by Rahman Majere

Created on: January 23, 2010   Last Updated: January 24, 2010

People have been telling each other ghost stories to scare the living daylights out of themselves for a very, very long time. If such creatures as aliens exist, one of their anthropologists would no doubt find this amusing practice as fascinating as our own anthropologists do. Regardless of each individual's personal reasons why he'd want to get himself or herself scared silly and risk wetting the pants, we can all agree that ghost stories are probably not going away anytime soon.

But what makes a great ghost story anyway? There are so many mediums such as movies, serials, books and oral campfire traditions that selecting any one of these in particular would be doing a grave injustice on the rest. Instead, let's take a look at the ghost story itself, outside its medium to see which of these stories are as scary as Barney the Dinosaur or as terrifying as Freddy Kreuger.

1) Intriguing but believable plot

Foremost, there must be a good plot. The plot must exist without relying on the ghost to tell the whole story. A ghost story that has ghosts outside of any context aren't really that scary because the narrative element has disappeared. That's why a lot of ghost stories start off with a setting and gradually builds the tension up until it reaches the climatic moment of truth. The plot twists and turns also keeps the reader or listener riveted without relying completely on the ghost itself to sustain the attention. The setting and plot itself need not be done in an obvious fashion though. In 'Blair Witch Project (original version)', we are only given some background information on the elusive villain but this is enough to shape the context and build a sense of dread in the viewers. It's only with this context that one of the scenes in the movie was so frightening. And no, I will not ruin the surprise in case you have not seen the movie.

2) Great characters that you can identify with

There are some ghost stories whose main characters are so unlikeable that the viewers or listeners actually feel cheered when they meet a gruesome fate. Now this doesn't mean that a ghost story cannot succeed without a likable protagonist... It's just that it's much harder to do.

3) Desperation

When the protagonist and main characters of any story have immense powers at their disposal, the ghost story loses its ability to scare people. 'Resident Evil' is not technically a ghost story, but it's a prime example of how a protagonist who is actually more powerful than the ghosts/zombies/spooks

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