Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-36393004-20190122221206/@comment-9041013-20190123191746

Well as Bob said, it's just a run of the mill ghost story. Nothing about it sticks out.

Compared to the closing statements the bulk of the story is just dry and pointless in providing spooks. I knew the whole time how this was going to end, I didn't get any connection to the characters, I felt no reason to invest in this other than this being your work and it being posted on the workshop.

It doesnt help that the Ghost's activity goes up to a hundred and drops to twenty with the progression of the story. You can't have it going around trying to hurt people only to later throw around or steal objects. It just feels like the progression has been reversed.

I do advise that you make the encounters a little more mundane, after a day of work, when the narrator is tired and not in a clear state of mind, something darts past his eye or makes him randomly tense up. It's super relatable, it does not need that "but I reasoned logically that xyz" and you can both pin it as a ghost and just the behavior of a tired body.

You could play into classic ghost tropes as well, like temperatures dropping or electrical devices working improperly (rather than the ghost playing with the switches). Maybe have some substance, "Ectoplasm", left around.

I'd remove the alcohol from the big reveal, when you're drunk you can see things, you can misinterpret things (you are bound to do the latter), it kills the point. I did one ghost story and initially I intended it to be a "percieved ghost story" rather than an actual ghost story, but I decided on adding that "what if there was a ghost really in the story?" Instead of relying simply on the narrator, I added his dog's reaction to the supposed ghost. You can have a mention of a family pet acting oddly at times, perhaps in the reveal (if you want to keep the alcohol part, makes it more reliable for me at least).

The ending itself was good, I am a sucker for these basic, almost classic, "but can't you see that monster over there?" moments... These are great.