Common ghosts in paranormal films

Almost all spooky house films include moving to a new house. After the family’s arrival, small strange incidents occur and gradually escalate until the family is in the middle of a fully -fledged haunt.

The same happens in ‘Beetlejuice’ when the Deetze family moves to a house and finds it to be chased by his former residents, Adam and Barbara Maitland.

Recently this trope was released in two of the ‘treacherous’ films, the first film in the ‘The Conjuring’ series and the similar film ‘Sinister’.

This sentence is often used in television and films, often after a character has actually seen a spirit, or at least someone they thought was dead earlier.

It appears in ‘Sleepy Hollow’ by Tim Burton and is said by the character of Miranda Richardson, Lady van Tassel shortly after she forced her own death. Doc Brown also says it Marty McFly in ‘Back to the Future III’ after Marty sees the grave of the DOC. Marty’s answer: “You are not far away, doc.”

The girls soon came to the conclusion that their house had been chased after they had experienced frequent inexplicable sounds that they described as being beating. If you use this as a means of communication, the girls have determined in the coming weeks that the spirit they spoke with, “Mr. Splitfoot” the spirit of a market trader named Charles B. Rosna, they believed that he had been murdered and buried in the basement five years earlier.

In the Joyce Byers of the Netflix series ‘Stranger Things’ 2016, played by Winona Ryder communicates with her missing sun using a similar technique, but instead of tapping, she used the blinking of a series of lights. She asks Will for “once for yes, twice for no.”

Ferrell will also use the technique to communicate with his dog in ‘Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy’, while talking to a quiet caller on the phone, he suspects that his dog is on the other side and says: “Baxter, is that you? Baxter! Bark twice when you are in Milwaukee.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KAPHT5YII8

Many are incorrectly attribute this trope to the original ‘Poltergeist’ film from Spielberg. The residential area in the film was built at a cemetery, but what the real estate developer in the film says is: “What is the problem? It is not like it was built on an Indian cemetery.”

In the remake of the film 2015 they seem to have a count a count with this misconception, during a dinner in the Haunted House, one of the guests says: “Well, it’s not like it was an old tribal cemetery”, and everyone laughs around the table.

In both version of the film, the estate was built on the site of a former cemetery, but we later learn in the story that to save costs, the developers only move the tombstones.

The Indian cemetery Trope is actually from the film ‘Pet Sematary’, with an old cemetery with the power to revive the dead. And in Stephen King’s ‘The Shining’ it is stated that the Overlook Hotel was built on an old cemetery.

This is one of the most famous ghost traps, because it is the most memorable line of ‘The Sixth Sense’, starring Bruce Willis. The young boy in the middle of the film tells the character of Willis “I see dead people […] Walking around like ordinary people. They don’t see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they are dead “. This line was also recreated in the ‘Scary Movie’ parody from the 90s.

In ‘Beetlejuice’, Adam Maitland, the former resident who pursues Lydia’s house, she asks her: “You can see us without the sheets? How are you see and no one else can?” Lydia replies: “Well, I read that manual for the recently deceased. It says:” Live people ignore the strange and unusual “.”

“If there is something strange in your area, who are you going to call?” A sentence made famous by ‘Ghostbusters’, a trope that is often quoted and re -emerged in various films and parodies, including in ‘Casper’ during a cameo by Dan Aykroyd. Appears as Ghostbuster Ray Stantz, he runs from the haunted house as states: “Who are you going to call? … Someone else”.

This common trope came into existence in the 1970s when films started to portray ghosts in romantic suddenly. A common theme in the romantic genre from this period is the Spirit as a benign guide or messenger, often with unfinished things, such as ‘Field of Dreams’ from 1989, the film ‘Ghost’ from 1990 and the comedy ‘Heart and Souls’ from 1993.

This has now become the main reason why spirits from the hereafter are excluded. They want revenge or want their story to be told. Perhaps they are the victim of a murder and they have to reveal the identity of their murderer from outside the grave. Some spirits are simply suddenly, violent or early dying and find it difficult to accept that they are dead. Their inability to understand their situation is their unfinished company and that they are trapped in our empire.

It is a common conviction among ghost hunters that spirits can be detected by a peak in the electromagnetic field, perhaps this dates from the 80s and ‘poltergeest’ when one of the team investigates the house says: “It is electric, you can smell the lead.”

This trop is very common in ghost yacht shows that use EM meters and similar devices to hunt ghosts, and they were not the only one. The PKE meter of the Ghostbusters worked in a similar way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_Wivebst6i

From Ouija boards to clairvoyants, Seans are a well -known part of many paranormal films. The most striking thing is that the character of Woopi Goldberg in ‘Ghost’ performs fake seisses. There is also seances in the second ‘paranormal activity’, a very creepy seans with a gas mask in ‘Insidious’, and in ‘The Others’ a seance is performed to try to contact the spirits that chases the house.