Essays on Ghost Story

Ghost stories and narratives can take many different forms and change according to history, location and culture. What is considered scary in one culture could be dismissed as a fantastic tale or a comical narrative by another. The cultural values and everyday narratives of the people in a certain location determine what is scary and what is not. The West and the East have different cultural values and beliefs. They differ not only in simple matters such as greeting a stranger but also in the principles that govern their conduct in life and business. These differences are also evident ...

Guillermo Del Toro’s Spanish horror-fantasy film The Devil’s Backbone is a unique ghost story for its time, given the film’s setting during the Spanish Civil War and the morally ambiguous nature of the ghosts found in the film. In telling the story of a small orphanage in rural Spain in the early 1930s, haunted by a small boy named Santi whose death provides one of the central mysteries, The Devil’s Backbone mixes the high fantasy of fairy tales with the gritty despair of one of Spain’s most tumultuous historical periods. As evidenced in the ...

Ghost stories and narratives can take many different forms and change according to the history, location and culture of a place. What is considered scary in one culture could be dismissed as a fantastic tale or a comical narrative by another culture. The cultural values and every day narratives of the people in a certain physical location determines what is scary and what is not. The west and the east have different cultural values and beliefs. they differ not only in simple matters such as greeting a stranger but also the principles that govern their conduct in life and ...