I have been using the paranormal to teach Freshman English for several years now. After the first couple of years, I began to notice that the class participants were having the same kinds of discussions every semester. Herein, I intend to document some of the tenets of paranormal theory which were born of dialogues in these classes. I will warn you now: this article will be full of spoilers in order to illustrate each branch of paranormal theory.
Ghosts
Perhaps the most popular branch of paranormal theory, and paranormal literature in general, concerns ghosts. I have discovered four main theories concerning ghosts. The first is: Ghosts represent a manifestation of a target’s (read - most of the time - protagonist’s) subconscious and also signify the target’s need to (1) learn a lesson, (2) solve a mystery or (3) enact revenge for a perceived wrong committed upon the spirit when they were alive. For the purposes of this article, I will primarily be using film as literary examples with a few contemporary and classic novels, and plays thrown in.
There are many examples of the use of ghosts as a way for characters to “learn a lesson.” The classic example of this is Scrooge in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Scrooge must learn not only from the lessons of his misguided life, but also that of Marley’s life. Both penny-pinching misers are in need of a lesson learned. Marley, though, has learned his lesson in the afterlife and comes back to school his former partner on the way in which Scrooge should be living his life. Afterlife as example of possibility. Weighted-down with the chains of guilt, Marley must convince Scrooge to change his ways be producing not one, not two, but three additional ghosts to teach this valuable tutorial. In the end, it is the horrors of a possible life lived alone and unloved – brought about by the Ghost of Christmas Future – that causes Ebeneezer to bring about a change. Fear of a tormented afterlife (Marley) is not enough. Scrooge must be shown the prospect of dying rich but alone and unloved, a man unmissed. The lesson presented by a ghost character is always related to the perils of the afterlife as punishment for a life poorly-lived.
A cinematic example of this ghostly lesson appears in 1989’s Field of Dreams. Ray, our protagonist, is visited by the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson. Jackson expounds on his need for baseball, even in the afterlife. That’s how important having a life’s ambition is. Ray is rudderless, drifting on a sea of financial struggles and aimless desires until the ghosts of other pastime players whisper through the cornfield, “If you build it, they will come.” Like Scrooge, Ray has been given a purpose from the afterlife: To exalt the game of baseball. The rest of his life falls into place after he commits to this new endeavor. Financial troubles disappear, his struggling marriage is healed and even the relationship with Ray’s dead father is reconciled. Lesson learned? Everyone has a purpose.
The second part of the first plank of paranormal theory lies within the chance to “solve a mystery.” In 1999’s Stir of Echoes, Tom (played by Kevin Bacon) is seeing visions of a ghost in his Chicago home. The ghost commands him to dig and dig he does, destroying floorboards, his backyard and finally his cellar floor and walls, where he eventually finds the body of the girl ghost haunting him. Tom questions his landlord and the landlord’s son about the past renovations to the house and receives another psychic signal from the ghost that he’s on the right track. Mystery to be solved: Who murdered the girl? What does it mean if Tom solves the mystery? He opens up. He experiences the world more fully and openly. He was closed to any relationships outside his own immediate family and to any views outside his own rigid values. The ghost gets peace and Tom gets a new lease on life.
1990’s Ghost, starring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore, is another example of a mystery needing to be solved in order to bring about closure for both the living and the deceased. Sam (Swayze) is murdered. He must solve the mystery of who murdered him and why in order to save his widow (Moore) from impending danger. In this case, the protagonist (Sam) is the ghost but the mystery still needs to be solved. The target is Molly, the widow. Our protagonist is still the clueless one, but he’s also the one returning from the afterlife. It’s too late to save his own life, so he must solve the mystery to save his love’s life. This time the story ends in the mystery being solved, causing peace for the ghost and closure for Molly. Spirits can’t rest if there’s unresolved conflict. We want to believe that we would have questions about our own deaths if in Sam’s situation. Who would want me dead? Are my loved ones in danger? No rest for the unsolved. This time, however, the ghost is the main character. We are thrust into the unknown with him. The mystery behind her husband’s death seems peripheral to Molly, since she doesn’t know she’s in danger from the killer. It should also be mentioned here that the audience is not only satisfied by the mystery being solved, we are also satisfied by “proof” of a cognizant afterlife. One where you can still interact with the living. We all want this, whether the belief in it is there or not, everyone wants to see proof of life-after-death. Knowing that Sam’s interaction from beyond the grave has saved Molly and solved the mystery is deeply satisfying to contemporary audiences.
