Throughout horror movie history, we have been introduced time and time again to those terrifying, haunting creatures. A ghost is usually defined as an apparition of a deceased person, frequently similar to that person, and encountered in places he or she frequented, or in association with that persons former belongings. Ghosts are often associated with hunting's which is why the theme of ghosts is constantly recurring in horror movie history. We have come to see that ghosts today seem to be more terrifying then ever and by looking through past horror movies we understand why.
In the 1961 film, The Innocents, directed and produced by Jack Clayton, we see a classic horror film. An inexperienced governess finds out that her predecessor was having an affair with the gamekeeper and both died in strange events. The Governess believes the ghosts of the two lovers were possessing the children she was caring for. Throughout the film, we see the ghosts of these two people standing perfectly still or moving in a stiff, ghostlike manner. Even through the events of the movie and seeing these ghosts, we are called back to the beginning of the movie when the Governess claims she has a good imagination. We still have to guess whether or not she is imagining all of these things or if the ghosts truly are possessing the children. It makes for a terrific horror movie because of the questioning that arises for the audience.
In the 1963 film, The Haunting, by Robert Wise, we find it is a classic ghost story. We have four strangers coming together in a haunted house to record the paranormal activities. This film plays on suggestion instead of gore. Since we never actually see the ghost, we have to decide for ourselves if we want to follow the naturalistic view and believe that Eleanor has completely lost her mind, or the supernatural explanation that the house is controlling Eleanor. This suggestion is still what gives films the horror aspect. We are afraid because all of these different things keep happening. We believe there are ghosts, but since we never get to see them we have to question those beliefs.
In the 2001 horror film, Thir13en Ghosts, a remake of the 1960 film, 13 Ghosts, by William Castle, we meet a family struggling to get by. As luck would have it, Arthur Kriticos inherits his Uncle Cyrus's mansion. In a turn of events, the family learns that Arthur's uncle was a ghost hunter and had trapped 12 ghosts in the house. These ghosts are:
1. The First Born Son
The First Born Son is the ghost of Billy Michael's, a boy who had a thing for cowboy films. One day, a neighbor found a real steel arrow in his parents' closet. He challenged Billy to a duel, with Billy using a toy gun. However his toy gun was no match for the Arrow which the neighbor used to kill Billy by shooting it to the back of his head. In death, Billy is in his cowboy suit with an arrow impaled in his head. If you look at him closely, you would see Billy holding an axe.
2. The Torso
The Torso is the ghost of a gambler called Jimmy "The Gambler" Gambino. Losing everything in a boxing match to Larry "The Finger" Vatello, he tried to welch on his bet and escape. The mob and Larry, to whom he owed money, caught up with Gambino and cut him into several pieces, wrapping them in cellophane and dumping the corpse into the ocean. His ghost is just his torso, trying to walk around on its hands, while his head lies nearby screaming within the cellophane.
3. The Bound Woman
The Bound Woman was a cheerleader named Susan LeGrow, who was born into a rich family and had a penchant for seducing men and tossing them away. After cheating on her boyfriend preceding a high school prom, she was strangled by him, and later found buried on the football field on the 50 yard line. After being arrested, the boyfriend was quoted as saying, "The bitch broke my heart, so I broke her neck." Her ghost is in her prom dress, hanging suspended by the strangling implements.
4. The Withered Lover
The Withered Lover is Jean Kriticos, the wife of Arthur. She tried to save her children in the house fire that changed her family's lives, and though successful, she was burned severely. She was hospitalised, and died in the hospital from her wounds. Her ghost is still in a hospital gown, carting an IV and showing fire wounds on her face. Unlike the other ghosts, she is not a vengeful spirit, electing to help her family rather than show malevolence.
5. The Torn Prince
The Torn Prince is the ghost of Royce Clayton, who was a gifted baseball star, albeit with attitude issues and a superiority complex. He challenged a greaser to a drag race and was killed when he lost control and crashed. His ghost carries a baseball bat, and half of his body is torn up by glass wounds.
6. The Angry Princess
The Angry Princess is Dana Newman, who despite being naturally beautiful, constantly believed she was ugly. This mentality was further fueled by a string of abusive boyfriends. Her money was constantly spent at a cosmetic surgery clinic, accepting numerous cosmetic surgeries on herself for various ailments and malformations that only she could see. It even got to the point where she had her own private plastic surgeon on call 24/7. One night, in an attempt to fix some unseen blemish, she attempted plastic surgery on herself. She failed horribly, blinding herself in one eye and permanently mutilating herself beyond saving. In despair, she crawled into a bath and sliced herself all over her body with a butcher knife until she bled to death. When she was found, they said that she was as beautiful in death as she was in life. Her ghost still has the butcher knife she killed herself with.
