Why Write Ghost Stories?

 I LOVE ghost stories. They overwhelm my podcast queue. I've read the complete works of M. R. James, and the short ghost stories of E. F. Benson. I read Shirley Jackson, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sheridan LeFanu, Tananarive Due, Charles Dickens, Ambrose Bierce, Shakespeare, etc. I prefer frightening stories, subtle stories, and ominous atmospheres. I turn my nose up at the more sentimental of tales, and embrace the gothic Christmas Eve traditions.

And naturally, since I love them, my next impulse is to write them.

But here's the rub: I don't believe in ghosts.

Theologically, ghosts indicate something beyond an afterlife (or pre-mortal existence, if you go for the REALLY cheesy). One of my Shakespeare professors pointed out the role that ghosts played for Shakespeare, at a time when England was being violently whipped between Catholicism and Protestantism, and had become spiritually burned out. Ghosts, he posited, are distinctly Catholic, because they come from a place where the spirits of the dead are held back because of "unfinished business" or purgatory. There's no purgatory in protestantism.

In a nitpicky mode, I might point out that purgatory is a place for unrepented sins, rather than vendettas. I might also point out that in stories (including Shakespeare's stories) ghosts deliver messages, which deliveries require no particular damnation, temporary or otherwise. No matter how convoluted the theology, protestants write ghost stories too.

In Mormon theology, as currently practiced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the dead do deliver some very important messages (Moroni, specifically), but they do so in dreams and visions, and as angels rather than ghosts. They do not haunt or terrify (except in that any supernatural visitation is bound to terrify, regardless of the benevolence of the messenger). Moroni visited Joseph Smith Jr. at the Hill Cumorah where the plates were buried, but also at his home. And Joseph never expressed any particular terror (whether he felt it or not) at being so stalked by the dead. I believe there are accounts from the early years of the church of visitations accompanied by fear. I would love to read some, but haven't the faintest clue where to start looking.

I have similarly stringent skepticism of demon possession, cursed objects, and other horror tropes. The only tropes that hold any real weight with me are apocalyptic, because I've "lived" through 2020.

As a writer, I feel the need to cling to some kind of truth, even if it's emotional. But what kind of truth can I write in a story about ghosts? My favorite horror podcast often begins each story with "They have a story to tell, and we promise you: it's true." Horror stories borrow the veneer of reality to inflate and enliven the terror. Philosopher Paul Ricoeur talks about textual debts to realism and reality (in different words), which are in essence contradictory. Fiction has to be believable, and history owes a debt to the past to be as truthful as possible.

How do I write believable fiction about something I don't believe? The dead are not malicious.

I would need to find a different truth that could use ghosts as a kind of avatar (which I suspect many writers already do). Do I believe in malice? I believe that human malice is rare: humans are simply too lazy to destroy each-other with any kind of intentionality. Was that the fear of witches? 

I need to keep thinking about this. The answer isn't going to be simple.