A good scary movie makes us afraid of its ghosts. A great one sees ghosts for what they are—specters of the past. That past can be horrific, filled with darkness we can never quite outrun. Ghosts can also be seductive, drawing us back to a past that we ought to have outgrown, teasing us with the idea that we can visit long-dead people and abandoned places, if only in shadow. We love ghost stories, perhaps, because we love the idea that there’s life beyond the grave, and that the past is never really gone. But the logic of story ensures that the gift of that reassurance comes with a price, and reminds us to be careful what we wish for.
With the caveat that neither The Uninvited nor The Innocents, two of the absolute best of the genre, aren't streaming anywhere, here are a handful of the best and most interesting ghost stories...
- Dead of Night (1945)
- Blithe Spirit (1945)
- Carnival of Souls (1962)
- The Haunting (1963)
- Kwaidan (1964)
- Kuroneko (1968)
- The Stone Tape (1972)
- House (1977)
- The Changeling (1980)
- Beetlejuice (1988)
- Pet Sematary (1989)
- Candyman (1992)
- Ghostwatch (1992)
- Beloved (1998)
- The Sixth Sense (1999)
- The House on Haunted Hill (1999)
- The Others (2001)
- Spirited Away (2001)
- The Devil’s Backbone (2001)
- Session 9 (2001)
- A Tale of Two Sisters (2003)
- Lake Mungo (2008)
- The Innkeepers (2011)
- The Conjuring (2013)
- Personal Shopper (2016)
- A Ghost Story (2017)
- La Llorona (2019)
- His House (2020)
- I Was a Simple Man (2021)
- Deadstream (2022)
His House is excellent