The inverted ghost story: what is different here?

The Canterville ghost, the book written by Oscar Wilde, is a ghost story. This kind of literature usually has the purpose of frightening the reader.
This story, instead, can be defined an inverted ghost story, because here a lot of elements are different from the traditional ones.
The first difference is the fact that Mr. Otis is not scared by the ghost that is in the Chase, while usually a ghost should frighten a person.
The explanation given by Oscar Wilde consists in the nationality of Mr. Otis: he is an American minister, so he is a pragmatic man and is not interested in ghosts, so he can have all that money can buy, and the Castle enters in this category.
The same explanation is valid also for the deletion of the secular blood stain in the living room by Washington, a son of Mr. Hiram, because he doesn’t believe in ghosts.
But the main peculiarity in this book is the fear of the ghost towards the American twins, because first of all they are not scared by the ghost, but when the ghost tries to frighten them, they prepare a false ghost with different objects (a bed sheet, a broom, a kitchen knife and an empty pumpkin).
First the Canterville ghost is scared by this new phantom, then he thinks that two ghost are better than one and, when he goes another time to the ghost, he discovers that it is only a joke prepared by the twins: the fear becomes anger, and he prepares plans of revenge.
But he doesn’t know that the American boys are terrible for his health, because they find in each occasion the way to make his projects fail.
Finally, another difference in this story is the fact that the ghost is helped by a member of the American family; he has to save his soul, and to do this he needs somebody with a pure heart that goes in the netherworld to expiate his sins; he calls Virginia, the little daughter of Mr. Otis and so he can finally die and leave this world.
In a classical ghost story the help that Virginia offers to the ghost would appear very strange, because, as already said, in a ghost story the purpose of the ghost is to terrorize his victims.
Therefore “The Canterville ghost” is a strange ghost story, and I think that Oscar Wilde wrote this book to criticise the American culture, instead of creating a scary story.

By Alessio Sale, Fadila and Angela