Washington Irving

I decided to take a stab at it, and gave a quick bullet-point answer.

- Ghost stories are part of the genre of imaginative literature, though its darker side, so naturally, those who love imaginative literature will love ghost stories. Lovecraft defended the genre using a lot of the same type of defenses Tolkien used in defending imaginative lit. Lovecraft called imaginative lit “art in its most essential sense.” (Amy Sturgis has a forthcoming essay on this point by Lovecraft in the 2009 volume from Apex Books, Cthulhu’s Grandfather).  

- Ghost stories are a place to grapple with fear. When Maurice Sendak was asked to defend his scary monsters in Where the Wild Things Are, he noted that the most frightening thing is for children to have fears and nightmares and find no parallel in the real world. Ghost stories provide a mirror for our fears.

- Ghosts are about history. In The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving makes a point about how there’s no encouragement for ghosts anymore, because people leave their hometown so quickly, there’s no one familiar for ghosts to haunt after their first nap in the grave. Ghosts remind us of a certain historical rootedness that most of us don’t feel in our transient, fast-paced, forward-looking culture.

Other thoughts?  Why do we love scary stories?  (And if you don’t, why don’t you?)