Like Dr. Evil Says

 

I want to watch a ghost story.

I want to see a really good ghost story movie because I haven't seen one in a long, long time. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that all the scary movies I have watched lately have been horror/demon type stories, as opposed to horror/haunting stories. I probably missed something, but I feel like the last true ghost story I watched was The Others, and that goes back fourteen (count 'em) years already. 

There have been a couple I watched that came from Japan, The Grudge being the most notable. But even that, disturbing as it was, rated more on my horror scale than on my ghost story scale. My favorite haunted house/ghost story movies are still The Haunting (the 1963 version, done in black and white and starring Julie Harris), The Changeling (1980, with George C. Scott), and probably The Sixth Sense (no notes needed). I like these films, these stories, because they are purely about ghosts, and not always malevolent ones. I don't cotton to the movies where the spirits in the story are beyond vengeful. I don't like slasher films made out of ghosts. I admit Nightmare on Elm Street is hair-raising, but it's still not my idea of the ideal ghost story. Maybe people think ghost stories just for the sake of the hauntings are boring?

So lately, I have been confining my ghost story viewing to things like Ghost Hunters and The Dead Files with occasional forays into A Haunting, Paranormal Witness, Paranormal Survivor, an occasional Haunted Highway, and when I can find one that I haven't already seen, Haunted History. Sometimes SyFy will do me a huge favor and repeat an old Haunted Collector, but for the most part, I'm in a ghost desert here. Cue to Dr. Evil imploring, "Throw me a bone, people." There's just not enough of the good ghost stuff out there.

The spark of hope lies in the fact that we are now in October, and programming will set its sights on appropriate Halloween fare. So more of my favorite shows are coming back this month: Supernatural and Grimm being the headliners. I love me some Winchester and Castiel stories, but boy, I wish they'd do one that was just a stand-alone ghost story, because the only other show that did such high-quality stand-alone ghost stories was The X-Files (golem, anyone?)

(Maybe that's not quite accurate. There was a short-lived British series on ABC back in the late Sixties called Journey to the Unknown that featured one-hour long supernatural stories each Thursday, and they grew progressively more frightening each week. Try watching that and going to sleep in a haunted house afterward! But boy, they were amazing and imaginative and truly scary and I miss that.)

Still, the old hope springs eternal. I am hoping that this month will bring me some good, chilling stuff having to do with haunted houses, or visitations, or apparitions in the mirror, or unexplained appearances on security cameras. My writing self lives for that stuff. I'll have to start looking for the paranormal offerings and specials that I hope will be coming up as we get closer to Halloween. I hope.

Throw me a bone, people.