Why do we fear ghosts?

It's late, it's dark and everyone's asleep when you're woken by the howling wind. Or maybe you're home alone ready to call it a night after a marathon of old movies. You turn off the TV and the house falls into silence, safe for the low creak of the floorboards as they settle.

You know you're alone. You checked all the doors. The windows are closed. But you can't shake the feeling that something is watching, and knowing that you're alone only makes your heart race faster as you resist running to your room and diving under the covers.

So you make your way through the dim lit house and all the scary movies, games, stories that frightened you as a child, flash through your mind. Well done brain, you always know the exact wrong moment to think about the exact wrong thing.

But you're a rational modern monkey, you dismiss the thought. It’s silly. Yet the crawling on the back of your neck won't go away.

Why is the thought of invisible spectres so scary? Why is it that we fear ghosts even when we know they don't exist? After all, this world would be much more interesting if they did. But no, you have to settle for boring reality. So where does this fear come from?

Fears are instinctual. You have no control over them, that's why they scare us. These days, fear is more likely to paralyze you when faced with a crowd of people, but once it was the difference between life and death.

It evolved with us, making sure, in a crude way, that our recklessness or curiosity doesn't kill us.

Fears of snakes, or heights, or even the dark, all have a purpose and a very real basis. Snakes are often poisonous, getting too close to an edge might result in a fall, the majority of predators are nocturnal, so being alert, or as it’s in many cases, running the hell away, ensures our survival.

So why is it that when we find ourselves in a spooky old house we dread encountering a ghostly apparition? How did that fear originate? Why? What in our subconscious mind makes us afraid of spirits of the dead?

Not all fears are rational. So who knows, maybe fearing ghosts is just one of those irrational drives with no real reason behind it. Or maybe there’s something more.

Truth is, even if you’re convinced in the fictionality of these creatures, you don't know for sure. In fact, you can't know that something doesn't exist, you can only be sure in your knowledge when it does.

We don't know what awaits us in a dark, empty house. Our imagination runs wild, conjuring all kinds of possibilities that we can’t really confirm and suddenly a shadow becomes an entity, and a noise turns into the monster that no doubt stalks us.

Fear is a way to keep alert and avoid risk, and in a situation where our environment and its components are shrouded, it is the most logical reaction. Because if there is indeed something dangerous, it’s best to approach it from the other end of a stick, or run like hell.

Related reads and sources:

The Washington Post: Evolutionary psychology explores ancient and newer roots of instinctual fears

Wiki: Fear of Ghosts

About.com: Should You Be Afraid of Ghosts?

iZombie

All images Courtesy of IMDb iZombie

I have to admit, when I first heard the premise of the series I wasn’t sold on it. Not another zombie flick, I thought, like we don't have enough of those already. And now it’s a pretty, psychic she-zombie… Oh my god, someone gave the young adult scribblers a copy of Shaun of the Dead. Well done world, well done, like it wasn't enough when they turned vampires into their glittery suck toy. And in a way, iZombie does that to the “pop mythos" of zombies too. There’s this special girl who gets scratched by a zombie, but instead of joining the mindless undead horde, she gets a bat case of a hairdresser disaster and a pasty skin tone. Still smooth and pearly and flawless skin, just pasty.

But, rather than give this the “kill it with fire before it breed” sentence, I have to dub it quirky but fun. Even smart if you don't think about it too hard or take it too seriously. It has its issues. What series don’t? But overall it’s a fresh take on the zombie trend, a soul successor even to Warm Bodies.

Overall, my verdict is light and fun, with clever moments, quirky characters, decent dialogue and acting, so worth a watch on a lazy evening.

And now, lets take a more in-depth look at the Pilot episode, but beware there be spoilers if you venture onward.

IMDb iZombie

The series open with the protagonist, Liv, played by Rose McIver, at her job in the hospital, where she’s shown as a hard working, promising, doctor in training. She wants to be a heart surgeon and she has the wits and ambition to achieve it. The hospital scene doesn’t overstay its welcome before moving on to the end of the shift, where things go even better for our young protagonist and the coworker, she thought hated her, invites her to a posh boat party.

Liv has to, unfortunately, decline the delicious invitation because her perfect fiance is waiting for her, as he does almost every night if the coworker's sassy comment on the matter attests.

But the fiance, so-not-a-troll-name Major Lilywhite, played by Robert Buckley, insists she goes and socializes at the party, because he’s oh-so understanding, of course. The entire sequence showcased how perfect her live and she are. Now, this is done quite deliberately, so rather than it being a case of lazy writing, it’s a way to establish the comic-booky esthetic.

So everything is going great for her, right? Well not for long as the party suffers the inexplicable case of zombie outbreak and Liv is suddenly zombified. Only she retains all of her mental and physical capacities, minus a pulse and plus a few extras. At least as long as she consumes brains from time to time, which isn’t a problem since she works at the hospital and easily gets a forensics morgue transfer where she can feast on all the brains the dead can offer.

Until her boss, Dr. Ravi Chakrabarti played by Rahul Kohli, discovers her secret.

IMDb iZombie

Which comes as a blow to her, considering she spent the past five months hiding her zombiness. She didn’t try too hard if you ask me. If she had wanted to blend in better she could have used a hair-dye maybe? Some make up? Anything that won't make her appearance scream zombie. Or emo-goth. So I guess it’s fine anyway.

Fortunately for our heroine, he is more than understanding, in fact, he wants to help cure her, an idea that hasn’t come to her for some reason even though she’s a doctor. I will dismiss it as a part of her post-boat-accident-disorder, a condition her loving family is very concerned about since for the past months she’s done nothing than sit in front of the TV and watch zombie movies. After breaking up with her perfect fiance and abandoning her ambitions to become a heart surgeon, something said family never stop harping about.

And finally, we get the last addition to the team, Detective Clive Babineaux, played by Malcolm Goodwin, making our series truly diverse.

IMDb iZombie

Where does the police section come into play here? Well, it turns out our she-zombie inherits traits and memories of the brains she eats, so when she snacks on the Jane Doe, she starts having visions of her life.

Here’s where the series comes short, in my opinion. While it strives to surprise and bring new, unexpected twists to old tv cooking formulas, the investigation section could have used some more attention. I understand that we are not supposed to take it too seriously, but the police work and the villain become a bit too... comic-booky.

Which I guess is the point, but it still makes me cringe when they could have easily adjusted a few aspects to make it more believable.

For example, in this particular episode, our villain is an over the top cop who, after killing one, is ready to murder two other call-girls because he lost his wedding ring while employing their services. How do our heroes discover his treachery? It’s not when Liv sees him at the police station, that doesn't trigger one of her visions at all. No, it’s our detective who comes to the conclusion that his desk neighbour is the culprit simply because the girls have no records, which implies there’s a cop involved.

Flimsy explanation at best.

But with all that aside, the episode wraps up okay, introduces a few story points to develop later and establishes all the characters, back stories and world building necessary. The kicker at the very end, follows on a point the boss doctor made. If there was an outbreak, and the zombification is caused by a man made drug, wouldn’t there be other zombies? And at the end the answer is: yes, yes there are. So onward the series goes, promising more zombies and more murder investigations, hopefully with better police work.

IMDb iZombie