On Ghosts and School Spirits
I've been watching two ghost-centered TV shows of late. Ironically, the one with the punnier name (School Spirits) is a kind of mystery/thriller drama, while the more straightforward-titled Ghost is the sitcom. There are other differences between the shows, too. The characters in School Spirits are mostly teens (or were teens when they died, in the ghosts' case) which adds a coming-of-age, YA kind of feel to the show. In Ghosts, the central characters are living married couple Sam and Jay, whose ages aren't specifically stated that I recall but who are generally in that “early adulthood” range, and have more adult-ey kinds of problems. The ghosts are broadly adult, too, and while some of them were on the “young and stupid” side when they died, none are portrayed as having been kids.
[Note: This post contains minor spoilers for School Spirits for those who aren't caught up through season 2 and care about such things (and I suppose for Ghosts, too, inasmuch as a sitcom can have spoilers).]
In short: these two shows tell very different stories. Their worlds have more in common, though, and I've been intrigued by the ways their approaches to the ghost element of their stories aligns and diverges. Both have a multi-generational ghost cast, and though the spread in Ghosts is much broader, they function in the same way: giving the viewer glimpses into history through the first-hand perspective of a character they've gotten to know in the present. Both shows also leverage the conversation between generations to highlight how society at large has changed. In Ghosts, for instance, 19th-century Lady Hetty's views on women's rights evolve after conversations with 1960s hippie Flower. An example from School Spirits is how ‘80s jock Wally comes to understand he was a bully, and expresses regret over how he treated gay classmates after getting to know bullied '90s theater kid Charley.
A notable difference here between the two ghosts in terms of their presentation: while neither set of ghosts ages over time, the spirits in Ghosts always appear exactly as they did at death, down to their injuries and the clothes they were wearing (or not wearing, as in the always-pantsless Trevor). The ghosts in School Spirits seem to mostly wear the same clothes, though they also have some control over what they wear and can put on clothes they find on the property (I'll circle back to exactly how that works later on). They also are seemingly uninjured. While some of their deaths wouldn't have left marks, others burned to death, or were murdered, but their forms in the afterlife show no signs of violence.
The effect of this difference for the viewer is that it makes the ghosts in School Spirits seem to have more agency, and that's reinforced by how the ghosts interact with humans. The baseline mechanics for interactions between humans and ghosts are similar: Ghosts are invisible to humans and can't do anything to affect the living world. Each show features a single human character who breaks this rule. In Ghosts, it's Sam, who dies for three minutes after falling down the stairs. After this incident, she can see all ghosts—not just the ones in her house, but wherever they haunt (which is most places, we learn as the show goes on).
Exactly how humans come to see ghosts in the School Spirit world is less clearly defined. The main cross-over character is high school senior Simon, who was best friends with the main ghost character, Maddie. Simon's ghost sight capabilities are much more limited. He can only see Maddie, and only in specific rooms of the school where people had died. In season 2, a second human character, Xavier, sees ghosts, in a situation more similar to Sam's from Ghosts—he flatlines in the hospital and his spirit is jolted from his body, interacting with the hospital's spirits before he's brought back to life. But this ability doesn't seem to extend to the ghosts in the school. It isn't until the very end of the season that the viewer learns he can still see at least one ghost in the hospital, though the way this idea is introduced leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
More intriguing, I think, are the differences in the other limited ways ghosts can interact with the living world. Possession is possible in both universes, and actually seems to be accomplished through similar means. In Ghosts, it happens when Jay's body falls on one of the spirits, Hetty. Jay remains in his body when this happens, periodically retaking control from her. The rules locking the spirits to their physical locations still apply during a possession, too—Hetty is eventually ejected from Jay's body when she tries to drive off of the grounds.
Spirits enter physical bodies through blunt force in School Spirits, too, but beyond that possession is a completely different beast. There's a “one spirit at a time” rule in play—when a person is possessed, their spirit is outed and becomes the ghost. A ghost can voluntarily give up a possessed body, or be forced from it by using physical force to shove the original spirit back in. So long as the ghost is in the body, though, they are in complete control and can go wherever they want.
