Unquiet
Things

For the final day of my horror marathon, I’m watching Ghost Story from 1981 – a choice that feels meant to be after spending time with Alice Krige in She Will yesterday. Throughout this month of horror viewing, I’ve followed various threads and themes, and one of the most intriguing has been my unplanned journey through Alice Krige’s performances. From Gretel and Hansel to She Will, I’ve found myself drawn to her remarkable ability to transform from vulnerable to vengeance-seeking, from earthly to otherworldly. Ghost Story, one of her earliest roles, seems a perfect way to close this journey, as it showcases her gift for inhabiting characters who move effortlessly between our world and something more mysterious.

Though I read Peter Straub’s novel years ago, the details have largely faded from memory, leaving behind only atmospheric impressions and half-remembered plot points that feel more like déjà vu than actual recollection. It’s a peculiar way to approach the film adaptation – familiar yet fresh, like returning to a house you lived in as a child. [Edit: I just read this review to refamiliarize myself with the book, and they make it sound so good that I almost want to read it again.]

The story follows the members of the Chowder Society, four elderly friends who gather regularly to share ghost stories. When one of their sons dies mysteriously, it forces them to confront a terrible secret from their youth. Through flashbacks, we learn of Eva Galli, a beautiful and mysterious woman who captivated their younger selves. During a drunken encounter, their unwanted advances led to her death – a crime they covered up and have kept secret for fifty years. Now, a woman named Alma Mobley, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Eva, has appeared in their lives, seemingly intent on revenge. Even though I don’t recall much of what I read, I’m realizing that the film strips away much of what made Straub’s novel so rich – in the book, Eva is an entirely different sort of supernatural entity, and the town of Milburn itself is practically a character, with Straub weaving an intricate tapestry of its inhabitants, their relationships, and the way evil slowly infiltrates their lives. The movie foregoes this larger canvas to focus more narrowly on the Chowder Society and their secret.

The film brings together an ensemble cast of Hollywood legends – Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and John Houseman – as members of the Chowder Society. At first, their old-world mannerisms and antiquated phrases like “twaddle” and “the jimjams” paint a picture of genteel respectability. But as the film peels back layers of time, we discover a far uglier truth. The flashbacks reveal not distinguished gentlemen, but predatory young men surrounding a lone woman, their drunken desire leading to Eva’s death.

Watching this in 2024, it’s impossible not to think of how frequently we’ve seen this pattern play out in real life – respected, powerful men whose carefully maintained veneers of dignity mask histories of violence against women. With each new revelation about a beloved male celebrity or public figure, the shock lessens; the pattern becomes clearer. These men in Ghost Story, with their literary quotations and refined mannerisms, represent a particular type of masculine privilege that uses cultural sophistication to disguise darker impulses. As the internet wisdom goes: “men is too headache” – a phrase that manages to be both funny and devastatingly accurate when considering centuries of similar stories, both fictional and real.

The parallels between Ghost Story and yesterday’s viewing of She Will are striking. In both films, Krige portrays women who suffer abuse at the hands of men in positions of power and influence. Both characters find their way to revenge through supernatural means – Eva through ghostly manifestation, Veronica through the power of the witch-burned land. It’s fascinating to see how Krige, from these early performances to her recent work, has brought such depth to these stories of women turning trauma into terrible power.

Horror delights in showing up everywhere – in perfumes and podcasts, in fantasy shows and folk tales. It lives in vengeful ghosts and haunted apartments, but it also surfaces in unexpected moments, in stories that seem to be about something else entirely. Through films about power and transformation, through tales of revenge and redemption, horror keeps finding new ways to speak to both personal and universal truths. And that’s the thrill of it. Each October, I return to this ritual of shadows – watching past midnight, reading between meetings, stealing moments wherever I can find them – because horror reminds us we’re not alone in our darkest moments. It gives shape to our fears, voice to our rage, and sometimes, unexpectedly, light in the darkness.

P.S. Here’s a little video I shared today of some Halloween fragrance picks!
P.P.S. I also watched the new Salem’s Lot this October, but it was so bad I decided not to even write about it! What did you think?