7. The Pilgrimess
The Pilgrimess is the ghost of Isabella Smith, an English woman who traveled across the Atlantic and settled in New England. She was a separatist, and this isolated her from the other townsfolk. She was found guilty of witchcraft, and sentenced to the stocks with no food or drink until she died. As a ghost, she is still locked into her stocks.
8. & 9. The Great Child and The Dire Mother
The Dire Mother is the ghost of Margaret Shelburne, who was an attraction in a carnival due to her being only three feet tall. She was raped by the "Tall Man," another carnival freak, and bore a child, Harold, who eventually weighed over 300 pounds (136 kg).
Harold was spoiled by his mother, keeping his childlike brain as he grew older. She raised him to be her protector and to exact revenge on the other members of the carnival who kidnapped her as a joke. When he caught up with the culprits he found that his mother had accidentally suffocated to death in the bag that she was kept in. Harold, in a rage, took an axe and killed all the circus freaks, who murdered her. Later, when the owner of the carnival found out what Harold had done he ordered a mob of people to tear Harold apart. Their ghosts are always together, and Harold still wields the axe.
An alternate version of the story is said that his death was caused by him choking on some food. Upon his death he fell on his mother and she couldn't lift him off of her, and that's what caused her suffocation. This would explain why he has food all over his bib in ghost form, but it would not give credence to his wielding of an axe.
10. The Hammer
The Hammer is the ghost of a blacksmith, George Markley, who lived in a small town in the 1890s. He was threatened to be driven out of town after wrongfully being accused of stealing by a man named Nathan. Knowing he was innocent, he refused to leave and stayed in town. One day, George's wife and kids were on their way home from the market when Nathan and some of his friends attacked and brutally murdered them. Enraged, George tracked down the people responsible for killing his wife and kids and hammered them to death. The other townsfolk captured him, and they drove railroad spikes into his body until he died. They also cut off his hand, replacing it with the head of his sledgehammer, which remains with his ghost and makes him very dangerous.
11. The Jackal
The Jackal is Ryan Kuhn, a self-admitted mental patient during the early 20th century with a penchant for attacking women. The doctors at the hospital did little to treat his mental condition and simply locked him in a padded room. After years of imprisonment, he went completely insane and scratched at the walls so violently that his fingernails were ripped completely off. The doctors permanently put him in a straitjacket, and when he chewed the straight jacket and escaped, the doctors had a metal cage locked around his head. After years of this, he grew deformed and reviled human contact. He was the only victim of a fire that broke out in the asylum; he chose to stay behind and meet, what he believed, to be his deserved fate. As a ghost, his arms are free from his jacket, and there is a hole chewed in the front of his cage, showing that he may have escaped his bindings again sometime before the fire.
12. The Juggernaut
The Juggernaut was a serial killer named Horace "Breaker" Mahoney. Standing at seven feet tall, he towed broken-down motorists to his junkyard where he murdered them, tearing them apart with his bare hands and feeding them to his dogs. Being impossible to take on in close combat, his pursuers opted for the safer method, and brought him down in a hail of bullets from all sorts of guns. When he finally went down, they shot an extra clip into him, just to be safe. His ghost still shows bullet holes all over his clothing, and the wound that finished him.
2. The Torso
The Torso is the ghost of a gambler called Jimmy "The Gambler" Gambino. Losing everything in a boxing match to Larry "The Finger" Vatello, he tried to welch on his bet and escape. The mob and Larry, to whom he owed money, caught up with Gambino and cut him into several pieces, wrapping them in cellophane and dumping the corpse into the ocean. His ghost is just his torso, trying to walk around on its hands, while his head lies nearby screaming within the cellophane.
3. The Bound Woman
The Bound Woman was a cheerleader named Susan LeGrow, who was born into a rich family and had a penchant for seducing men and tossing them away. After cheating on her boyfriend preceding a high school prom, she was strangled by him, and later found buried on the football field on the 50 yard line. After being arrested, the boyfriend was quoted as saying, "The bitch broke my heart, so I broke her neck." Her ghost is in her prom dress, hanging suspended by the strangling implements.
4. The Withered Lover
The Withered Lover is Jean Kriticos, the wife of Arthur. She tried to save her children in the house fire that changed her family's lives, and though successful, she was burned severely. She was hospitalised, and died in the hospital from her wounds. Her ghost is still in a hospital gown, carting an IV and showing fire wounds on her face. Unlike the other ghosts, she is not a vengeful spirit, electing to help her family rather than show malevolence.
