FAQ

He was not impotent, he merely had a temporary performance failure. Many men have at one time or another, been unable to gain an erection. Tiredness, psychological pressure (the pressure to ''do it" and the Eva was probably a virgin, as he probably was), too much alcohol, the system is not ready for sexual activity, and the body lets you know, in no uncertain terms. Temporary espisodes do not bloom into a permanent problem, and he was no doubt able to ''do it,'' after

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Ghost Story is based upon the 1979 Peter Straub novel of the same name.

This line occurs a number of times in the novel, and is left maddeningly vague. It seems to share meaning with another quote from the book, wherein a sleepwalking Alma says to Don what he initially takes to be "I saw a ghost" but eventually concludes was actually 'You are a ghost," which he considers to be 'the unhappy perception at the heart of every ghost story.' (This scene also occurs within the film, but without that line of dialogue, when Don and Alma are vacationing at a beach house.) The implication could be that humans are transient beings doomed to eventually share the fate of the ghost, or that ghosts and those they haunt are reflections of one another. Beyond that, the author imparts no specific meaning to either statement.

In Danse Macabre, horror writer Stephen King (who collaborated with Ghost Story author Peter Straub on The Talisman) suggested, "What is the ghost, after all, that it should frighten us so, but our own face?"

This issue falls under the heading of "problems of having turned a very long book into an average-length movie." In the book, the spirit cuts a bloody swath through the entire town, not simply targeting the group of old men known as the "Chowder Society." She also is responsible for the death of the wife of Lewis Benedikt (the fifth Society member, who didn't make the film), and Ricky Hawthorne is fearful for the lives of his own offspring, now living far away. These factors were eliminated from the film version, no doubt to accomodate a more normal running time, but the Don/David Wanderley aspect of the novel was too crucial to the story to be removed, hence it tends to stand out as an aberration in the ghost's revenge-motivated actions.

In the book, the woman known as Eva Galli was engaged to a man named Stringer Dedham (who does not appear in the film) at the time of her (apparent) death; in the film, she becomes involved with Edward Wanderley. When she tells Don that she wishes to be married in front of his father and his father's friends, it indicates that her desire for revenge runs deeper than simply wishing the old men to die; rather, she wishes first to horrify them by reappearing to them in the ceremony denied to her in life, and in particular to destroy the heirs of the one most directly responsible for her death. This is a sharp difference from the source novel, wherein it is strongly implied that Eva was never human to begin with, and had in all probability been responsible for her own fiance's gruesome demise.

It would seem that Alma's initial plan did not involve killing Don or his brother, at least at first. She speaks of her desire to marry Don in his hometown, in front of his father and his father's friends, for the presumed psychological approach of letting her former lover/killer and his accomplices see her wedded to his son, likely damning him. When Don ends their relationship, she moves on to his brother David, apparently in an attempt to proceed with the same plan. Only after David also realizes that she is not as she seems does she then kill him. Her plans thwarted, she then moves on with the more straightforward approach of returning to Milburn for a more blunt version of revenge.

As with the above question, this is a matter of a plot thread being drastically shortened from the book version, but not removed entirely. The film describes the brothers as escapees from an insane asylum who end up squatting in Eva Galli's old house, having been given "permission from the owner." The elder brother Gregory later claims that Eva, whom he describes as "our benefactor," has promised to make them immortal. In contrast, the book version of Gregory had accepted that gift of immortality decades earlier, and his younger brother, to whom a young Sears James was a schoolteacher, soon followed, despite Sears' attempts to save him. Gregory was a major nemesis in the novel, as opposed to the film, where he appears in a scant three scenes and has no supernatural powers.

Curiously, the film never deals with the fate of Fenny, who is never seen again after killing Sears. In the first draft of the script, dated December 3, 1980, the film ended with a scene of the young boy, now alone after Gregory's death, prowling around the headstones of Milburn's cemetery, his whimpering amongst the headstones evoking the story that Sears tells at the beginning of the film.

