Ghost hunt: Elliot O’Donnell’s non-fiction

Abstract

The article deals with the author’s strategies, used by E. O’Donnell in his Twenty Years’ Experience as a Ghost Hunter , and compares this peculiar text with ghost stories – a genre of fiction very popular those days. O’Donnell’s book is a part of a long tradition of occult ‘non-fiction’, but it is positioned as the author’s memoirs, a true story of his own life (his other books are basically collections of ‘real’ ghostly appearances in various regions of England), and begins with his (or his alter ego’s) youth and his first traumatic encounter with a ghost that influenced his career choice, but then this traditional life story turns into a set of cases, not necessarily witnessed by the narrator himself. Some stories are structured exactly like fictional ghost stories but their perception is preconditioned by the ‘rules of reading’ established by the author (the book is supposed to be his memoirs) and by the character of information – what the narrator knows about ghosts from various sources. Thus, the text is very uneven – its aesthetic characteristics are regarded as secondary in comparison with the ‘facts’ retold.