A Head Full of Ghosts

“Did you buy the house? Not a terrible idea at all. Sure, giving tours of the infamous Barrett House didn’t quite work out for the previous owner, but that doesn’t mean it can’t work out now. It’d be great promotion for the book.”

At this point in the novel, the reader does not yet know about the deaths of Merry’s parents and sister inside the Barrett house. Merry is flippant and animated, appearing happy to be back in the house. She revels in the opportunity to have an audience she can entertain, and is energetic in anticipation of further exposure with the forthcoming publication of Rachel’s book. She is apparently unconcerned and detached from the potential “ghoulishness” of what she is suggesting.

“The message was already clear. Daddy Barrett was out of a job and consequently the family and society as a whole was in full decay mode. Poor Mom, Sarah Barrett (stalwart bank teller), only gets a brief background check in the opening segment. Her being the sole breadwinner in the family isn’t mentioned until later in the pilot […].”

In her first blog post analyzing The Possession, “Karen Brissette” critiques the Discovery Channel special as misogynistic. Merry’s pen name is her cloak of anonymity for writing about the horror genre. In this instance, her pseudonym is particularly crucial because she is writing about herself and her own family from the perspective of a detached third party. Merry later tells Rachel that she believes everything that she writes on “Karen’s” blog; this post encapsulates Merry’s belief that her father was not deserving of the sympathy he received.