Next up? Revenge. The classic example here is Hamlet. The ghost of Hamlet’s father seeks revenge. This makes Hamlet a prop or tool to achieve that revenge. There is also a familial responsibility involved her as well. The ghost has been wrongfully executed and Hamlet must get caught up in the subterfuge that is familial revenge. There is also an element of mystery here. Does Hamlet know, from the beginning of the play, who killed his father? Or is it merely speculation? Who else is connected to the assassination? This gets resolved fairly quickly and we’re off on a plan for revenge. Much like that of the Jewish belief in the Dybbuk, ghosts who seek revenge were severly wronged in life and seek the revenge from beyond the grave. In the Jewish myth, the Dybbuk possesses a member of the living to do the bidding of the spirit. Here, while there is no direct possession, Hamlet is still being used by the ghost. He is the eyes, ears and hands of the ghost.
In The Possession (2012), Em buys a wooden box at a yard sale. Little does she know that the box contains a Dybbuk, a vengeful Jewish spirit seeking to possess a living host. When her curiosity gets the better of her, she opens the box to view its contents. Over the next few days, the spirit in the box takes possession of Em and she is forced to either right the wrongs connected to the Dybbuk or wreak havoc on those who wronged the spirit in life. The danger here is the possession itself. According to Jewish legend, the need for the spirit’s vengeance is so great that the spirit essentially devours its host. Similarly, this happens metaphorically to Hamlet. Ultimately, he is lost to the conspiracy of murder and its resulting revenge. So, too, is Em lost. This prong of the first tenet of paranormal theory brings with it a moral center that gets lost to the murkiness of revenge, and doesn’t exist with the other two branches. Tom doesn’t have an empirical need to find out who killed the girl (Stir of Echoes, 1999). It is not a moral mystery. He is more interested in no longer being haunted by the spirit. For the revenge-seeking spirit, there is no escape from being consumed.
The second theory concerning ghosts is that ghosts appear in forgotten spaces, such as vacant rooms or entire floors of a dwelling, attics, basements, cellars, crawlspaces. Why is it that so many stories pertaining to ghosts are set in the little-used spaces in our lives? First, we should ask what dwells there. Boxes of forgotten toys, photographs, furniture. Often these things have so little relevance to our everyday lives they get left behind when a living space is vacated. Leaving basements and attics full of generations of history. But, what is history. There is the old adage that those who forget history are bound to repeat it. I say, in terms of forgotten spaces, those who forget that history are doomed to get bitten on the ass by it. The spaces themselves are forgotten because the items therein are things to be forgotten. Younger selves, reminders of dead relatives or friends, mementos of life choices not chosen. We want to forget the things we put in attics and crawlspaces. That is, until we need them or get nostalgic. How many stories and films have the trope where the thing that solves the mystery or banishes the demon is in a box in the basement or in a trunk in the attic? We can’t get rid of this stuff because it might be needed to fend off something down the line. But also, we need to monitor and keep in-check its volatility.
It also may hurt us. Photos of the baby you put up for adoption that your current family knows nothing about. The scripture to a cult you were indoctrinated into but have since escaped. If discovered, this could unravel the orderliness of your world. These things exist alongside the spirits of those once living who aren’t thought of again. People who remember them have long since moved on. Ghosts exist in the land of the forgotten things.
The final tenet in regard to ghosts that is important to associate is the fact that ghosts may not know they’re ghosts at all. Why is this important? What if you were unaware that you were human or female? What if you lacked the vocabulary to accurately describe your own existence? Most ghosts in literature are self-aware. This becomes particularly important when illustrating the earlier jobs of teaching a lesson or solving a mystery. But what about those ghosts who are not self-aware? Do they serve a purpose?
