Horror and Holiness: Joseph Pearce on Ghost Stories, Purgatory, and the Catholic Imagination

 

What is the proper Catholic attitude toward ghost stories, Halloween spooks, and Christmas fireside tales? On Driving Home the Faith, host Dr. Ken Craycraft welcomes back literary scholar, speaker, and author Joseph Pearce (Tolkien: Man and Myth, Great Books for Good Men) to discuss his essay "Horror and Holiness for Halloween" published in The Imaginative Conservative. Pearce unpacks the historical and theological distinctions between Protestant and Catholic views of spectral phenomena, examining how authors from William Shakespeare (Hamlet) to Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol) use supernatural storytelling to illuminate moral truth. They discuss guardrails for evaluating ghost literature, modern Catholic gothic fiction, and how storytelling helps train the moral imagination. Stream now!