The Haunted Frame: When the Past Won't Stay Buried

Every story drags shadows behind it. Some writers keep those shadows at the edges, while others bring them forward, giving them form. The haunted frame is what happens when the past insists on being present, when memory or history refuses to remain silent, when a ghost—literal or metaphorical—takes up residence in a narrative. Readers may expect movement from past to present, but the haunted frame reverses the flow. It lets the past surge forward, overtaking the now, unsettling character and reader alike.

Ghost stories are the obvious expression. The Gothic tradition is thick with spirits rattling chains or drifting down candlelit corridors. Yet haunting in literature is rarely only about specters. More often, it is about unfinished business: trauma that has not healed, injustice that has not been resolved, grief that cannot be contained. The past refuses erasure, and the story itself becomes a site of return.

Toni Morrison’s Beloved is one of the clearest examples. The ghost of a murdered child embodies the history of slavery that saturates the lives of those still living. Haunting here is a demand, a refusal to let the characters retreat into forgetting. Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House works differently, but with similar insistence. The house itself breathes with memory, feeding on the vulnerabilities of those who enter it. Haunting merges psychological fracture with architectural space. And in W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz, the haunting is not spectral at all but historical: the story of displacement during the Holocaust emerges in fragments, as if memory itself were a ghost slowly materializing. These examples reveal the flexibility of the haunted frame—it can lean into the Gothic, gesture toward history, or dissolve into the subtleties of psychology.

For writers, this frame allows atmosphere to carry narrative weight. A half-glimpsed figure, a recurring sound, a recurring phrase—any of these can signal that the past is pressing in. But there are traps. One is vagueness: haunting presented only as mood, never as meaning. Another is over-explanation: ghosts explained into symbols, draining their power. The frame thrives in tension, in the unresolved space between presence and absence.

A literary coach can ask questions writers may resist: What does the haunting signify? Does it deepen character, or is it decoration? Does the recurrence of the ghostly element sustain suspense, or does it become predictable? Fresh eyes can identify when haunting overwhelms the story or when it needs to be sharpened into something more visceral.

Picture a manuscript that begins with a character hearing footsteps in an abandoned farmhouse. Readers may feel unease, yet not know what to do with it. A consultant might suggest weaving in a subtle history earlier, a glimpse of the family’s secret, so that the haunting doesn’t float untethered. Conversely, another draft might lean too heavily into symbolism—every ghostly flicker aligned neatly with a moral lesson. In this case, critique could encourage restraint, allowing the haunting to remain more ambiguous, more troubling, more alive.

The haunted frame often alters time. Narratives may loop back, break chronology, or collapse decades into a single moment. Readers are asked to feel that the past is not finished. Yet fractured timelines can disorient more than intended. A consultant can gauge whether the time structure invites readers into haunting or simply leaves them confused. Feedback helps distinguish between deliberate disorientation, which can be powerful, and accidental incoherence, which can sink a manuscript.

Another question: who is haunted? Sometimes the character clearly perceives the ghost. Sometimes only the reader does. Sometimes the haunting resides in the setting itself—a town built over old wounds, a landscape bearing scars. Writers can play with this instability. But too much instability can weaken impact if readers cannot locate the haunting at all. A consultant’s perspective helps here as well, signaling whether the haunting feels integrated or peripheral.

The frame’s power lies in its ability to blur categories. A ghost may be a person, but also an emotion. A haunting may be private, or it may belong to an entire culture. Literature thrives on these overlaps. Beloved haunts at the level of national history. The Haunting of Hill House haunts at the level of psyche. A writer choosing this frame is really choosing to let boundaries collapse. Done well, the collapse is electrifying. Done poorly, it feels like confusion.

Readers respond to haunting because it feels true. To read a haunted narrative is to feel the pressure of what cannot be shaken. This recognition is why the frame endures, long after Gothic castles went out of fashion. The haunted frame reminds us that stories are not tidy. They contain ruptures, shadows, and presences that refuse silence. To write with this frame is to honor that truth: the past does not go away. It presses forward, unsettles, insists on being heard.