Ghost Stories and Whodunnits

[Toby Frost]

It occurred to me this morning that there's a lot of overlap between the classic ghost story and the murder-solving type of crime novel, especially the "cosy" variety. You've got the standard setting: a country house with an old history- or, more generally, a plot tied closely to a single evocative location. Then there are dark deeds that have to be uncovered to find the killer/set the ghost to rest (or be killed by it). There is a cast of often wealthy characters, who steadily lose their nerves and respectability as the plot gets nastier.

More than that, there's often a sense of vague, nebulous evil floating about up till the ending, always slightly out of view. I remember being frightened by the BBC's adaptation of Agatha Christie's Nemesis when I was little, for this reason. So are ghost stories more like murder mysteries than they are horror novels?

 

[alexvss]

It occurred to me this morning that there's a lot of overlap between the classic ghost story and the murder-solving type of crime novel, especially the "cosy" variety. You've got the standard setting: a country house with an old history- or, more generally, a plot tied closely to a single evocative location. Then there are dark deeds that have to be uncovered to find the killer/set the ghost to rest (or be killed by it). There is a cast of often wealthy characters, who steadily lose their nerves and respectability as the plot gets nastier.

More than that, there's often a sense of vague, nebulous evil floating about up till the ending, always slightly out of view. I remember being frightened by the BBC's adaptation of Agatha Christie's Nemesis when I was little, for this reason. So are ghost stories more like murder mysteries than they are horror novels?

Scooby-Doo popped up in my mind instantly .

And I see your point. In stories where ghosts haunt places, there is a story of abuse or murder behind it all, and the protagonist must find out what it is to put that miserable soul to rest. The first thing you do after moving to a haunted house is hitting the local library and research who used to live there. The Conjuring franchise is all about that. East Asian stories, like Ring or The Grudge as well. They’re more sad than scary, if you don’t watch them alone at night that is .

 

[Toby Frost]

Good point. Just after posting this, it occurred to me that the classic whodunnit is probably a British invention, while the ghost story definitely isn't. There's a melancholy feel to some ghost stories that you don't really get in a lot of crime. Hellraiser feels to me like an interesting mix of ghost and horror story: the cenobites are bloody and violent, but they seem to haunt the house.

 

[Yozh]

It occurred to me this morning that there's a lot of overlap between the classic ghost story and the murder-solving type of crime novel, especially the "cosy" variety. You've got the standard setting: a country house with an old history- or, more generally, a plot tied closely to a single evocative location. Then there are dark deeds that have to be uncovered to find the killer/set the ghost to rest (or be killed by it). There is a cast of often wealthy characters, who steadily lose their nerves and respectability as the plot gets nastier.

More than that, there's often a sense of vague, nebulous evil floating about up till the ending, always slightly out of view. I remember being frightened by the BBC's adaptation of Agatha Christie's Nemesis when I was little, for this reason. So are ghost stories more like murder mysteries than they are horror novels?

I agree that there is a particular subset of "ghost stories," at least in the western tradition, that are like mysteries displaced by time. The ghost in these stories is usually a sympathetic spirit, once protagonist gets over their initial jitters. Plot is protag helping the spirit, rather than fighting it.

In modern movies, this pattern is sometimes twisted so we get a "who's really the ghost, here?" stories like The Sixth Sense or The Others.

 

[Randy M.]

Since both ghost/horror stories, as we know them now, and mysteries stem from the Gothic, it's not surprising there is overlapping. You can see it with some s.f., as well. For instance, for all it's eeriness, "Who Goes There?" is a problem-solving story, the problem being, what is it we're facing and how to tell it from each other; essentially it becomes a different sort of murder mystery. See also, pretty much every episode of The X-Files.

As you say,

More than that, there's often a sense of vague, nebulous evil floating about up till the ending, always slightly out of view.

A good part of ghost stories like Naomi's Room, Curfew, Poltergeist, is solving the mystery of what you're up against. And that atmosphere of dread is often tapped into by mystery writers -- Agatha Christie does it with a variety of short ghost stories as well as And Then There Were None, and Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca might be an exemplar (I read years ago that Ellery Queen called Rebecca a ghost story without a ghost, which is pretty accurate). I just finished White Horse by Erika T. Wurth, which features a woman investigating her mother's death in an attempt to stop being haunted by her.

 

[paranoid marvin]

In my opinion, there's quite a difference between a ghost story and a story with ghosts in it. 'Oh Whistle' is a ghost story whilst 'Ghostbusters' is not (imho).

Thinking on this reminds me of a line from Michael Hordern in the BBC adaptation of 'Oh Whistle' when he says "There's no broad consensus about what a ghost is..." and I think the same is true of ghost stories.

But I agree that there are close ties between whodunnits and classical ghost stories. Often remote locations, eerie atmospheres, a sense of continual threat and suspicion and a need to get to the bottom of 'who' the murderer/ghost is and 'why' they are doing it.

 

[BAYLOR]

Some of Seabury Quinn's Jules De Grandin stories fit into this category

 

[Guttersnipe]

Ghost stories are still collected in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine (and, to a much smaller extent, Ellery Queen).

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

And of course there are stories about "occult detectives" that are specifically intended to be both mysteries and ghost stories. Carnacki the Ghost-Finder and some of the John Silence stories, written in the early twentieth century. And earlier than that, I think some of LeFanu's stories would fit that description.

Some urban fantasy, I believe, features detectives who are ghosts, but that's quite a different thing.