Dave's Anatomy: My History as a Writer #23: Appearance and Reality: "The Lighthouse Ghost"

Continuing to write horror and supernatural, I got the idea for a story I called "The Lighthouse Ghost" while visiting the north of my home state, Michigan. In Michigan, we have the Great Lakes, the Third Coast as we call it. We are surrounded by water and our state consists of two peninsulas. We have 3,224 miles of coastline, almost as much as Florida, Alaska, or California, and it's all inland and all fresh water. And where you have coastline, you have lighthouses. Where you have lighthouses, you often have ghosts.

"The Lighthouse Ghost" is the story of Berdine Hoffman, who lives in a small town in northern Michigan and works in clothing store. She is in a relationship with Lexander Tzortzinas (Lexi). Berdine's  parents do not approve of her sexual orientation or her relationship with Lexi, who is the older daughter of a prominent businessman in town. Berdine thinks Lexi truly loves her, but she has doubts—about their relationship and about her own identity. Lexi is wealthy and beautiful. Berdine struggles to get by week to week with her job and considers herself plain and ordinary.

One afternoon when she is having coffee and pondering this, she comes across a book called North Point Ghosts that mentions Lillie Palmerstone, who has appeared in spectral form to many people for many years near the Tarton Light House. Berdine is taken aback because she has seen the figure in the old photograph in a dream. She is even more startled when she reads the sidebar to the article:  Lillie Palmerstone, the “Lighthouse Ghost,” is an enigmatic figure in local history.  Could the thing that brought about her tragedy have been a same-sex relationship?

Berdine thinks little of this until, when she goes to the lighthouse to meet a school friend who is a docent and who gives her a tour, she sees the ghost. Later, the ghost appears to her and they speak. Lillie Palmerston asks her for blood so she can gain enough substance to call to her former lover, who drowned herself after Lillie committed suicide. Berdine eventually agrees, cuts her hand and lets the ghost spread the blood on her lips. She is reunited with her lover and goes to her rest.

Or does she?

 

The story draws on the appearance vs. reality trope—a literary technique that goes way back—one that Shakespeare especially liked to use. Does Berdine really see a ghost? Or is the entire thing happening in her mind? Is it a fantasy she invented to resolve the conflicts she feels? This is a possible explanation because all of the events—the dream, the visions, the conversation with the ghost, cutting herself—could be explained as resulting from psychological factors. The reader is left to wonder.  This is the strength of such stories.

Writers have used this technique frequently. H. H. Munro's horrific tale, "The Monkey's Paw" draws on this. Did the curse of the monkey's paw really cause the death of the couple's son, and did his ghost come to the door? The reader is not certain. Does the ghost of

Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights really "walk," or is it merely a local folk tale? The reader is not certain, and this is part of the story's appeal.

At the end of the story Berdine is convinced that Lexi will be true to her and does love her. Again, has she been able to arrive at this resolution through the intervention of the ghost—or was the ghost merely a mental construct, a feat of the imagination through which she was able to resolve the very non-supernatural dilemma with which she is dealing? Maybe yes. Maybe no. But why dichotomize? Could they not both be true if what postmodernism teaches us is accurate and we create the realities by which we live and find identity?

This sort of psychological horror appeals due to its ambiguity. In one of my blogs a while back I mentioned a story and noted that "the uncertainty, along with the darkness, squishing, screaming, and blood make for horror." In "The Lighthouse Ghost"there is fear, uncertainty, and a good dose of horror in the story's denouement. It is the uncertainty that appeals and opens the mind of the reader to thought, to possibility, and to consideration.

"The Lighthouse Ghost" appeared in a journal called Rivets, now defunct (not to be confused with Rivet, a journal still being published).

And marvelous news: a new novella is available for pre-order—Le Cafe de la Mort, Death's Café. Release date is September 30th, but advance copies can be ordered now and will be delivered to your Kindle on the last day of this month.

For additional titles check out my Writer's Page.

I want to hear your comments and insights. Have you written or read other stories that rehearse ambiguity and appearance vs. reality?

And one last note:  I think

the artist who did the cover

to Le Cafe de la Mort did an

outstanding job.

More to come on horror and

writing--my first book came

soon after I finished "The Lighthouse Ghost." Look for next week's blog.