Don shows the Chowder Society a necklace given to him by Gregory Bate, claiming that Alma Mobley was wearing it when he last saw her. The confusion arises from the fact that this simply isn't the case; Alma/Eva is never seen wearing the necklace in question at any point in the film. Lawrence Cohen's original script contains a scene set at the beach house immediately following Alma's sleepwalking incident, wherein she and Don fight over her increasingly bizarre behavior. The scene specifically notes that she is wearing the necklace; however, the scene ultimately did not appear in the film. After Don leaves her, Alma is seen looking downwards after opening a music box, and in a tight close-up, we see the necklace on the floor, with no indication of how it got there. This may have been an inserted shot designed to link Alma with the necklace after its establishing scene was omitted (Alma may have been originally intended to be simply looking down at the music box). Why the scene was cut is unknown, though an image from this missing scene can be found on Shout! Factory's Blu-ray release of the film, indicating it had been filmed before the decision was made to remove it from the finished film.

As with any question regarding mythical creatures, there isn't a logical answer, but such attributes are not unknown in supernatural lore. Alma/Eva fits the definition of a revenant, or a person who has returned from beyond the grave. Unlike the more well-known zombie, the revenant is supposed to retain its identity and may brazenly walk amongst the living, sometimes seeking revenge on those who wronged it in life, sometimes simply returning to haunt its own family and former acquaintances. They are sometimes said to be blood drinkers, and in this respect, coupled with its human appearance, the revenant is similar to the vampire (a line deliberately blurred by Peter Straub in the novel of Ghost Story).

After learning of the incident in which Eva Galli died, Don Wanderley suggests that the forces enabling Eva to return have grown stronger over the years, possibly fueled by the horror stories told by the old men, which have kept her alive "in spirit." The story Sears James tells at the start of the film also centers on a victim who was buried alive, showing that the story of Eva has never really left their thoughts.

The novel gives a different reason for the time delay, as it posited that Eva was an immortal being for whom fifty years was a relatively short period of time. The Eva of the book was less of a traditional ghost, instead being described as a shapeshifter the likes of which appear in many ancient myths.

This has caused some understandable confusion, since the characters of Rea and Nettie Dedham were of the same generation as the Chowder Society's members, but there are no elderly women besides Stella and Milly in the film. They do appear, however, but in the flashback to the 1930s, when they were in their twenties, rather than in the present-day scenes. They have one scene of note, when they are standing behind Ricky, Sears and John, making cutting remarks about Eva Galli as she dances with Ned. The fact that they are never addressed by name doesn't help abate the confusion; one can only go by a recognition of the credited actresses to identify them.

The original script included a scene of the sisters in the modern-day portion of the film, wherein they are besieged by a poltergeist-type incident during David's funeral. The sheriff investigates and finds no tracks leading to the house or barn, despite the destruction and the escape of the sisters' horses. One of the sisters incongruously attempts to blame Gregory Bate, a sentiment echoed by Ned and Sears, indicating that the man is already known as a local troublemaker. Amongst the broken personal items in the Dedham household, the sheriff finds one framed photo still standing, showing the sisters at a party fifty years earlier, with Eva Galli visible in the background.

Eva is depicted as less of a traditional ghost and more of a revenant (see above). The folkloric method of dealing with a revenant was to exhume the persons' actual body, which could sometimes be found still in the grave, and usually remove its head or heart (similar to the methods for destroying vampires). When Eva lunges at Ricky, her corpse, already severely decomposed, crumbles apart on its own, presumably serving the same general purpose: her ghostly, wandering self disappears as with her body. It could also be the exposure of her murder that causes her to vanish-she had been disposed of and forgotten about by the world at large, with only her killers knowing what had become of her. When Ricky reveals her in front of others, the secret is finally disclosed, allowing her to be free.

The Peter Straub novel ended in an entirely different manner, positing Eva as a shapeshifter who could not be killed in human form, but only when in a transitional animal form (the pond in which she'd been sunk had been filled in with concrete and a shopping mall had been built atop the site decades before Eva's return, and it's suggested that her body had vanished from the car she'd been placed in before it had even completely sunk). Years after the events depicted in the film version, Don Wanderley encounters a young, essentially reincarnated Eva, and determines to finish the task of destroying her for good.