MORE THAN JUST GHOST LORE IN A B A D P L A C E 57
meanings and unpleasant surprises while being in the room with the number 1 4
0 8.
It is when the walls close in on him that Enslin notices that the door handle
has broken off denying him access to the outside world, that the supernatural
manifestations come out of nowhere only to take his life, and that the neighbour
across the street is a mere mirror image of his wishful thinking, b ut does not
belong to reality. Hafstrom represents Enslin’s realization of enclosure and
increase of anxiety through fast alternating shots decreasing in size from eyelevel medium-shots to extreme close-up shots. Whereas at first, eye-level
medium-shots show Enslin walking around in the room, lying on the bed, or
standing in the hotel room window, the director replaces these by extreme closeup shots, revealing for example the alarm clock counting down from 60, Enslin
recording his fearful apprehension that no one will last longer than an hour,
Enslin trying to check out of the room over the phone, and Enslin peeking
through the keyhole. All close-ups convey that there is no escape from this room
that has turned BAD and that the viewer already understands as an architectural
manifestation of Enslin’s anxiety-ridden mind.
But why does Mike Enslin suffer from sudden anxiety attacks? Enslin’s
change of disposition is provoked by the return of the repressed, which causes
“the changing of libido into anxiety” (Freud, Anxiety 410). In other words,
Enslin’s still existing love for his deceased daughter and “affective fixation to
something that is past” (Freud, Fixation 276) implies an incomplete process or
even “a pathological form of mourning” (Freud, Fixation 276). As such, his still
existing love for his deceased daughter becomes a source for his developing
anxiety finalizing in his extreme fear of death, which manifests itself in the
return of and interaction with the dead. The ghostly encounters in Hafstrom’s
film, thus, express Enslin’s “special interest in the past” (B riggslll) that is
closely connected to his present life.
In scenes 11 and 12 (0:48:24-0:58:45), Mike Enslin encounters a total of
three ghosts: First, an older man jumping out of the window; second, a middleaged woman crossing the room prior to jumping out of the hotel window; third,
Mike Enslin’s deceased father sitting in the bathroom complaining about his
spiritual existence. In accordance with a traditional ghost narrative, all ghosts
personify to some degree “the magical interaction” (Briggs 17) between Mike
Enslin and his universe that somehow belongs to the past; a past that represents
a lost perfection of family life consisting of him as the Father, his daughter
Katie, and his wife Lily.
He notices the first two specters after “seeing” his entire family on TV
(scene 11, 0:48:26-0:49:51). This is a moment that juxtaposes this past stability
with his present instability provoked by his desire, his pain, and his idealization
of and consequential search for his lost life that has become a haunting shadow.
This idea of bodily and “natural limits” (Cirlot 222) causing loss and pain
opposes Enslin’s feelings of “solidity, calmness, and home” (Venefica 2009):
notions that find representation in the room’s second number: 4.