every ghost story is an onomatopoeia at the level of grammar, the vibrating pressure and release of narrative. the experience of it *is* how it reads. that's why it's a ghost story and not any other kind of story: the experiencer infers the ghost. that's .. what ghosts are. a thing that is self-evident is not a ghost. thus a ghost *story* is as it sounds, whether you tell it to yourself in realtime from sensory sources or you tell it to someone else later from memory sources.
see also: "move along"