In a recent article, I talked about the legacy of William Castle and the many gimmicks he used to promote his horror films. One gimmick I neglected to mention was the Ghost-Viewer cards distributed for one of Castle’s most popular film, 13 Ghosts. Since the film’s plot involved pairs of “Spectral Viewers” which allowed the Zorba Family to see who and what was haunting them, Castle thought it was only fair to allow audiences to experience something similar. Through careful applications of red and blue filters, viewers could make the ghosts appear and disappear; the red cellophane slit of the cards would make the ghosts that were shot in red more visible as a result, while the blue cellophane would cause them to disappear into the background of the film which was tinted blue.

13 Ghosts, as that article also pointed out, was one of the only remakes made by Dark Castle Entertainment to reimagine Castle’s horror filmography in a new light. And the new light that screenwriters Neal Marshall Stevens and Richard D’Ovidio shined down on the film was incredible. In place of the film’s campier headless men and undead circus lions, horrors were peeled from their purgatory states and trapped in October glass cases. Brought to life by the designs of effects artist Howard Berger, each ghost really came to life (or unlife, I suppose) as they got that weighty physical presence that Beck shunned the use of CGI ghosts for.

Each of the twelve ghosts in this film, dubbed the Black Zodiac, has their own special intricacies and quirks. On top of that, they each have a backstory, recapped as a special feature on the home release of Thirteen Ghosts (narrated by their captor Cyrus Kriticos himself). So today, I’ll be cataloging their origins and ranking all of them. I’ll be ordering the ghosts by the effectiveness of their design, and overall how impactful they are, both on screen and in their story. This isn’t trying to determine which ghost is the scariest, just the one that stands out the most. Beginning with the weakest first…

12 THE WITHERED LOVER

Jean Kriticos, the wife of the film’s protagonist Arthur Kriticos, was the last ghost to be “created”, but not the last to be collected. Her death was as sad as they come: a fireplace mishap set their Christmas tree aflame, resulting in a catastrophic housefire. Though Jean initially made it out, her burns proved too great to heal, so she was lost.

This is by far the worst of the ghosts Cyrus decided to capture, not just on moral grounds but because she’s mostly underwhelming compared to all the ghosts around her. She shows up for a sliver of the runtime, and while the prosthetic work in her makeup is fine, it lacks the feeling of a truly tortured spirit like her counterparts.

11 THE TORSO

Jimmy Gambino had a gambling addiction. As he fell deeper and deeper into the world of sports betting, he began to live bet to bet. Squandering all his winnings, he eventually followed in his father’s footsteps and became a bookie to keep himself afloat.

Jimmy’s demise was brought on when he was approached by a mobster wanting to put a big bet down on an underdog fighter. Knowing he couldn’t possibly cover it, Jimmy still accepted the deal in a desperate ploy to make some money. As mobsters are want to do, the match was rigged, and Jimmy was sent to sleep with the fishes when he couldn’t scrounge up the cash for his associates. As his name would imply, he didn’t end up making his way to the ethereal plane intact, with his body being just as destroyed in death. Brutal.

The Torso’s backstory does have a lot of humanity to it, which makes it compelling, and the three-piece design of his severed limbs, head, and torso is gnarly. But he gets beaten out by just everyone else because they manage to do the same while being especially visually striking and much more memorable.

10 THE TORN PRINCE

The only other teenage ghost aside from Susan Legrow, Royce Clayton was on a fast track to a number of college scholarships thanks to his natural talent for baseball. Still, Royce was a risk-taker who stylized himself as a greaser. This involved taking on dangerous car races, and in the exact turn of events you would expect, things went bad. A rival cut his car’s brakes, and the ensuing accident sent him to the afterlife with his baseball bat and all.

He is a greaser, he is a ghost. He’s a greaser ghost.

Not a whole bunch going on in the way of a backstory either, but still aesthetically appealing enough with his whole baseball bat and greased hair schtick.