5. The Torn Prince
The Torn Prince is the ghost of Royce Clayton, who was a gifted baseball star, albeit with attitude issues and a superiority complex. He challenged a greaser to a drag race and was killed when he lost control and crashed. His ghost carries a baseball bat, and half of his body is torn up by glass wounds.
6. The Angry Princess
The Angry Princess is Dana Newman, who despite being naturally beautiful, constantly believed she was ugly. This mentality was further fueled by a string of abusive boyfriends. Her money was constantly spent at a cosmetic surgery clinic, accepting numerous cosmetic surgeries on herself for various ailments and malformations that only she could see. It even got to the point where she had her own private plastic surgeon on call 24/7. One night, in an attempt to fix some unseen blemish, she attempted plastic surgery on herself. She failed horribly, blinding herself in one eye and permanently mutilating herself beyond saving. In despair, she crawled into a bath and sliced herself all over her body with a butcher knife until she bled to death. When she was found, they said that she was as beautiful in death as she was in life. Her ghost still has the butcher knife she killed herself with.
7. The Pilgrimess
The Pilgrimess is the ghost of Isabella Smith, an English woman who traveled across the Atlantic and settled in New England. She was a separatist, and this isolated her from the other townsfolk. She was found guilty of witchcraft, and sentenced to the stocks with no food or drink until she died. As a ghost, she is still locked into her stocks.
8. & 9. The Great Child and The Dire Mother
The Dire Mother is the ghost of Margaret Shelburne, who was an attraction in a carnival due to her being only three feet tall. She was raped by the "Tall Man," another carnival freak, and bore a child, Harold, who eventually weighed over 300 pounds (136 kg).
Harold was spoiled by his mother, keeping his childlike brain as he grew older. She raised him to be her protector and to exact revenge on the other members of the carnival who kidnapped her as a joke. When he caught up with the culprits he found that his mother had accidentally suffocated to death in the bag that she was kept in. Harold, in a rage, took an axe and killed all the circus freaks, who murdered her. Later, when the owner of the carnival found out what Harold had done he ordered a mob of people to tear Harold apart. Their ghosts are always together, and Harold still wields the axe.
An alternate version of the story is said that his death was caused by him choking on some food. Upon his death he fell on his mother and she couldn't lift him off of her, and that's what caused her suffocation. This would explain why he has food all over his bib in ghost form, but it would not give credence to his wielding of an axe.
10. The Hammer
The Hammer is the ghost of a blacksmith, George Markley, who lived in a small town in the 1890s. He was threatened to be driven out of town after wrongfully being accused of stealing by a man named Nathan. Knowing he was innocent, he refused to leave and stayed in town. One day, George's wife and kids were on their way home from the market when Nathan and some of his friends attacked and brutally murdered them. Enraged, George tracked down the people responsible for killing his wife and kids and hammered them to death. The other townsfolk captured him, and they drove railroad spikes into his body until he died. They also cut off his hand, replacing it with the head of his sledgehammer, which remains with his ghost and makes him very dangerous.
11. The Jackal
The Jackal is Ryan Kuhn, a self-admitted mental patient during the early 20th century with a penchant for attacking women. The doctors at the hospital did little to treat his mental condition and simply locked him in a padded room. After years of imprisonment, he went completely insane and scratched at the walls so violently that his fingernails were ripped completely off. The doctors permanently put him in a straitjacket, and when he chewed the straight jacket and escaped, the doctors had a metal cage locked around his head. After years of this, he grew deformed and reviled human contact. He was the only victim of a fire that broke out in the asylum; he chose to stay behind and meet, what he believed, to be his deserved fate. As a ghost, his arms are free from his jacket, and there is a hole chewed in the front of his cage, showing that he may have escaped his bindings again sometime before the fire.
12. The Juggernaut
The Juggernaut was a serial killer named Horace "Breaker" Mahoney. Standing at seven feet tall, he towed broken-down motorists to his junkyard where he murdered them, tearing them apart with his bare hands and feeding them to his dogs. Being impossible to take on in close combat, his pursuers opted for the safer method, and brought him down in a hail of bullets from all sorts of guns. When he finally went down, they shot an extra clip into him, just to be safe. His ghost still shows bullet holes all over his clothing, and the wound that finished him.
In the movie, the mansion is a giant machine of steel and glass with ancient writings used for protection from the ghosts. When the machine is turned on, it releases the ghosts one by one until the 12th ghost is released. When they are called, they meet together in order to open the Ocularis Infernum. The thirteenth ghost is a fail safe that can stop the machine. These ghosts are horrifying creatures, they inflict terror on the audience as well as the characters in the movie. Modern day horror movie directors have taken it upon themselves to create the most horrifying creatures. In modern day horror movies, it is safe to say that the ghosts created induce more terror on the viewer then in past movies. What will the directors come up with next?
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