>>280221281
>it depends on what you are looking
I've just been more aware of it, that's all. I was reading anthologies like Social Media Ghost Stories or Reiwa Ghost Story, and those really did it right, leaving more questions than answers and making you think.
I was looking into Dr. Strange's Phantom Seminar, for instance, and chapter 2 has a family driving along a country road on their monthly dinner trip when suddenly A GIANT GHOST APPEARS AND IT INSTANTLY BODYJACKS YOU AND THEN IT EATS YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY, leaving one of the MCs as an only survivor, and I was like 'well that was random" instead of being shocked or intrigued. Then I realized the story was really similar to Nikubami - they both start with a loved one dead, then start flashback arcs to see what happened. But Nikubami was way better at setting up dread and a reason for the MCs to be there. Phantom, in comparison, is a series of people whose families all got randomly whacked by ghosts they can't even describe but can somehow still name, which makes me wonder how you can even exist, let alone interact.
I guess my main hangup is "if a random ghost can annihilate a character instantly, because of methods they are powerless to understand, with excessive force they had no previous context for, for no reason at all, then it's a bad story." All the stories I described as good avoid this issue.