9 THE FIRST-BORN SON

The simplest of the specters, Billy Michaels’ origins can be summed up in two sentences: Billy loved playing Cowboys and Indians until a neighbor boy decided to up the ante by using a real bow and arrow. Billy didn’t win the quick draw.

A bleak fate for the youngest ghost in the gallery, but certainly not the most painful. Billy does at least get the nasty wound, creepy kid factor, and a cool era appropriate outfit to make him stand out, so he gets one spot above Jean, Jimmy, and Royce.

8 THE ANGRY PRINCESS

Definitely one of the bolder ghost designs in the film, though the surface level risqué of her look has a heartbreaking origin. Suffering from extreme body dysmorphia and some form of PTSD due to her numerous violent partners, Dana Newman wrestled with her sense of self and body image her entire life. Despite having supernaturally good looks, it simply wasn’t enough.

So when she landed a job as a receptionist at a cosmetic surgery clinic, she made arrangements to be paid in surgical procedures instead. Eventually, Dana attempted an impromptu surgery to fix a nonexistent issue with her eye, but only blinded herself in the process. The resulting failure caused her to take her own life.

The Angry Princess is probably the design that got burned into most people’s heads because of the juxtaposition between beauty and grotesqueness she embodies. Personally, I feel like her backstory carries that design and gives it some real life that, out of context, would be just a kind of cool horror movie villain.

7 & 6 THE DIRE MOTHER AND THE GREAT CHILD

A packaged deal, these two ghosts are a mother-son duo who share backstories. Margaret Shelburne, who would become the Dire Mother, was born with dwarfism and spent her whole life being ridiculed and abused for it. With nowhere to turn, she joined the circus as a sideshow attraction. She eventually had a child by one of her abusers who worked alongside her, naming the baby Harold.

Overly protective and unwilling to let him grow up, Margaret overfed Harold and kept him isolated from the outside world the best she could, “babying” him until he grew to monstrous proportions with an infantile mind. When her fellow circus performers accidentally killed her in a dangerous prank that involved trapping her in a bag, a mentally stunted and emotionally damaged Harold went on a rampage and killed the entire circus. He was eventually taken down by a mob led by the circus’s ringleader, and reunited with his mother as spirits, where they formed two more pieces in Cyrus Kritico’s master plan.

There is a shock value to these two when you first see them in the film, and their designs make you ask the question every designer wants people to ask about their characters: what’s their deal? They pique curiosity while balancing between the frightening and sympathetic; a perfect haunting duo.

5 THE BOUND WOMAN

A beautiful young prom queen with a promiscuous streak, Susan Legrow’s life was one of many trysts and flings as the town’s heartbreaker. Eventually, Susan’s chronic infidelity would trigger the psychotic reaction of her then-boyfriend Chet. He would seek revenge by killing the man she cheated on him with, torturing and binding Susan, and burying her under the school’s football field.

There’s a very palpable discomfort that comes with looking at all the ghosts in the top five, and Susan’s state of eternal distress is particularly bad in a way that is almost worse than a ghost who can straight-up attack you. With the exposed bone and choked expression that Laura Mennell subjects viewers to, The Bound Woman has some serious nightmare fuel potential that rounds out the frights of the other eleven ghosts perfectly.

4 THE JUGGERNAUT

Born with gigantism, Horace Mahoney was seemingly the strongest of all the phantoms in Cyrus’s collection, and the one that proved the most trouble in capturing. Ostracized by others, Horace grew up deeply maladjusted, with the only person who accepted him being his father. The two worked alongside each other in the family’s junkyard for the remainder of his life.

But with his father’s passing, Horace’s true nature was unleashed: he became a notorious serial killer known as The Breaker, who would systematically break every bone in his victim’s bodies. His killings were eventually stopped by police, who had to shoot him upwards of 50 times and lost several officers in their attempt to apprehend him. He certainly ended up living to (and dying by) the name.

John De Santis is one of Hollywood’s quintessential “Big Guy” character actors. He’s been in so many projects over the years, and still, his work as The Juggernaut will be what he is remembered for. He really slipped into the role of the shockingly violent and surprisingly creepy phantom like a glove, so he deserves all his flowers for his portrayal here.

