Theme: The Ambiguously Fantastic

The Ambiguously Fantastic refers to works that create a deliberate uncertainty about whether elements of the fantastic exist or not. They raise the suggestion that it could exist or equally that it might be all in a protagonist’s imagination or there may be a more mundane explanation for what is going on.

Sometimes this may result in a Rationalised Fantasy where the end of the story pulls back to deliver a mundane explanation for seemingly fantastical events, or everything is revealed to be conclusively in someone’s imagination. Just as equally, a work may leave the ambiguity unresolved.

The most common examples of this might be whether ghosts and hauntings are real. Efforts included here also leave doubt about the actuality of monsters, aliens, angels, reincarnation, miracles, witchcraft and deviltry, UFOs, werewolves, or claims that someone is an alien or time traveller.

The classic Ambiguously Fantastic story was Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898), which has been multiply filmed, in which we could not be certain if the central character was seeing ghosts or it was all just in her imagination. On film, the classic Ambiguously Fantastic films were the works of Val Lewton, beginning with Cat People (1942) in which we could not be certain if the heroine really could turn into a panther or it was just her superstitions and the imaginings of others.