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W.H. Auden, in his essay on detective fiction, ‘The Guilty Vicarage’, asked: ‘Is it an accident that the detective story has flourished most in predominantly Protestant countries?’ He was thinking about confession and how this changes things. In Auden’s view, murder is an offence against God and society and when it happens it shows that some member of society is no longer in a state of grace. But confession gives a transgressor a means of returning to a state of grace, so the moral order can be restored without recourse to a policeman.

You wonder: do ghost stories too flourish most in a Protestant (or formerly Protestant) society? There have always been ghost stories and they reflect the beliefs of the people who told them – for instance, when Christ’s apostles saw him walking on water, their first thought was that he was a ghost. If access to confession could change the dynamic of a detective story, there is another Catholic doctrine which could alter the workings of a ghost story and that is purgatory and the possibility of prayers for the dead.

While the concept of the unquiet spirit is common to all the stories, the ghosts’ aims in appearing to the living may differ. St Thomas Aquinas poses the question of whether the souls who are in heaven or hell are able to go from hence. He answers: ‘According to the disposition of divine providence, separated souls sometimes come forth from their abode and appear to men… It is also credible that this may occur sometimes to the damned, and that for man’s instruction and intimidation they be permitted to appear to the living; or again in order to seek our suffrages [prayers], as to........

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