Posted on 10/26/2024 4:50:17 PM PDT by Twotone
My grandmother believed in ghosts. More specifically she believed in the ghost of my uncle Alec, her only son, who died when he was still a boy of – depending on who you talked to – either membranous croup or an infected needle administered by a drunk doctor. His ghost, or so my mother told me years after my grandmother passed, appeared to her and told her not to grieve.
Since I would hear about Alec's ghost over a half century after his sad death, it's safe to say that my grandmother, my mother and her sisters continued to grieve. I remain a skeptic on all things supernatural but I don't doubt my grandmother's conviction for a second, and I am sure most people who share my skepticism have similar stories from among friends or close family.
My grandmother had her ghostly encounter when Spiritualism was still a major movement, with famous adherents like Arthur Conan Doyle, its popularity grimly boosted by millions of deaths caused by the Great War and the Spanish Flu epidemic, to which my uncle Alec was just one incidental number added to the total. What people knew about ghosts them – besides all the table rapping and ectoplasm and ghost photography – came from books and folk tales in addition to whatever pseudo-science Spiritualism espoused to give it legitimacy.
Horror was a movie genre from the start, but film would not add substantially to popular ghost lore until talkies, and then strictly for laughs in films starring Bob Hope, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello – horror spoofs where hauntings and monsters turn out to be con jobs. That was until near the end of another world war and the release of The Uninvited (1944), the beginning of the modern movie ghost story.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
“The Uninvited” is one of my favorite films from that era. The revelation that there were two ghosts, not one, was a wonderful surprise.
I also liked The Uninvited when I first watched it on TV years ago...probably on Turner Classic Movies, and then finally bought it on DVD.
The Haunting (1963) with Julie Harris is also a long-time favorite. I first saw it in the movie theater. I was 15 or 16 at the time. Scary as hell.
That one is truly creepy and without all the blood and gore. Just the atmosphere, a few tricks and the acting is all it took to scare me.
I like “The Uninvited” because it’s a nice mix of some spookiness, some romance and some humor. The brother/sister banter was great fun.
No, no “ghosts” of dead people, just demons...
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