setting and run with it. Whether it’s a portal that opens up in a little girl’s suburban bedroom closet in Poltergeist or a snowed-in hotel in the mountains in The Shining, a unique and non-traditional setting is a great addition to the genre.

Because these ghosts are tethered to a place, they often attach themselves to a resident of that place. Innocent children and tormented adults are often likely targets.  They differ from possession stories, which I’ve omitted entirely because they are their own separate entity, even if the ghosts are malevolent. Ghosts can still be evil, just like people can be evil. Because ghosts once were people, and they can be just as resentful and troublemaking in death as they were in life.

The vengeful ghost

I’ve touched on how ghosts are stuck on Earth, looking to tie up loose ends. Sometimes those loose ends are specifically related to how they died. They may have been murdered or wrongfully accused, particularly in the case of females. They may even have been found guilty of witchcraft, adding another classic horror element to the story (Paranorman for example).

These ghosts spend the majority of the story as the antagonist only to come out heroic or at least better understood at the end of the story. They get their revenge often with the help of another living character as in What Lies Beneath. At the end, you’re left in a state of catharsis in terms of watching this spirit get their justice. You can only hope for the same should your life end in a similar predicament.

What are your favorite ghost story tropes? Leave your answers in the comments below!

Also check out my post: 9 Great Vampire Tropes.

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