Right up there with dolls are ghost children. Ghost children scare the heck out of most people. So much so that it's become a staple in ghost stories and now a movie cliche. Heck, I remember that one episode of friends where Joey talks about how he's scared of "little girl ghosts".
What I find interesting about the ghost child archetype is that it's been used over and over...but we still respond to it. It's not just a cliche in current movies. The idea of ghost children goes back hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. They still scare the crap out of us.
I mean, look for example at the movie The Orphanage. This is a movie based around the idea of ghost children. In this day and age, when we've already seen The Ring and the The Shining umpteen times, you'd think we would no longer respond to this horror archtype. But we do.
Oh boy do we.
So...why?
The Familiar is Unfamiliar
Yet again, we have something that is normally very pleasant and comforting made unfamiliar - which is very disconcerting to us. Most people see children as a sign of something fun or cute. And they certainly see them as something precious. When something that is normally so beloved and so adored suddenly becomes unfamiliar and strange that really jerks at our chains.
Children are Powerful Symbol
Children are great symbols in literature and art. Culturally they represent live, birth, growth, and prosperity. Think about Cupid, the symbol of innocent, random love. Think about the Baby Jesus, who symbolizes the birth of hope and new life for humanity. Think about baby fawns, who symbolize mirth. A image and idea of a child has powerful meaning for people that crosses all cultures and boundaries.
With the image of a child being such a powerful cultural construct, inverting that symbol becomes a truly dreadful experience. It punches us right in the Spiritual Horror button that I talked about at the beginning of this blog.
Ghost Children are an Enduring Idea
There's also the fact that ghost children are an enduring cultural archetype that has been around as long as ghosts themselves. Ghost children have been around as long as faeries and goblins. Indeed, the idea of a Changeling really is part of the whole ghost children concept, though it sprouts from an entirely different origin. Maybe we'll talk about that later.
One of my favorite ghost children stories is that of the Radiant Boys, the glowing forms of little children who appear before you. Seeing one is said to bring death upon those who witness it.
Picture of a little boy ghost? Grit on the camera? You decide!
Another pretty freaky example of ghost children is the Wild Hunt, which is supposedly a pack of wild dogs that roams about Ireland and parts of England lead by a mysterious figure who bears the horns of a stag upon his head. The pack of wild dogs rips apart those it comes across. According to legend, the dogs are really the souls of unbaptized children who have been transformed into these savage beasts by the Devil himself.
This last part was probably added to the original Celtic legend through Christianization, but it still makes for a great story.
All for now.
