There are so many interesting ghost stories and films written and made, and yet the number of formula behind these is less than the number of fingers in one hand. Here are some of the most widely used ones. English and Hindi ghost stories/films: An HOUSE and a GIRL in a long, white dress (slightly dirty, lengthier than knee length and shorter than ankle length) with untied hair, is the favorite combination of English and Hindi ghost stories and horror films. English ghost stories/films cannot happen without a house and most occurrences happen around that house. There is a sinister history of the house and a happy unsuspecting family or group of friends usually come to live/stay there and first small odd occurrences start happening, leading to a girl being possessed and these odd occurrences start getting more frequent and intense. Then someone digs into the history of the house and makes a smart discovery. Then usually a person or a book or an encryption or artifact with a lot of insight about some ancient secret to drive out the ghost/devil enters the scene leading to the climax and showdown. In a variation of this formula, the one who is possessed becomes a serial killer and starts killing almost everyone who was introduced in the beginning of the story in a variety of ways, keeping alive only the protagonist, and sometimes her/his love interest. Bengali ghost stories: There have been 78,377 ghost stories written in Bengali till date that have the exact same formula: the protagonist travels to somewhere and meets someone who is found to be rather helpful. Though the readers, because of reading 78,376 stories of this type earlier, already know this is a ghost; the protagonist never realizes it and is quite unsuspecting. It is only later that the protagonist comes to know that rather helpful person had died a long time ago and he had actually met a ghost. Usually this formula comes with accessories like the protagonist’s sudden need to go to a far-flung place, a last train of the night, a deserted railway station etc. Even A-list writers have followed this formula again and again.
Posted on: Sun, 11 Aug 2013 14:42:43 +0000
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