I was out-of-commission in the fanfic community for three years until, to my surprise, Buzzfeed Unsolved managed to claw me out of it.
Preface: if you don’t watch the show you likely won’t understand my story idea and why I like it.
I was staring off into space while drawing some fanart last week and a story idea just popped into my mind out of nowhere: Shane gets into a car accident and tragically dies; Ryan, in his grief one day, turns on the spirit box and guess who starts speaking through it?
My gripe with this story idea was that, why would Shane’s ghost be lingering, finally proving Ryan’s beliefs true, and not any of the ones they’ve attempted to investigate on the show? As a Shaniac myself, I personally don’t think there’s any explanation in real life as to why some souls would stay behind after death while the rest found peace in heaven or hell. But for the sake of creativity and just having fun with a writing idea, I contemplated an explanation that would make sense and not have any contradictions, and after tossing some ideas around I settled on this (copied and pasted from my google doc):
“How the laws of ghosts work in this narrative
-Ghosts are lingering spirits than can only find rest when they are at peace. What people don’t realize, however, is that this peace can come from within the spirits themselves–an outside force, person, or event is not necessary to expedite this process. For example, if a spirit lingers because they are worried about how a family member will deal with their death, the spirit may remain until the family member finally moves on from it and the spirit realizes this. This explains why their hunts turn out fruitless, because the souls from hundreds of years ago have already moved on. S’s rest will come when he’s proven R’s belief right with his very existence.”
(I use letters when jotting down ideas because I try to write them down as quickly as possible)
Basically, I plan for Shane’s soul to linger because, when he was alive, he never had closure to he and Ryan’s burning question: “Are ghosts real?” I plan for the story to end with Shane speaking through the spirit box to a distraught (and now stunned) Ryan. Once he did, however, their question would be answered, and his time would be limited before his soul found peace and carried on.
I think this story would make some nice, natural-feeling angst and also end on a sad, happy, cute, etc. note (if done correctly).
Do you think my explanation of the existence of ghosts would work in this story?
I’m absolutely open to ideas for scenes in this story and tips for how the plot could go!
(Ps yes that’s part of the fanart i was working on when i got the idea)
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