Like a handless clock with numbers, an infinite of time
– Ben Harper
There has been a recurring concept in horror over the past few years that I’ve had a hard time putting my finger on. It’s not a common horror concept – not yet risen to the honour of trope – but it has been one that has fascinated me non-the-less.
In fact, I can only think of three examples of this concept in use, although I am sure there are many more out there across various media such as film, television, novels, and good old video games !. I am, of course, referring to Forever Ghosts. It may be a term I have just made up, but it’s also the title of this article, so shame if you couldn’t figure it out.
What Is A Forever Ghost?
For the sake of this article, I am defining a Forever Ghost as any ghost (or spirit) that either A) exists outside of time, or B) exists across time. The distinction here is really perspective, which is, interestingly, closely tied to my references to this concept.
To give a basic overview – a house, location, person, object, whatever, might be haunted by a ghost in the year 2000. But the ghost doing the haunting might be the ghost of someone who dies after the year 2000. The ghost of the present might not be created until the future.
I think what I love so much about this concept is that it is not only a subversion of the classical ghost, where the ghosts of our past haunt us, but it also creates an almost cosmic horror out of becoming a ghost – at least a new type of horror over the classical ghost stories. The idea that the torment of death is not just infinite in one direction. That someone still living could also have a separate ghost existing at the same time. That this proves that your fate cannot be avoided. Spooky shit!
Forever Ghosts in Media
As I said in the intro, I’m only personally aware of three stories that use this concept, but I’d love to discover more! So please let me know in the comments if you are aware of any other stories that utilize this concept.
I’m going to go over each example in reverse chronological order, simply because the most recent example is what made me ultimately decide to write this article, but you and I can pretend that it’s for thematic reasons.
WARNING: Necessary spoilers will be talked about below. I will try and avoid what I can, but some of these spoilers are, by nature of the very concept we are talking about, twists.
Presence (2025)
Presence is a pretty fantastic film directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by David Koepp – and currently, audiences hate it. The frustrating part about the poor audience reception is that the vast majority of negative reviews seem to stem from two key related points: not scary; trailer misled me into thinking this was an intense horror film. To those two points, all I have to say is that fear is subjective, and it’s not the movie’s fault it was poorly marketed, but I understand your frustration.
I get why people don’t think that the film is a horror film though, as it is, largely, an incredibly well shot character study. There are no jump scares, or demons, or even a single ghost in sight !. Hell, in the entire film, there wasn’t even a single CGI shot of a girl opening her mouth too wide, and I’m expected to think this was a spooky Hollywood movie?
Presence (2025), follows a family moving into a new house, with the entire film being shot from the point-of-view of a “presence” in the house. This has the effect of providing the entire watch an uncomfortable voyeuristic feel from the very first scene, with the viewer’s first questions being to figure out if this presence in the house has good or bad intentions.
Now I’m going to avoid the meat of the film to encourage you to watch it yourself, and instead get straight to the twist ending (which, considering the subject of this article, should no longer be a twist). The titular “presence” is a forever ghost. Specifically, the jerk brother, who eventually dies in the house after a heroic act to save his sister. It’s interesting that the presence itself could not help, and instead opted to notify its living counterpart to do the thing that would eventually lead to his own death. Fate.
So, the point of view of the entire film, is actually the ghost of one of the main living characters. And I just think that is a freaking cool concept. However, if you let your mind wander, and you start to ponder what this means, what the implications are – if you are like me – you will have a mini panic attack at the existential dread that follows.
So wait – the brother was the presence this whole time? But the presence was there even before the family moved in. We watched the family move in from its perspective. And we see the family leave from its perspective, with the implication being that it could not follow them, it had to stay in the house. So how far back has the presence had to be there? Has it been there for a hundred years? A thousand? Is that why it took the presence so long to begin interfering instead of just passively observing? The thousands of years since life washed away most of its memories and connections, but the time spent with the family reawaken some latent instincts? Wait, people thought this movie wasn’t scary?
The Haunting of Hill House (2018)
Almost certainly the most well known story in this article, The Haunting of Hill House is a Mike Flanagan miniseries, loosely based off of the Shirley Jackson novel that shares its name.
