Strange encounters

While digital demons have upped the horror ante, medieval ghost stories still have the power to chill host stories have all but

- ETTIE NEIL-GALLACHER

Ghost stories have all but disappeared from contemporary culture. Sure, the BBC trots out the occasional MR James at Christmas, but as a literary and screen genre, ghost stories have become unfashionable. Perhaps, in such a secular age, many people have lost interest in the spiritual dimension. Or is it because ghost stories have been replaced by horror, tailored for audiences who have become so inured to shock that the incremental, creeping fear of a good ghost story fails to satisfy?

Which is a pity, because the best ghost stories are chillingly gripping. The brilliance of a good one invariably lies in its subtlety, as fans of MR James, the master of the craft, will attest. Malevolent forces don’t leap out, bearing the mark of the beast, and bludgeon the protagonist to death while chanting satanic incantations. Indeed, the denouement often doesn’t involve direct confrontation with the malign; the suggestions of its intentions are sufficient.

Ghost stories are also an integral part of our history: they go much further back than MR James and Edwardian England – to even before the Norman Conquest. They had been stamped out by the early Church because of their associations with paganism, but as the first millennium approached, bringing with it eschatological fears of the approaching apocalypse, there was a marked increase. As monks and clerics were generally the only people who could write, many medieval ghost stories were taken down by them. The Church spotted an opportunity to use this interest in the undead to her advantage, and many of the stories that appeared were exempla: didactic warnings to the faithful.