The ghosts in 2001’s The Others do not interact with the living. In fact, they are terrified by them. How do we categorize them? Should they be their own separate category of paranormal theory? First of all, the ghosts in The Others are the protagonists. The story is told from their point of view. Only late in the film do we come to realize that they are no longer among the living. Do the living then become the manipulators of the dead? In this case, do the dead need to be taught a lesson, helped to solve a mystery or to seek revenge? Are there other examples of this reversal?
Of course, the paranormal is not limited to ghosts. Major compartments within the sphere of the paranormal contain that of psychics, aliens and cryptids, which we will examine further now.
Psychics
When talking about psychics in terms of paranormal theory, it is perhaps important to point out that often the presence of ghosts and psychics occur simultaneously. Many of the examples of ghosts in the literature above also contain psychics as catalysts within the stories. It may be advantageous to separate the appearance of psychics out of these pieces of literature in order to examine their own influence on paranormal theory. This brings us to the sole tenet of paranormal theory which deals with psychic characters and their storylines: Psychics and the presence of E.S.P. (Extra Sensory Perception) represent the attempt to know the unknowable; the future, the existence of life after death, the target’s past or unknown historical circumstances. When dealing with ghosts, the obvious connection is that of proof of life after death. Many of the ghostly films and other literature references above also deal with psychics.
In Stir of Echoes, Tom does not see the ghost of the murdered girl until he has been given the gift of clairvoyance, which is the ability to see ghosts and events of the past. Whoopi Goldberg’s character in Ghost is the psychic who bridges that gap between living Molly and dead Sam. In The Others, a psychic is the antagonist who “pesters” the ghostly protagonists.
In The Conjuring films, the protagonists are professional psychics Ed and Lorraine Warren, who are hired by various individuals to investigate ghosts, demons, and the like. Here we get a mixture of all of the elements from the psychic tenet of paranormal theory. In The Conjuring 2, The Warrens investigate a poltergeist in Enfield, England. This case, however, cannot be solved by their usual means of connecting with a spirit and finding out what it wants/needs in order to “move on” to the afterlife. Here the Warrens must research various historical records and first-hand accounts to get to the spirit’s real motivation for tormenting this Enfield family. By doing this, Ed and Lorraine rely not only on their ability to see and communicate with spirits, they must also use conventional means to release the ghost from the Earthly plane. Thus psychics in literature have to straddle the line between the metaphysical and conventional, using both their “sixth sense” and their intellect and practical applications.
Speaking of The Sixth Sense (1999), here we have a psychic who is also a protagonist. Young Cole (Haley Joel Osment) can “see dead people.” He is tormented by ghosts who have an agenda. If they notice that Cole can see them (unlike most people), they bother him until he helps them to achieve a goal of some sort, usually to communicate something to the living. One ghost girl wants Cole to give her father a video cassette containing evidence of her poisoning. The ghost of Cole’s grandmother wants to communicate to Cole’s mother how proud she is of her. A group of ghosts who were wrongfully hanged in the place that is now Cole’s school, want Cole to communicate how and why they died. These demands on Cole’s ability to “see dead people” rely on Cole’s gift but also on the gifts of Cole’s psychiatrist, Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis). Cole’s youth and inexperience is tempered by Malcolm’s clinical intellect. Where Cole is unwilling or unable to use his gift, Malcom steps in with logic and reasoning to diffuse the situation. Cole feels better about being less afraid of his talents and thus can “help” the spirits he encounters. Cole uses what Malcom brings to the table to disseminate the need to fear what he can see but others cannot. The two together make one complex protagonist.
In the 1988 comedy, Vibes, Cyndi Lauper and Jeff Goldblum play two psychics (Sylvia and Nick respectively) hired to find a lost Incan city. Sylvia has a spirit guide, Louise, who tells her about the future and Nick has the gift of psychometry. He can touch things and tell you about their past. Again, together they make one great psychic and one great protagonist. Sylvia’s gifts are ethereal while Nick’s are grounded in the tangible. One uses E.S.P. and one uses solid objects to discover a past, historical context, yet they both represent the unknowable.