I know that there is debate on whether the ghosts in the series were real or not, but for the sake of this article, I will say that they absolutely are real. Even if you don’t think that a ghost can both represent past trauma and… also be a ghost !, Mike Flanagan himself states “In the series, it was absolutely haunted“, so we’ll go with that 🙂
The series essentially takes place in two timelines. The “child” timeline where the family is living in Hill House, and the “adult” timeline where Ganon succeeds in killing Link the family deals with their trauma and tries to get answers. The story itself is launched off of the apparent suicide of the youngest daughter, Nell, in the adult timeline.
I really can’t sing the praises of this show enough, so if you have not seen this series, please do yourself a favour and watch it. But as is becoming a pattern, I am about to spoil a big revelation – well, one that was probably already spoiled by the fact I am talking about this series in this article to begin with.
One of the primary mysteries throughout the series is the “Bent-neck Lady” – a ghost that Nell begins seeing shortly after moving into Hill House, and continues to haunt her throughout the remainder of her life. And the big reveal is that the Bent-neck Lady was Nell herself, who becomes a ghost of Hill House after her suicide.
Unlike Presence, this forever ghost actually haunts their living self. Although, it’s important to note that my interpretation of the series is that the ghost had no ill intent and was simply trying to communicate/understand what had happened to her – which of course did nothing but traumatize a young Nell, trauma that certainly led to her going back to the house that final time. Fate.
Longing For Something Greater – Hypnagogic Archive.
Longing For Something Greater is one of the stories that is a part of the Hypnagogic Archive ARG. The archive was created in 2022 by Nicolas Sequeira with the premise being that the archive is a place “dedicated to preserving the weird and the wonderful from years gone by“. Several of the stories within make reference to the timelessness of ghosts, but it is this story in particular that truly first placed this idea in my mind.
In the story (which is lovingly formatted as a series of forum posts reviewing a highway rest stop), one of the reviewers, Fiona, begins by recounting an unsettling experience at a stop somewhere in California. I’ve linked the story above and so highly encourage you to read it, but I’ll very lightly summarize the relevant plot here.
We first have a group of friends that visit the stop for a quick break. Most of the group, including Fiona, leave the car to go inside, but the driver, Phil, stays behind. Inside the stop, Fiona and her group talk about feeling uneasy, like there is a violent presence within. Phil, however, meets a woman and engages in small talk – a woman who then vanishes.
Several other entries follow, with some users corroborating the feeling of violence from a “red entity”, and some even encountering the ghost woman as well.
The final entry is from Phil, the driver who originally saw the woman in the initial entry. In his story, he talks about how they were driving around when an argument in the back seat occurrs between Fiona and Colton. Colton, in anger, smashes a bottle against the window, shattering it. Phil pulls over and kicks Colten out. Angered, Colten exits the car, but drags Fiona with him. Scared about what Colten intends, Phil chases after them, but quickly loses sight as they fade into the mist and trees. Some time later, Fiona emerges from the mist, alone. They silently leave.
Phil is convinced that Colten is dead, that Fiona had to defend herself. He also comes to the realization that Fiona will become the ghost woman – he never recognized her before because the ghost was several years older than Fiona is now.
The story ends on a very melancholic note as Phil knows he needs to warn Fiona not to ever go back to that stop again, because he knows that at some point in the future, she will return and die, destined to be tormented by “the red thing” for eternity. Fate.
Final thoughts
I hope these three stories do the concept of Forever Ghosts justice. I just think that it is such a cool concept, and even though these are the only three examples I know of, I appreciate how different the use of each of these ghosts is to their respective stories. If there is one thing that this retrospective has revealed, it is that the idea of fate is essential to what makes these types of stories horrifying. What all three of these ghosts have in common is a sense of tragedy.
In Presence, the audience is in the perspective of the forever ghost, and the ghost directly affects not just the protagonists, but its living counterpart as well. In fact, the ghost is arguably responsible for its own death.
In The Haunting of Hill House, the forever ghost directly haunts its living counterpart throughout Nell’s entire life. The trauma eventually leading to her own death as she struggled with the frequent nightmares and terrors.
Finally, in Longing For Something Greater, the forever ghost is one in eternal fear, trapped in a cycle of violence from a man so vicious, he continues to torment her even in death.