The 6 Best Ghost Stories Ever Told On Film

The Shining (1980)

You would be hard pressed to find a list of best ghost stories on film that does not include The Shining, and with good cause – it is a remarkable feat of both storytelling and filmmaking. The way in which it is embraced as a ghost story is fascinating, however, because the idea of it being a ghost story is ambiguous in itself.

Based upon the Stephen King novel of the same name, The Shining is directed and co-written by Stanley Kubrick, with Diane Johnson being his co-screenwriter. It tells the unsettling story of Jack Torrance – a struggling writer who takes a seasonal job as winter caretaker of The Overlook Hotel. The hotel sits in a remote, isolated, mountainous spot, atop a Native American burial ground. We learn that the previous caretaker was unable to stand the isolation and murdered his family before killing himself. We also learn that Jack’s son, Danny, possesses some psychic abilities, in addition to a previous injury caused by Jack during a drunken rage. The family settles in for the winter, with Danny experiencing blood-drenched psychic visions, and Jack becoming increasingly unhinged.

The ambiguity arises from Kubrick’s use of mirrors, since most sequences involving Jack conversing with what might be considered a ghost also involves a reflective surface of some kind – suggesting that, during each interaction, Jack is actually talking to himself. However, it is the character of Grady that drives home the ghostly theory, as it is implied that he is the previous caretaker, who had a tendency toward murder-suicide. The key is in their brief conversation, during which Grady tells Jack that he is the caretaker and that he has “always been the caretaker.” Kubrick himself was known to state that, in his adaptation, Jack Torrance is the reincarnation of a previous caretaker – hence the closing shot of a photograph showing a smiling Torrance at the hotel in 1921.

So, The Shining becomes a film rich in the unsettling – with ghosts being just one aspect of that. They intermingle with psychic phenomena, mental illness, and the very real horror of domestic violence. It is the way in which Kubrick anchors those more fantastic story elements inside a tale of tangible family tragedy that make The Shining one of the best ghost stories in film.