Ghosts in video games: a uniquely personal terror

We’ve all cursed at the main character in a horror film for stupidly deciding it’s a good idea to explore the basement of a spooky house with only a flickering old torch for protection. But would we make better decisions if we were in their shoes?

The player agency afforded in video games allows us to explore this question and engage with fictional ghostly situations in a way that’s impossible in linear film or television. From the earliest days of being relentlessly pursued by the spooks in Pac-Man through to the beautifully rendered cartoon spectres of Luigi’s Mansion, ghosts will always have a special place in gaming culture. They allow us to confront fear in a uniquely personal way, while offering game designers a platform to tell stories that can haunt us long after we’ve put the controller down.

Spirits in video games can take on multiple roles depending on the genre and gameplay style of the title, but probably the most common is as the antagonists in survival horror games. This genre is based around a vulnerable player character forced to survive a horrifying situation with limited supplies and little power to fight back.

Following in the footsteps of colossi of the genre such as Silent Hill and indie titles like Corpse Party, Taiwan based developer Red Candle Games released Detention in 2017 to critical acclaim. The game takes place in Taiwan during the 1960s – a bleak, paranoid time when martial law was in effect in the country and ordinary citizens were often brutalised by the government for perceived dissent.

After a sinister yet serene opening in which the government appointed Instructor Bai approaches a teacher about a mysterious ‘list’, protagonist Ray awakens in her high school to find a typhoon incoming and only a boy called Wei for company. The rest of her classmates and teachers have disappeared and the exit to the school campus at the bottom of the mountain is now blocked by a crimson river. In time the school morphs into a nightmare version of itself, filled with bloody puzzles, sinister scrawled messages and ‘The Lingered’ – shadowy spectres that scream, cackle, and sob. Ray has to hold her breath or place traditional food offerings in order to creep past the terrifying apparitions, and if they spot her they initiate a heart-pounding chase that can quickly end in death.

The first thing that strikes the player is just how unsettling this world is. The game is bathed in a sickly sepia tint that speaks of decay and a legacy of paranoia. The shadows of political violence linger in the blood splattered classrooms. Dim lights buzz in the vast school auditorium, the body of Wei hanging upside down like a grainy snapshot of a distant war crime. The sound design is discordant and rumbling, pierced by the shrieking of the dead as they roam the halls. Characters move in a stiff and disjointed way — beautifully illustrated puppets re-enacting the real world horror and brutality of the ‘White Terror’ period of Taiwanese history.

But the ghosts in Detention aren’t just manifested in the spirits of the dead students in the game, but also in the emotions and experiences of Ray. As the backstory is slowly unveiled, it becomes clear that she is also haunted by the past actions of herself, her family, and her country. The game is steeped in Taoist rituals and folklore – ghosts of a country struggling in limbo and haunted by cultures past. Confronting themes such as domestic violence, suicide, political censorship, and state oppression through the abuse of power by both the government and ordinary citizens alike, Detention is a disturbing and powerful ghost story. Although clearly influenced by 1990s Asian horror films such as Ringu and the Whispering Corridors series, the game has itself gone on to spawn a film adaptation and a Netflix series.

Killing is an almost unavoidable part of numerous video games. But what does it mean as a player to slaughter endless waves of faceless enemies? What becomes of these characters once they’ve disappeared from the screen? In 2004 famed Japanese game designer Hideo Kojima approached these questions in his usual idiosyncratic way in his stealth masterpiece, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. In this cinematic Cold War set action adventure, protagonist Naked Snake takes on the members of the elite Cobra Unit – six superhuman soldiers each with unique boss mechanics. In his battle with the ghost of the psychic medium soldier, The Sorrow, Snake finds himself in an endless river within the spirit realm. What’s unique about this fight is that the spirits of any enemies (and animals) that the player has killed return here to drag the player to their doom. They appear as they died at the player’s hands – burned enemies are still engulfed in flames while those who had their throat slit appear as ghastly partially beheaded spectres. The spirit river confrontation with The Sorrow is uniquely tailored to each player depending on how they played the game – with up to 100 ghosts appearing, depending on how violent the player chose to be.

Ghosts in video games generally appear as part of a pre-determined narrative, and Kojima subverts this by making the manifestation of the dead a direct consequence of the players’ actions. As well as adding a gameplay mechanic that affects the difficulty of the game, this twist confronts the player with their own behaviours and can even bring on a feeling that’s unique to the format of video games – guilt.  “Battle brings death. Death brings sorrow”, The Sorrow declares.

One of the most influential horror games of the past 10 years has now become something of a ghost itself due to its fleeting appearance and the impossibly slim chance of experiencing it ever again. In August of 2014 Konami launched a free download on the PlayStation Store to little fanfare or press coverage. It was simply marked as P.T.

In this mysterious first person experience, we find ourselves in an L-shaped corridor in a dimly-lit home. Family photos are surrounded by piles of rubbish and the rain beats down outside as a radio news report tells of the murder of a family at the hands of the father with a rifle. Upon reaching the door at the end of the corridor, we unexpectedly find ourselves back at the initial doorway. The home gradually becomes more terrifying as we are forced through this never-ending loop with no way back. Cockroaches spew from a crack in the bathroom. A distorted crying sound echoes in the hall. “Hello!”’ appears scrawled on the wall. And then She appears at the end of the hallway for a split second before the lights blink out.

Word of mouth quickly spread and the game became a phenomena as gaming communities tried to pool their knowledge into how to finish this mysterious experience in the face of a seemingly impossible abstract final puzzle. The project turned out to be a teaser for a new game in the Silent Hill franchise due to be directed by Hideo Kojima and filmmaker Guillermo del Toro with input from acclaimed horror manga artist, Junji Ito. The game was later pulled from stores and the full title was cancelled by the studio, leading to an almost immediate legendary status.

Like a terrifying half-glimpsed apparition, P.T. disappeared as quickly as it appeared. Full of genuinely unnerving imagery, the oblique narrative hints at traces of domestic violence within a steadily unravelling family home. Throughout its short running time, the game peels off the mask of banality in suburbia to show the rotten horror that can lurk underneath, echoing the work of David Lynch in Blue Velvet (1986) or Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist (1982).

Of course this is just the tip of the cursed iceberg when it comes to phantoms in games and it would take multiple volumes to cover everything. Other notable titles include the hit online game Phasmophobia where you gather a group of ghost hunting friends to take on terrifying apparitions, 1993’s Haunting where you play as a rad skateboarding 90s ghost taking revenge on a sleazy family of business tycoons, and of course the Japanese spirit photography classic, Fatal Frame. If you’ve ever wondered how you would react if you came face to face with a ghost then there is over 40 years of video games history out there that will allow you to test your nerve in the face of the supernatural.