This isn’t so much the case with the written word as it is with film, but I’ve noticed that a lot of movies about ghosts and hauntings can be boiled down to the following: someone went into a house. they saw a ghost. it was scary. they ran away.
sometimes the plot’s got a little more action: a few people went into a house. they saw a ghost. it was scary. they all died, except the one who ran away.
on paper it’s really boring. it’s not exactly The Haunting of Hill House or The Ring. Hill House was so complicated by real human beings with relationships that a short summary isn’t really possible. The Ring’s summary has an appealing irony to it: Lady sees a haunted video tape and gets a phone call saying she’ll die in a week. She shows the video to her co-worker and he gets the call too. She goes ghost-hunting to stop the video haunting at its source. She finds the ghost’s body and everyone feels a sigh of relief. Then her co-worker dies. She does some more research and realizes the only way not to die is to make someone else watch it. All’s well until her kid watches the video. So she calls up his grandpa, her own father, and tells him she’s got something to show him. Heh. That’s screwed up.
There are other options. The Others. Lady moves into a weird house where the help seem to be ghosts. Then she learns she and her kids are the ghosts.
The problem with most stories is they seem to be based on what kind of summary or pitch would be most likely to catch the interest of a producer. Take five minutes to promise effectiveness and simplicity. That’s not how stories happen. Not in my head.
