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Writing the Uncanny · 10 of 23
Writing the Uncanny
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Ghost as Arrested Moment and Intertextual Haunting

Writing the Uncanny Dan Coxon and Richard V. Hirst (eds.)

Key Principle

Catriona Ward's foundational reframe: the ghost story's horror is temporal, not supernatural. Ghosts terrify because they cannot die — they are locked in endless repetition, denied even the change that death represents. Every formal device of the genre (circular structure, obsessive prose repetition, nested frames, the sceptic-witness) is a technical enactment of this central fact. The ghost does not scare by what it is but by what it cannot do: change, grow, end.

Why This Matters

If a ghost story is built around supernatural origin rather than temporal paralysis — explaining the ghost's cause, motive, resolvable history — the explanation implies that change is still possible, that something can be done. This neutralises the genre's deepest source of dread. The reader fears not death but the impossibility of it.

The second implication follows: if form and content must align, then the prose and structure of a ghost story cannot afford the variety, development, and forward momentum that other fiction cultivates. Varied, elegant prose signals a narrator in control. Ghost fiction requires the opposite signal. When the same word, phrase, or image recurs with escalating frequency, the text becomes haunted by itself — the reader's own experience of reading enacts the ghost's condition. In The Haunting of Hill House, "coming" appears six times across three paragraphs before being superseded by "bang" and "knock," which is then answered by "a thin little giggle" — the women's own nervous laughter returned as threat, "with an almost musical precision, building to a crescendo." (Section 26: Haunting the Text)

Good Examples

Structural circularity in The Haunting of Hill House: Jackson opens and closes with the same paragraph. Ward's reading: "Instead of progress, we have achieved only entropy. Instead of the catharsis of an ending, we are looped back to the beginning." The form refuses what the ghost refuses. (Section 26: Haunting the Text)

The sceptic-witness as structural requirement: M.R. James makes Parkins announce himself as "a convinced disbeliever in what is called the 'supernatural'" precisely so the reader can occupy that position and be dismantled alongside him. "We, the reader, are Parkins." The horror lives in the journey from disbelief to dreadful belief; remove disbelief and there is no journey — only events. (Section 26: Haunting the Text)

Intertextual haunting in Jackson: Jackson absorbs the double-bed encounter from M.R. James's "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" and transforms it. Eleanor Vance's name echoes Elinor Mortimer from Melmoth the Wanderer. Maturin himself echoes The Monk. Each text haunts the next: "Having taken up residence in its host, the Gothic replicates itself throughout our culture like a virus." (Marie Mulvey-Roberts, The Handbook to Gothic Literature, Macmillan 1998; quoted in Section 26: Haunting the Text)

Counterpoints

Ghost stories that explain their ghosts: Once a ghost has been given a cause, motive, and resolvable history, the reader understands that the situation could in principle be resolved. Resolution implies change. Change is precisely what the ghost denies. The explanation collapses the genre's load-bearing structure.

Prose variety in ghost fiction: A ghost story narrated with stylistic range and forward-moving energy signals authorial control. Control is the condition the ghost story should be subverting. When the prose is too settled, the form contradicts the content.

Misusing the circular structure: A circular ending only enacts stasis if the opening conditions were established with enough weight that the reader feels the loop close. An ambiguous or weak opening followed by an identical closing produces confusion, not dread. Ward acknowledges the ambiguity in Jackson's own circular structure — Eleanor's death may be escape rather than capture — but notes the form's job is not to settle the reading, only to deny relief from the opening's conditions. (Section 26: Haunting the Text)

Key Quotes

"Ghosts are the antithesis of growth, organic change, life and even of death, which is perhaps the greatest change of all." — Catriona Ward (Section 26: Haunting the Text)

"There must be an inherent mistrust and scepticism of the phenomenon in the beholder, or else the uncanny effect cannot be achieved." — Catriona Ward (Section 26: Haunting the Text)

"Having taken up residence in its host, the Gothic replicates itself throughout our culture like a virus." — Marie Mulvey-Roberts, The Handbook to Gothic Literature (Macmillan, 1998), quoted in Section 26: Haunting the Text

"Presenting itself as an account of the dead, the ghost story is about living struggle." — Catriona Ward (Section 26: Haunting the Text)

Rules of Thumb

  • Identify the ghost's arrested moment: the specific instant it is trapped repeating. Every formal device in the story should echo or enact that stasis.
  • Give the viewpoint character explicit scepticism early. This is not a cliché but a structural necessity — without the journey from disbelief to dreadful belief, there is no architecture for the horror to inhabit.
  • Repeat a key word or phrase deliberately: let it increase in frequency as the story progresses, then replace it with something worse. The repetition is the ghost at the prose level.
  • Read the ghost story canon not for influence anxiety but as a structural resource. The tradition is the ghost's transmission medium. Strategic use of inherited imagery deepens resonance; accidental echoes dilute it.
  • If the story's form offers catharsis or forward movement, the ending is doing the wrong work. The closing should loop the reader back, not release them.
  • Concealing the machinery matters more at the climax than anywhere else. Visible mechanism converts dread into analysis; the reader exits fear and enters puzzle-solving. (M.R. James, "Some Remarks on Ghost Stories," The Bookman, December 1929)

Related References