Under the Shadow of a Ghost

It begins with the shift of a shadow, a cold draft, the creak of a floorboard and the touch of an unseen presence that lurks the corridors of the house at night and it ends with a curse, a death or even the gates of Hell opening wide. Each alone can be unsettling if not disturbing, but together with a number of other ingredients it can be a bone chilling and horrific experience for even the most harden residents of a haunted house.

However, that is just something that a family in a stereotypical Hollywood manufactured film would go through. The true sense of a ghostly meeting can be either subtle or excessive, but it will almost always be beyond grasp of the rational mind than that of any campy horror film. However, not all portrayals of ghosts and haunting are campy and flashy, some are pure psychological terror, while others, like the ghost of hamlets father in Shakespeare's Hamlet, are quite ominous. The mark of a great director, writer or artist, concerning the paranormal, is not only to capture the what and why of a ghost, but to effectively use them to manipulate the audiences' reaction to the work. In Hamlet, the ghost of Hamlet's father not only served as the catalyst for Hamlet's search for vengeance, but as a specter cleverly placed by Shakespeare to invoke the audiences own beliefs, fears and superstitions.