Needing Ghosts

by Ramsey Campbell

Simon Mottershead is lost. He's searching for his family and for his identity as a published writer, whose talent is almost too big to bear. "Needing Ghosts" is one day in Simon's world. One day in which he doesn't need to image the worst - it's all around him.

Genres: Horror, Fiction

80 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Ramsey Campbell is a British writer considered by a number of critics to be one of the great masters of horror fiction. T. E. D. Klein has written that "Campbell reigns supreme in the field today," while S. T. Joshi has said that "future generations will regard him as the leading horror writer of our generation, every bit the equal of Lovecraft or Blackwood."

Reviews

[Jack Tripper · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve always been a sucker for tales that take place over the course of a single nightmarish night in an unfamiliar (or somehow different or changed) city, and among seemingly deranged characters. Likely this is due to having seen Scorsese’s surreal-ish dark comedy After Hours as a kid, where even though Paul’s insane nighttime adventures while stuck in Lower Manhattan were meant to be funny, I found it to be pretty damn terrifying in a way, as if the universe itself could possibly turn against you. My favorite examples in literature with this vibe include Marcel Bealu’s The Impersonal Adventure, Haruki Murakami’s After Dark, Stephen Dobyns’ Cold Dog Soup, the title story from Marcel Brion’s Waystations of the Deep Night, Hans Henny Jahnn’s The Night of Lead, and this 1990 novella, which can be more easily — and cheaply — found in Campbell’s 1993 collection Strange Things and Stranger Places. In fact, this might top them all for me.

It follows a writer fellow named Simon Mottershead on his pre-dawn odyssey through a city (where he supposedly has a speaking engagement at the local library even though the city is still mostly asleep) that becomes more and more ominous and threatening as he progresses. He’s having trouble remembering key details about his life as well, including what books he’s written, so you the reader are always on unsteady ground, not knowing if his fleeting glimpses of creepy, morphing shadows and the increasingly ridiculous and hostile behavior of the strange people he encounters on the streets are the result of reality becoming unmoored, or Simon’s own personal breakdown. Much like After Hours and Cold Dog Soup, this rides the edge of horror and humor, as I was never really sure if I should be laughing at Simon, pitying him, or frightened for his life. Campbell’s disorienting, hallucinatory prose style only heightens this effect.

The first time I read this, I thought it was merely decent. But after this somewhat random re-read, which was during the middle of night as opposed to the day, it all suddenly clicked, and it now ranks among my very favorite works of Campbell, up there with Incarnate, The Grin of the Dark, and the entirety of his Dark Companions collection. He is definitely an author you need to be in the proper mood for, and this is no exception. But the next time you’re fancying some hellish unreality with a dose of unhinged lunacy straight out of the worst acid trip imaginable, this might do the trick.

4.5 Stars.

[Craig · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, I just didn't get anything much from this one. There are some funny moments in it, but it's all very vague and confusing and ambiguous. It's an 80-page novella or I might not have finished it. Most of the other comments posted here are quite positive, so there must be something good that I somehow missed. (Spoiler warning, I guess...) A guy wakes up early in the morning and doesn't know who he is or what's wrong with him, but he rides on a ferry and some busses and sees a lot of bookstores and figures out he's a writer and he's supposed to lecture at the library but that doesn't go well, and things get weirder and the people he meets seem to be made out of plastic, so he finds his way home after a bit more wandering about in the city, but there's a family there and that doesn't go well either so he goes back to bed. Maybe he was dead and/or crazy, I just didn't get it.

[Murray Ewing · Rating 3 out of 5]

Needing Ghosts begins with its protagonist, a writer named Mottershead (such a Campbellian name, part comic, part unsettling), struggling awake then setting out to catch a ferry, not entirely sure of what he's travelling for, or even, perhaps, of who he is. What follows is an extended nightmare journey, which reminded me a bit of a passage from my favourite Campbell novel, The Influence, where young Rowan tries to return to her family through an increasingly threatening and unstable landscape. Here, Mottershead travels through pure Campbell-country: full of things and people seeming always to be on the verge of revealing themselves to be somewhat more than, or less than, normal, all written with Campbell’s usual paranoiac intensity. With Needing Ghosts, Campbell is in absurdist mode, with many of his horrors stretched to almost comic/ridiculous levels of frustration and unsettling weirdness. Campbell in absurdist mode isn’t my favourite Campbell, however, and the long nightmare sequence began to feel, to me, like a series of disconnected strivings for a horrific effect, rather than the sort of Lovecraftian mounting towards a single revelation I prefer.