In addition to Stir of Echoes, The Sixth Sense and Vibes, there are many other films which contain a link between psychics and ghosts. Extraordinary (2020) features a psychic who must unravel the mystery of who is enslaving ghosts for nefarious purposes. Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016) presents a fake psychic whose daughter displays an authentic psychic ability to communicate with the dead. In Nekrotronic, the protagonist discovers he is the descendant of a long line of psychics who are trying to find out the source of who is tormenting ghosts for profit.
The long history of ghosts and psychics is varied and yet oddly similar. To add to their authenticity, most psychic characters are “grounded” in research and tools that lend themselves to believability. Psychics are to know the unknowable by knowing the knowable. That is to say for their gifts to come from an otherworldly place, we need to believe in their worldly place. We must connect with their logic, their research, things that set them up in the real world, in order to accept their psychic gifts.
Aliens and Cryptids
In the 2009 film, The Fourth Kind, Dr. Abigail Tyler is visited on a regular basis by aliens. They are not on a schedule. They give no warnings. They come and go as they please. When they do come, Dr. Tyler is carried away to have experiments performed upon her, her husband and her children. They do not ask permission, no waivers are signed. Tyler is manipulated by unseen and unsupervised forces. To ensure her cooperation and inclusion, they erase her memory of all of their dealings. The only way she knows what has been happening is a tape recording. The recorder was left on one night as Tyler slept and recorded the event of her abduction.
This leads us to the first tenet of paranormal theory regarding aliens and cryptids. Aliens represent our “higher selves” and thus are smarter, more experienced, more powerful than humans. They answer to no one and have complete autonomy. We often desire what the alien has.
In the Alien series of films (beginning in 1979 and starring Sigourney Weaver), the aliens are super-soldiers. They have superior fighting skills, acid for blood which makes for an unstoppable defense system, and the autonomy of a monarchy, led by a queen. We are envious of such soldiers. How formidable would/could we be with such strengths? Not only do these strengths make for great action sequences, but they also serve to represent what we want to become. In the second film, Aliens, the corporation that is terra-farming the planet requires a sample of this alien to be brought back to Earth for study and possible profitable use. We want what the alien has. We admire it.
The final tenet of Paranormal Theory also has to do with aliens and cryptids. Cryptids and aliens represent that which cannot be categorized in the natural world and thus cannot be resolved by conventional theories/means. Of course aliens are not of the natural world, they are not of this world. However, cryptids are of the natural world, but are as of yet unidentifiable.
1987’s Harry and the Hendersons is a prime example of a cryptid film. The Hendersons hit a sasquatch with their car when returning home from a camping trip. They take what they think is the dead body home with them only to find it alive in the garage. Through a series of mistakes and losses, the Hendersons realize that “Harry” is intelligent and gentle and must be returned to the wild. Harry is a part of the natural world, you see, and cannot be categorized. Only the Hendersons know Harry’s true value and it’s not to be put into a museum or zoo. The sasquatch is a mythical creature, never before captured on film – officially – and sightings have primarily been in the Pacific Northwest. Unexplained large humanoid footprints have been documented in this area and many believe it to be the mythical sasquatch.
As has been stated, a cryptid cannot be dispatched in an orthodox way. The Hendersons can’t give it to a zoo. They can’t kill it. And they can’t keep it in the suburban domicile. It must be able to return to its “natural” environment where it can live out its existence in obscurity, the literal sense of the word. A cryptid’s only safety lies in this obscurity, this inability to identify and categorize. Its mythos will keep it alive long after any trace of “Bigfoot” still remains.
Conclusions
Paranormal Theory is new. It’s, by its nature, meant to be scary and obfuscated. Studying its use in literature can, however, be its own reward. If nothing else, it is a great way to illustrate “truth” versus “belief.” We want to believe in life-after-death. We want to believe that we are not the only intelligent life in the universe. We want to believe that the last remaining dinosaur presides in a loch in Scotland. Does the truth support these beliefs? No. And it’s important to quantify, not yet. So what can we learn from Paranormal Theory that can be considered “true?” Our humanity. We not only want to believe in these things, we have to believe in them. Einstein said that energy doesn’t just cease, it goes elsewhere. So, something should happen to us after death. Why not suppose it into existence? Why not write and read and watch it? Truly, the thing that separates us from the other animals is our ability to suppose worlds outside of our own senses.