I get asked sometimes why I’m so drawn to ghosts. Why do I write about them and talk about them with what is arguably an unreasonable level of enthusiasm? And honestly, it’s because ghosts have always been part of my life in the most ordinary, everyday way.

I have grown up in a family where the afterlife has never been a subject of debate or scepticism — it is simply part of our everyday vocabulary. On my mum’s side especially, there is this strong spiritual female line, and we have always treated the paranormal as something normal and familiar. We can often be found speaking to loved ones who have passed as if they are in the room with us. Their names aren’t whispered with fear; they are just there, woven into our conversations, our rituals, our memories. There has never been a debate about whether ghosts exist. In my house, they just do. As natural as weather or memory.

So believing in ghosts never felt like a choice I made — it was the language I was raised in.

And then there is the film side of it, and this, if I’m being entirely honest, is probably just as responsible for why I have ended up dedicating a good portion of my adult life so far to ghosts on screen. My grandma was a huge horror fan. A proper, unapologetic, old-school horror fan. And when she babysat us, she had absolutely no concept of age-appropriate viewing. If she wanted to watch something, that was what went on the TV. So some of my earliest memories involve sitting with her, absorbing things I definitely wasn’t supposed to see but absolutely adored because she was there, totally unbothered and thoroughly enjoying herself.

I grew up on a diet of Vincent Price’s velvet menace, Christopher Lee’s towering presence, and the delightful weirdness of Creepshow and Tales from the Crypt. Haunted stories were my fairytales — gothic, sometimes ridiculous, always brilliant. They didn’t frighten me so much as shape me. They taught me that horror could be playful, expressive, and imaginative.

When I rewatch these things as an adult, I feel the exact same strange mixture of warmth and thrill because of the memories tethered to them. It’s hard not to see these moments as their own kind of haunting. Soft, affectionate hauntings that have followed me into every part of my life.

This blend of inherited belief and cinematic upbringing. A family that treats the dead like house guests, and a grandmother who treated horror like comfort viewing. Put those together, and it’s no wonder I grew up wanting to understand why ghosts are so wonderfully persistent — in culture, on screen, and in the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of what we’ve lost.

In this mad mix lies the reason I look for the hope in hauntings rather than the fear. I was raised to think of ghosts not as things that chase us, but as things that stay with us — for better, for memory, for love. It all feels less like an academic interest and more like coming home to something I’ve always known.