Ghost Story

American Gothic fiction is a sub-genre of gothic fiction popularized in the early 1820s and late 1830s by Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Washington Irving. Specific traits of the American Gothic genre include rationality, puritanism, shame and guilt, ghosts, monsters, and the uncanny. The defining characteristic of the American Gothic genre is the characters’ inability to rationalize their way out of the strange situation in which they find themselves. No amount of denial will save Ichabod from the headless horseman. In Ghost Story, the Chowder Society attempts to rationalize and solve the problems in Milburn, but the more they cling to the rational, the further they get from salvation.

American Gothic tales use the wild woods in place of the corridors typical of European Gothic tales. This can be seen as Straub plays on this essential characteristic with Lewis’s coon hunt and Sears struggle to find the Bate house. The two men travel into the unknown and away from society’s safety, adding to the eerie quality of the tale.

The antagonist in Ghost Story follows the monster trope of the gothic tradition, but with the twist that is typical of the American subgenre. The shapeshifter is almost indistinguishable from other humans. It targets Ricky and Don because it knows they will be able to tell it is not quite human, thus making the game more entertaining. The wilderness of the American northwest is mirrored by the wilderness of the characters minds, providing a diverting chase for these inhuman monsters.

Straub grounds Ghost Story in the American Gothic tradition by drawing on Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James, two of the most celebrated American ghost story writers. Sears James and Ricky Hawthorne share names with these literary greats. Straub also mirrors Henry James’s Turn of the Screw in the story of the Bate family, only with an impoverished family rather than a rich one. Ghost Story creates a modern take on classic American Gothic themes.