3 THE PILGRIMESS

The ghost with the worst luck on this list is curiously the one with the best luck as well. She is also the oldest of the spirits, as she’s one of the earliest English colonists of the Americas. In life, she was known as Isabella Smith, a woman who didn’t curry much favor with other colonists for being “an outsider”, presumably of a different religious background than the others.

After a string of livestock deaths and the passing of the town’s preacher, her fellow pilgrims accused her of being a witch, and eventually set a barn she was in on fire. When she survived the fire completely unscathed, either out of sheer luck or actual witchcraft, she only suffered a much more prolonged demise: she was locked in a pillory, stoned, and starved to death over the course of weeks.

This might be an odd pick for the #3 spot, especially ahead of The Juggernaut, but I think these three ghosts could carry their own films. There is an undeniable charm in having ghosts from beyond the 20th century in this film too, which makes it feel like a proper old campfire story. The Pilgrimess is a perfect example of a persecuted person from another time, dragged screaming and locked up to the future, trapped in a never-ending prison. There’s double the dramatic irony as well, since she is both trapped in her pillory and simultaneously trapped in Cyrus’s machine; extremely rough, extremely cool execution.

2 THE JACKAL

The most feared ghost by fans of the film, The Jackal is also one of the most tragic due to the origins of his distinct look. Abandoned as a child, Ryan Kuhn became a listless serial killer who targeted young women and prostitutes. Despite his bloodlust, Kuhn was aware of his sickness and even tried to cure his compulsions by voluntarily submitting himself to an asylum.

No matter how strong his restraints were, Kuhn would escape them, until eventually, his doctors had a cage placed over his head along with his straitjacket to prevent him from savaging anyone with his teeth. He succumbed to a fire that consumed the asylum, being the sole victim; Cyrus mentions in his notes that Kuhn’s death was most likely voluntary as well, assuming he would get some peace in death. He was sadly very wrong.

The best physical acting in the film, Shane Wyler made the Jackal the face of Thirteen Ghosts, and he deserves all the credit in the world for it. He’s just so kinetic and charged up with every moment he’s on screen, and that torn-open cage is a really nice inversion of the classic masked monster that shows you all the fine detail in his face. It’s an ideal design, with an ideal portrayal.

1 THE HAMMER

A spirit from the 1890s, George Markley was originally a gentle giant of a man and a blacksmith on the American frontier. However, being an African American in a predominantly white town, Markley and his family were far from welcome by the townspeople. After he was accused of theft, both of his daughters and wife were killed by an angry group of bigots.

George would go on to avenge his family with extreme violence, killing the man who had accused him of theft and his cohorts with a tool of his trade: a hammer. George was killed by an angry mob in turn, who impaled him with hundreds of nails and railroad spikes, before replacing his hand with the head of his hammer in a final attempt to defile him and his legacy. However, Markley’s vengeance never ends.

Now this, this is the one. If that Thirteen Ghosts television series ever comes to fruition, this is the one ghost I would want to see the most of. He has a classic ghostly backstory, his design conveys a painful and torturous death, and the makeup and numerous pieces of prosthetics meld perfectly, it all just synergizes to make the perfect spirit. It reeks of someone who has unfinished business sticking around to get revenge, and moreover, a ghost you can root for.

Some might consider it over-designed with the abundance of moving parts, but it is just the right amount of insane for me to match Markley’s backstory and make the best of the twelve.

***

Do you agree with the rankings? Do you have a favorite ghost from Thirteen Ghosts you’d like to see in the TV series? Or do you have thoughts on the movie in general? Be sure to tell us in the comments on Instagram, the replies on Twitter, and anywhere else you can find us under the tag @HorrorPressLLC! And for more articles like this one, stay tuned to HorrorPress.com for the latest in everything horror this season!

