Ghost story peter6/10/2023 The women in the house knew it and so did the children.” In the Nobel prize-winning author’s most famous book, the ghost of a baby killed by her mother to save her from slavery is a malicious sprite but also a metaphor for the way in which the great evil of slavery haunts its victims after abolition, haunts the history of America and should haunt us all. This great testament to the horrors of slavery opens with a haunting. The very best ghost stories get you to suspend your disbelief because whatever the nature of their manifestation the rationale for that ghost existing is entirely convincing: here are some of them. Suddenly, there are a lot of verbs that can only be employed with the greatest of caution. The minute your ghost talks about whisking from one place to the next, or floating along a pavement, they sound like Casper. It’s surprisingly hard not to make a narrator-ghost appear twee. That created other problems, though – what could my ghost do? Could she move objects, pass through walls? In the case of Platform Seven, I answered that question right at the start by having the whole novel narrated by a ghost – that of a young woman who has died on Peterborough railway station and finds herself trapped there until the mystery of her death is solved.
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