Needing Ghosts was one of several novellas issued by Legend in the early 1990s. (The only one I remember reading at the time was J G Ballard’s Running Wild.) It’s an interesting form, allowing writers to experiment more freely than in a full-length novel, but to greater depth than in a short story. At best, it can feel like a compressed novel; here, I felt, it was more like a slightly too-long short story, but I’m a long-time reader of Campbell’s, and perhaps someone new to him might find more to enjoy in this generous, if over-sticky slice of nightmare.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A terrifying novella about a man in an increasing warped reality trying to remember who he is and what he has done. Nobody can do "unsettling" better than Campbell.

[James Armstrong · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece of paranoia. A piece of genre fiction that is unlike anything else within the genre. It seems to exist in its own febrile, schizophrenic, slippery microclimate. Signifiers float unmoored but radiate significance and hint at terrors that are worse than unfathomable. Not for everyone but if you really click with what Campbell is going for you will experience nothing like it in fiction.

[Michael Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every sentence somehow manages to be unsettling. Kafka definitely influenced this book.

[Carl Barlow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ambiguous as ever, this Campbell novella depicts either a decent into madness or an unwelcome rise up from it. Almost beautifully unsettling description keeps the reader guessing at just how much that is depicted is real and how much is unhinged vision. Matters start off almost comic (there's that trademark Campbell fear of the underprivileged classes), but develop into anything but, getting under the reader's skin like the best of his material does. At eighty pages, this would really have to try to outstay its welcome, and so would make a good introduction to Campbell's style for the uninitiated and a little treat to those in the know.

[Arthur B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stories which boil down to "a writer writes about being a writer" can end up being a little trite, but Campbell makes sure the concept does not outstay this welcome in this sharply-honed novella. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/201...

[Marnie Z · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn't finish..

[Thomas Burchfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another exceptional portrait of a mind cracking under the strain of an overwhelming alternative reality, unmoored, alone and deeply afraid.

[Morvling Bookink · Rating 4 out of 5]

Confusing but the metaphorical imagery was immaculate

[Jim Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

The endlessly burgeoning nightmare of creativity unfulfilled. A hell of gestating inspirations. Peak and uncompromised Campbell. One of his finest longer works along with Incarnate and The Grin of the Dark.

[Oblomov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mottershead is not having a good day. Having awoken in a confused daze, his attempt at a leisurely trip to town turns into a bizarre nightmare when he forgets his bike, an appointment, is met with constant suspicion and antagonism wherever he goes and something in the dark wants his attention.

I kept misreading the protagonist's name as Motorhead, so everytime it appeared in print I couldn't stop myself mentally adding 'the ace of spades, the ace of spades'. Distracting, but hardly Campbell's fault. In fact, I lay very few problems with this novella at Campbell's feet, as the build up was quite superb.

The strange, malicious world Mottershead walks, or more often flees through, is quite terrifying and yet only rarely supernatural. Everything he encounters seems quite common place, with snotty shop assistants, frowning book critics, creepy people on the bus and overly enthusiastic security guards, and it's all a cringing, gripping and uncomfortable ride through a nasty world that seems fairly plausible.
It's only the constant number of arseholes Motorhead Mottershead encounters that makes all the misunderstandings and hostility more and more suspicious, and even when the book offers us a moment where almost all these odd encounters could be reasonably explained when Mottershead realises he's been walking round all day in a knackered, worn suit and a string vest with his chest hair sticking through it, thus explaining why everyone's treating him like a lunatic drunk there is still a creeping, uneasy doubt.

Where this novella of extremely high tension and exhausting paranoia falls apart, is when we speed towards the conclusion and the 'reasonable' menaces become silly, especially when Mottershead stumbles upon his old home. The conclusion, sadly, has almost been done to death in more contemporary media, whether that be books, films or games. I don't blame Campbell for this, as the ending being common place now is hardly his fault writing in 1990, but I do think it could have been handled better. I'd have enjoyed it more if Mottershead's encounters through the day had subtlely hinted at the twist, but instead there's just this the mad dash of symbolism at the end, making it feel like Campbell had been making it up as he went along until his agent made some angry calls about a deadline.

This a horror where the ride is better than the destination, and it is one harrowing journey of social anxiety.