Last September, I gave you a step-by-step guide on introducing a scaredy-cat to jump scares. But over the past year, I have continued to hear the same conversations from horror fans the world over. “That movie sucked, it was all jump scares.” “They couldn’t make it scary, so they just threw in a bunch of jump scares.” How cheap, how tawdry, and on and on and on. It turns out that teaching people how to endure jump scares is just half the battle. Teaching people how to respect jump scares is an entirely different prospect.

Beware Anti-Jump Scare Propaganda

There are people who genuinely dislike jump scares for good reasons, both personal and philosophical. However, given how frequently the same talking points are regurgitated over and over when it comes to jump scares, a lot of people are imitating the opinions of others rather than investigating their own relationships to jump-scare-heavy movies. If you talk to enough horror fans, you get the sense that the general party line is that jump scares are a cheap, lazy way to frighten the audience and spice up an otherwise uninteresting B-movie. Ask anyone in the know about the differences between 1989’s The Woman in Black and the 2012 version if you want a real potent example.

And sure, throughout horror history there are plenty of bad jump scares where you can practically see the production assistant’s hands tossing the black cat into frame in front of the woman in the diaphanous nightgown. However, at the same time, moments like the final scene of 1976’s Carrie or the big hospital scare sequence in The Exorcist III are generally hailed as masterpiece moments. This strikes me as hypocritical, for one very good reason. It is hypocritical.

Listen To Your Body

There’s a reason even anti-jump scare folks will praise some of the best examples of the form. Jump scares are servicing a different, but no less valuable, need for the horror fan than “elevated” horror material that is more atmospheric and dread-inducing. This is because they have a profound, direct impact on the body. Jump scares spike the adrenaline, cause the heart to race, and generally exhilarate the system. While this is something that general dread can accomplish too, jump scares provide a much more immediate rush, like taking a ride on a roller coaster. And who the hell ever got off a roller coaster and said, “I wish that was more intellectually stimulating?”

A dread-filled atmosphere is to a good, solid jump scare is what a filet mignon is to a handful of M&M’s. Presuming they align with one’s tastes in the first place, both experiences are satisfying in their own unique way, but there’s only one you’d post on Instagram about. The only major difference between them is how they are perceived by others rather than the way they are received by oneself. On top of that, not all jump scares are mindless carnival rides, anyway (even though there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being that in the first place).

Switch Your Brain On (If You Want)

Maybe the propaganda is right. Maybe jump scares are cheap. But the best ones are never, ever lazy. As if we needed proof that there’s more nuance to jump scares than people give them credit for, there are a wide selection of different varieties of jump scares in the horror genre. The two primary categories are slow burn horror scenes that culminate in a big scare (ie. the clapping scene in The Conjuring) and short sharp shocks that come out of nowhere during a seemingly calm scene (i.e. the end of the original Friday the 13th).

The former type are the ones that typically receive the complaint “I could see the scares coming from a mile away.” But here’s a little secret: That’s usually the point. Filmmakers working in the Conjuring slow-burn mode want you to know there’s a scare coming down the line. The trick is in not telling you when it’s going to come. These scenes harness the anticipation of a jack-in-the-box, prepping you for a random shock but still making you jump nevertheless. This type of active participation in a scene can be just as intellectually satisfying as dissecting the subtextual themes of a character’s dialogue, especially when the filmmakers have the prestidigitation skills to point your attention in one direction, only to have the scare come from a completely unexpected place.

Shed Your Shame

Ultimately, what I think people are doing when they complain about cheap jump scares is the same thing that one does when groaning after somebody tells a pun. That’s the reaction you’re expected to make to something perceived as “low culture.” But didn’t you secretly sort of enjoy that pun? Admitting you’ve enjoyed a bad joke has become taboo for whatever reason, but the “worst” puns are the ones that get repeated the most, because piss and moan all you want, you’re only human. Sometimes you need to act upon your more basic urges, even if they’re not as classy as the interests you probably want to be known for. Societal pressure is a tough nut to crack sometimes, but embracing both the high and low elements of the genre is simply allowing oneself to enjoy a fuller spectrum of horror movie moments.

My point is, don’t limit yourself. Eat those M&M’s. Laugh at your friend’s stupid puns. And jump into the scares.