Ghosts in VL

[John Bailey]

Josiah's ghost comment reminded me of a bit on p33 I read this morning:

"But if you have any further contact, you'll give us a call, hmmm?"
"Who are you?"

And the next para describes NEVER's logo as a TV in a struck circle.
In my tubally-conditioned mind that can't help but summon up
Ghostbusters (1984), and the question of the preceding paragraph is
essentially "Who you gonna call?"

The notion of haunting is big in VL. People are haunted by ghosts of
their past, there's the Thanatoids, and the media itself is figured as
a spectral, otherworldly place which at times collides with reality.

Check out Jeffrey Sconce's book Haunted Media on this - great piece
which describes how the appearance of electronic media (telegraphy,
radio, tv, internet) is always accompanied by stories, fictions, urban
legends about ghosts and UFOs etc allowed contact through the new
medium. Also Avery F Gordon's Ghostly Matters on how haunting is a
sociological fact, not just superstition or psychology. The idea of
haunting fulfills a social, transpersonal function, according to her.

Anyway, I'm at page 34 and I've noted about 20 explicit references to
films and TV shows, not to mention possible allusions such as
Ghostbusters (or The Fog). Video media are everywhere in this thing,
but the matter of their substance is one of the novel's big questions.