User blog comment:ChristianWallis/A Look at Ambiguity/@comment-25941663-20160603210228

This was well put together and very interesting. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Something that popped into my mind though. What if you want the reader/viewer to know more about the ghost? Maybe as a living person it had some terrible memories/did some terrible things or was especially weird/off. If that is played out right, it can be very effective. You should still keep things behind veils of smoke, but you can slowly build up the ghost's story and give it a clear identiy. It would be clear why the ghost is acting like it is and simultaneously you would keep it mysterious enough to be foreign to the reader.

There is also another route: Maybe the ghost has a tragic story behind it and you want the reader/viewer to feel "sympathetic" for it. You don't want to make the ghost the protagonist, but you can have the readers feel bad for it. I haven't seen though a case where this worked well, so I'm not sure it can be done in horror.

Anyway, great blog. I enjoyed it a lot.