Specters of the Mind: Ghosts, Illusion, and Exposure in Paul Leni’s The Cat and the Canary

Natale’s chapter addresses a particular class of ghost movies: the type in which the ghost is ultimately refused and relegated to the realm of human imagination and trickery. It focuses on the case of Paul Leni’s The Cat and the Canary to show how this film remediates a long tradition of spectacular entertainments based on the rejection of supernaturalism, and how such rejection has important consequences for the film’s narrative framework and the audience’s response. The chapter applies the concept the “spectralisation of the mind,” proposed by literary scholar Terry Castle, to explain the narrative and conceptual role played by ghosts in this film. After establishing Cat’s connections to the cultural history of ghosts, this chapter situates the film within the tradition of spiritualist exposés. This chapter also includes a broader discussion of the ghost film subgenre made popular by Hollywood between the 1930s and 1960s that proposed interpretations that denied the ‘reality’ of the world of ghosts and spectres.