I grew up in 50s America and like so many baby boomers we were a large family squashed into a tiny house on a large block of land. I joke today that post war parents had so many kids that they could cope with losing one or two so we were allowed greater freedoms than today's children. We were kicked out of the house in the morning and told not to come back until dark. Even then, we were allowed out after dinner as long as we were in calling distance. And so we would play tag and hide and go seek in the dark but we also sat in a circle and told scary stories. Like campfire stories except we weren't rich enough to go away to camp. But that didn't matter because we could camp out in our back yards.

By the time I was 8, I had become the pre-eminent story teller in our neighbourhood and my specialty was the ghost story. When you sit in a circle facing your audience, it's easy to see what story elements work and which don't. With ghost stories, it's all about setting the mood. That’s why I never started a ghost story until it was sufficiently dark. In the dark I could take advantage of the sound of crickets chirpping and then going silent - never a good sign. I could take advantage of the sound of animals stirring in the shadows or even walk around the circle and at the appropriate time grab someone and ellicit the all important scream of terror.

Writer's have to create atmosphere with nothing more concrete than words. They build suspense by first putting the reader at ease, then slowly introducing the unexplained. Like so many kids, I grew up reading ghost stories and loved the particularly scary ones. Initially it was Edgar Allen Poe, then H. P. Love craft followed by such classics as The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, the Turn of the Screw by Henry James and a swath of Stephen King novels.

But ghost stories aren't only about things that go bump in the night. Sometimes they're about the dangers of hanging on too hard to the ones we love. They are stories of coming to terms with grief and those tales are older and more universal than today’s poltergeists, vengeful spirits and resident evil spirits.

The earliest of these ghost tales dates back to the Epic of Gilgamesh. In this Sumerian tale from 2100BCE, the hero, Gilgamesh, seeks out his deceased friend Enkidu to ask about conditions in the underworld. Enkidu says the afterlife is dusty, dark and filled with vermin who consume the bodies of the bodies. In other words, bot great. But, he also says that things are better for those who lead a good life and leave behind a lasting legacy. The Epic is all about how Gilgamesh learns to be a good leader.

In greek mythology, the young and beautiful Persephone is abducted and dragged to the Underworld by Hades. It’s a truly disturbing story. Picture young girls playing in the meadow when the sky darkens and the Earth erupts to reveal an older man driving a chariot pulled by terrifying steeds. The young Persephone screams as she's grabbed and dragged down into the Earth. Picture her distraught mother running across the meadow calling her daughter’s name. Then picture, Demeter going down into the bowls of the Earth to beg for her daughter's return only to be told that she's too late. Persephone has eaten the food of the Underworld and must remain its queen. Demeter rages sending the Earth into an extended winter. It's this rage that leads to Persephone being allowed to return part of the year, bringing spring at the joy of her return and summer as mother and daughter enjoy their time. Autumn brings an end to this happiness as Persephone prepares to return to the Underworld and Demeter laments through winter. Grief, like life, has its seasons.

In Roman mythology, it’s Orpheus who braves the underworld to retrieve his wife Eurydice. Using his music he charms Cerberus the three-headed dog into allowing him to pass. Then charms Persephone asking her to let go of his wife. She agrees on one condition; that Euridyce follow Orpheus and that Orpheus never look back to make sure that she is there. It is a test of love, love that is built on trust. Orpheus fails but we are left wondering if he doesn't trust his wife to follow or if he doesn't trust the gods to keep their word.

By the Middle Ages, ghosts were an accepted phenomena. Some were protective spirits like the Glaistig, a beautiful lady dressed in a long green dress who acted like a guardian angel. Some were spirits of the dead sent by God to punish evil doers. The largest collection of ghosts stories from this time was written in the Byland Abbey by an unnamed monk in 1400ACE. They are mostly tales of souls trapped in purgatory because of unforgiven sins. They pester the living until at last they are released and move on while their mortal counterparts are left weak and in some cases even die as a result of the encounter. The most terrifying of these stories involves the dead who dig themselves out of their graves. They were called revenants and there are several modern day story tellers who have revived this ancient midieval horror.

The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution introduced logic and scientific research. It questioned not only purgatory but the existence of spirits and yet stories of ghosts did not disappear. On the other hand, the concept of proving or disproving their existence begins to creep into the ghost story. My personal favourite from this period was written by Washington Irving. His story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow takes aim at the so-called educated man who falls prey to that most human foible - a belief in the supernatural.

With the new century came a new horror. One that humans could not have foreseen. World War 1 killed humans on a scale never before seen and in ways previously unimaginable. Cities like Troy had been plundered and destroyed. Great kingdoms like Carthage had been wiped from the face of the Earth but WW1 ushered in a new kind of warfare. One that went on for years and nearly wiped out an entire generation of young men.

So many parents, siblings and spouses were left wondering where and how their loved ones had perished. It's aftermath gave rise to a new kind of spiritualism- the seance. Seances fleeced the vulnerable, promising contact with loved ones in order to bring closure. This need to contact the dead, if only to say good-bye and was so prevalent that even Thomas Edison tried to get in the action by developing a spirit phone. One ghost story written during WW1 became a legend that was purported to be true. Arthur Machen wrote a short story called the Bowmen based on accounts of the Battle of Mons in 1914. That story was quickly appropriated by the press and the population grabbed onto it creating what we now refer to as an urban myth. The Angel of Mons tells of  a ghost army that fought alongside the flagging British forces and turned the tide of battle. If this sounds familiar it may be because of Tolkein's battle of Pelennor Fields, in Lord Of The Rings.

By the end of the twentieth century, Nietzsche had declared God dead, humans had discovered that they were their own worst enemy and science had explored the world from the infinitesimally small to the furthest reaches of space, so the question becomes, how could ghost stories survive in such a world? The answer is, by doing what they have always done, adapting to our innate fears. Recently there were tales of an app that challenged young people to increasingly more dangerous dares. It was called Blue Whale and although it never existed, parents were warned of its dangers. Another fake app was called Momo. The Japanese supposedly developed this scary rendition of a doll with long white face and big eyes who appeared in children's games and encouraged them to do terrible things. In my day, we stared into a mirror in a dark room and repeated Candyman 10 times. Before that it would have been finding a book of spells and reciting an incantation that brought forth an evil spirit. And that is the beauty of ghost stories. They never grow old because fear is something we never grow out of. Whether the setting is a computer, a rickety old house or a grave yard, ghost stories help us identify and even face the very things that terrify us.