TV Ghost That Murders People Representation Needs to be Better
by conner ozer
I’m a ghost that lives inside a TV and I love murder. I’m not happy about my representation in media. Of course I’ve seen other ghosts like me in films like The Ring. As a kid ghost I was a little obsessed with The Ring cause it was the only time I saw myself on screen for years.
Although I will say I’ve never seen my exact experience. I’m an avenging spirit created in 1998 when a gas explosion in St. Cloud, Minnesota killed four people, and a witch injured in the explosion combined their souls to seek vengeance on her behalf. I think there is a lot of ageism in how ghosts are portrayed in media. All the big shows and movies it's always ancient spirits and victims of big historical tragedies. And if you do see a young ghost, they’re usually someone who was fucking magic like regular people can’t be recent ghosts. Very little love for people who died in the last few decades, especially if you’re like me and died in a relatively minor accident.
When my souls combined the witch was pretty close to a Best Buy so my ghostly apparition was bound to a 25” Phillips Magnavox Smart Series TV. And since she asked me to seek vengeance for a genuine accident without a clear person at fault, I was kinda just aimlessly throwing aggression at people. Every phantasmal shade you see on screen has a clear reason for haunting, I just want to watch a show about a ghost who doesn’t have it all figured out yet. I want a show like Girls but about ghosts. I’d love for it to be TV haunters like me, but I acknowledge there are a lot of ghost narratives that are just as underserved as mine.
I guess what I eventually settled on was that I go a little harder on people if they’re prone to accidents, cause an accident killed my souls. My gimmick became getting people to trip and fall inside the TV, then within whatever TV show they were watching they would encounter me as four charred bodies mangled together. After being chased a little, they would trip and fall back into the real world and then within 24 hours they’d be killed by a freak accident. And I’ll give Hollywood this, the murder curse part of being a TV ghost they get more right then they do wrong. Although I will say it can feel a bit sensationalized, a lot of TV ghosts they only show the ethereal homicides. I contain multitudes. I love slaughtering clumsy idiots who happen upon my TV, but that's not all I do. I love playing backgammon and making custom tabletop RPGs. You never see a TV murder ghost do that in a movie.
I think we all know the root cause of such non-complex television dwelling murder ghosts in shows and movies: there are no murderous TV-bound spirit writers. It's not just about who’s on the screen, it's about who’s behind the screen. And who better to be behind the screen then someone’s who’s literally been behind a screen their entire afterlife. There is talent out there. Talent that has spent decades metaphysically altering existing TV programs to find new, creative ways to cast a hex that leads to an ironic death.
But even then that doesn’t solve the issue of why this wasn’t already happening. There are zero astral beings of any kind in executive positions at studios. Not even a single benevolent spirit, which makes the prospects for violent ghouls even dimmer, Don’t even get me started on the indie film scene for us nightmare shades. The widest distribution a murder ghost film ever gets is a single VHS that will probably just end up getting used as set dressing for another generic living human show about the '90s.
Homicidal, cursed TV ghosts do not have it the worst in Hollywood. Not by a long shot. But the media you consumed being created and financed by people who don’t care enough to even give you a proper seat at the table is a problem. Now go open your front door. Oh look, a 25” Phillips Magnavox Smart Series TV. Don’t trip ;)