Did I Mention This?

The 'This is Horror' Podcast

Haunted Objects v. Haunted Locations

A friend gave me the collected ghost stories of Brit writer M.R. James, and it’s become my December read. The stories are chatty to a fault. If you’re looking for body horror, keep looking — “Montague!” I continue shouting, “What does this cursed manuscript, monkey’s paw, mezzotint smell like! How is the physical moment present in the character’s body? — but the stories are beginning to grow on me.

In almost every case the story depicts a cursed object. Some item that holds onto a permanent, terrible power¹. Let’s suppose that the British plundered the world and brought all the spoils back to the British Museum: Is it some lasting guilt that drives the English to write haunted object stories? Consider that Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe fiction is a mainstay in the U.K. If not for the junk shop, Winston Smith would be happily watching Tubi right now.

Consider that American horror seems to manifest in places — violence-ridden hotels, Indian burial grounds, haunted mansions, The Bramford. While so much Brit horror resides in objects — again, all those swiped oddities in the British Museum. And, yes, you could set a haunted object among the riches at the Hearst Castle (and, yes, there’s Rosebud the sled, but that’s a different type of haunting), but the American Gilded Age plundering was so “transactional” that it doesn’t seem to carry the same guilt. Whereas American land seems more properly stolen (Amityville on an Iroquois tribal exposure bed, the Overlook Hotel on a burial ground, Poltergeist on a relocated cemetery). Guilt + Object/Land = Horror.

Or am I just bugging?

In case I forgot to post this link, I did the podcast This is Horror. It’s always a good place to discuss what people can only discuss through a metaphor. Here are the links:

Their website.

Their presence on Apple.

Their presence on Spotify.

Their presence on YouTube.

Michael has asked me back for a long discussion of how the story Guts works. Believe me, I am all about the structure. Structure is everything. Reading M.R. James, I see how his haunted objects always present themselves in a structure as rigid as the Catholic Stations of the Cross. As there’s a Catholic undertow in all of James, I wonder if he also spent a chunk of childhood walking on his knees around the church muttering prayers under the watch of Sister St. Charles?

The trick with good structure is to identify it. Recognize it in detail. Then to forget it. Finally, to be amazed when it resurrects itself in your subconscious and your work. Yes, it’s boring to explicitly discuss the nuts and bolts of storytelling. But you’ll eventually forget that boredom and allow the knowledge to surface in a strange new way.

---

As you watch people shop for holiday gifts, consider that they’re looking for objects. They want an object to fulfill the gift function. They want an object that will carry a future story. “My grandmother gave me this cursed monkey’s paw.” They want an object that will carry a meaning. I’ll send a link once we dissect Guts.

1. Like a lullaby. Like an imported invasive plant. Like an STD (sexually transmitted demon, and yes, there’s such a genre).