Ghostly vengeance sounds super scary and violent. Yet, revenge means there was wrong done, that seems to ‘justify’ the havoc, or does it? Bearing in mind that ghosts are ex-humans, which ghost is so downright evil, to wish to wreck chaos without reason at all? Thus is there need to humanise the inhuman more, to demonise them less. Victimisers are often, if not always, once victims too. Are the hellish not those who had gone through hell? Even the vampiric might had figurative ‘blood’ sucked from them.
It is wrong to wrong the wronged, but also wrong to be deadly destructive for being wronged. Who is the first to be demonic? The humans who destroyed the once human out of delusional hatred, or the once human who turn demonically hateful as a result? Which antagoniser was not first antagonised? Many indeed… though there are the few who are self-antagonised due to strong personal delusions.
In the face of the wrathful supernatural, there is a cultural tendency by believers in two main polarities of ultimate good and evil, with no sliding scale in between, to seek and destroy the evil, assuming them to be so evil that they do not deserve to be delivered from darkness. There is then ultimate condemnation, as if with banishment to ‘hell’, without counselling or asking for forgiveness. Is this not how demonisation and haunting of one another continue through the ages?