Based on this quality, you could say the spirits in School Spirits are more powerful. But the Ghosts ghosts have their own, more unique trick. Each ghost can impact the living world in one highly specific way. Viking ghost Thor can control electricity; lounge singer Alberta can be heard by the living (and voice control systems like Alexa); hippie Flower makes people high when they walk through her. This is a useful device for plot movement and joke set-ups alike, but also a smart way to work in some haunting tropes like ghostly voices, bad smells, and flickering lights, without making all of the ghosts too broadly powerful. A lot of the comedy in Ghosts is built on dramatic irony and silo-ed information, largely around the fact that only Sam and Jay know about the ghosts, so it wouldn't serve the story to give them too much influence over the living world.
While the ghosts in School Spirits aren't able to influence the living world, they do have a bit more control over the one they live in. They can pick up objects left by the living. When they do, it essentially creates a ghost copy that seems to stay with them until they put it down. They also can interact with those items fully—they can use a phone to surf the internet, or eat a burger they take off of a student's tray at lunch. Normally, the items do eventually reset. One ghost learns how to make permanent changes but this ability hasn't yet been fully explained or explored.
For me, this difference reflects the importance the ghosts' stories are given relative to the human storylines in the two shows. The majority of plot movement in Ghosts revolves around Sam and Jay. Sometimes one of the ghosts will get a week in the spotlight, and they do each have their own arcs both within and across episodes. These arcs are usually tangential to the main plot, though, and they're generally supporting players in the narrative.
In School Spirits, the arcs of the ghost characters directly intersect with the main plot. In fact, you could argue that the human-centered story is just a chapter in the longer narrative of Mr. Martin and Janet's quest. For those who don't watch the show, Janet was Mr. Martin's student in the '50s, and have been on a quest to cross over since they died together in a chemistry lab fire. You could argue that the show is really Janet's story, not Maddie's. It's only because of Janet's quest that she possesses Maddie—and it's only after she does that the other human characters become aware of the spirits. What exactly happened to Janet, and whether she or Mr. Martin should be seen as the villain, is the primary tension driving season 2. Given their importance to the core story, it makes sense to give the ghosts more control over their immediate environment. It's also practical, considering they're supposed to be carrying out experiments and keeping records of them.
The ghosts in Ghosts and School Spirits all share an ultimate goal, which is a common one for ghost-centered narratives: they want to cross over. In keeping with their relative role in the narrative, this is a much more active goal for the School Spirits characters. The idea comes up in passing in Ghosts, and a few spirits are shown either ascending or descending to another plane, but on a day-to-day level the ghost don't seem to actively pursue this, nor do they seem certain what triggers it.
I mentioned already that the ghosts in School Spirits are actively trying to cross over. They don't know exactly what allows a ghost to cross over at the start of the show but they've figured it out at the end. And it's, admittedly, nothing groundbreaking: they have to come to terms with their death. While it's not particularly unique, it does align nicely with the coming-of-age narrative, and allows a few characters' arcs to come to very satisfying emotional resolutions.
And they do add one unique detail: when they're ready to cross over, ghosts in School Spirits still have a choice. They're not just lifted up in a beam of light without warning, like the ghosts in Ghosts. To cross over, the spirit first has to pass through their “scar”, a slant reality that shows a horrorshow version of their death on a loop. Only after the spirit passes through this, and resolves their unfinished emotional business, do they get a glowing doorway to the beyond—one they can choose not to open, if they want to keep haunting the school for a bit longer.
Ghosts are a well-trod trope across storytelling mediums. What I love about both School Spirits and Ghosts is that they've found ways to freshen up the idea of ghosts and keep it interesting without losing the core details that viewers expect. Both worlds also made smart choices regarding the in-world rules for their ghosts, ones that served the genre and plot of the story they wanted to tell.
See similar posts: