What makes a supernatural mystery linger in your imagination long after you've turned the final page? Author E.M. Wallis explores five essential ingredients, from believable characters and atmospheric settings to the secrets that refuse to stay buried.
Why some stories stay with us
I can remember finishing books years ago and still being able to picture a particular scene, a character or a place. Sometimes I can't recall every detail of the plot, but the feeling the story created remains remarkably clear.
That's something I've always found fascinating about fiction.
A good mystery keeps you reading because you want to know what happens next. A particularly good one stays with you because of what it makes you think about afterwards.
Supernatural mysteries have an additional advantage. They can take something familiar, introduce an element that appears impossible and leave us questioning whether the world is quite as predictable as we like to believe.
A telephone rings in an empty house. Someone glimpses a familiar face in a crowd, despite knowing that person died years earlier. A photograph contains a figure nobody remembers being there.
Each incident could have a perfectly reasonable explanation.
But what if it doesn't?
As a writer of supernatural mysteries, I'm interested in that moment when certainty begins to disappear. I enjoy creating situations where characters must question what they've experienced, while readers try to decide which explanation they believe.
But an unusual event alone isn't enough to make a story memorable. It needs something more substantial beneath it, something that gives the mystery meaning and makes the reader care about the outcome.
For me, five ingredients make the greatest difference.
Looking for your next supernatural mystery?
If you enjoy stories where the unexplained collides with ordinary lives, you might like my novels Whispers in the Fog and The Last Caller, or my shorter supernatural mystery GHOSTED.
From disturbing psychic visions on an isolated island to an impossible telephone call from someone who should be dead, each explores the secrets, relationships and unexpected events that make supernatural mysteries so compelling.
You can discover all three on Amazon:
Whispers in the Fog | The Last Caller | GHOSTED
But what makes a supernatural mystery genuinely unforgettable? Here are the five ingredients I believe matter most.
1. A mystery that raises questions worth answering
Every memorable supernatural mystery begins with something that doesn't quite make sense.
It might be a disappearance, an unexplained death or an event that seems to contradict everything we understand about the world. Whatever happens, it needs to create a question compelling enough to make the reader want to investigate.
The important thing is that the mystery should develop rather than simply become more complicated.
I've read stories where strange events occur one after another, but there's little sense that they're connected. The result can be unsettling, certainly, but without a central question driving the narrative, the reader may eventually lose interest.
I prefer mysteries where each discovery changes our understanding of what happened before.
A character uncovers an old photograph, for example, and recognises someone who shouldn't be there. That leads to a name, the name leads to an event from the past and suddenly an apparently supernatural occurrence becomes connected to something much more personal.
The reader begins forming theories, testing explanations and looking for details that might have been overlooked.
That's where the pleasure of a mystery lies.
In my novel The Last Caller, Jacob works for a bereavement support service when he receives a telephone call from a woman who should be dead.
The impossible conversation creates the initial question, but it also begins an investigation involving a devastating fire, concealed family relationships and secrets surrounding Jacob's own past.
I wanted the mystery to develop beyond the identity of the caller. The more Jacob discovers, the more he has to reconsider what he believes about the people closest to him.
For me, that's an important part of making a supernatural mystery work. The unexplained event should open the door to a much larger story.
And sometimes, the answers should be more disturbing than the original question.
2. Characters we genuinely care about
A ghost can be frightening. A mysterious disappearance can be intriguing. But neither will necessarily stay with a reader unless the events matter to someone.
Characters give a mystery its emotional weight.
I think one of the most common mistakes in supernatural fiction is concentrating so heavily on the extraordinary events that the people experiencing them become secondary.
They're there to witness something frightening, investigate a strange occurrence or uncover a secret, but we never really understand who they are beyond their role in the plot.
For me, the most effective supernatural mysteries work the other way around. The extraordinary event interrupts a recognisable human life, creating problems that affect relationships, ambitions, memories and beliefs.
Imagine two characters receiving an impossible message from someone who has died.
One might be terrified because they believed they'd finally escaped an abusive relationship. Another might be overwhelmed with hope because they never had the opportunity to say goodbye to someone they loved.
The supernatural event is identical, but its emotional significance is entirely different.
That difference is what makes characters interesting.
In Whispers in the Fog, Lillie's psychic visions draw her into a murder mystery on the isolated Misthaven Island.
Her experiences suggest that something important is hidden beneath the surface, but understanding the visions is only part of her problem. As suspicion begins to fall upon her, the consequences become increasingly personal.
I wanted readers to understand that possessing unusual knowledge doesn't necessarily make someone powerful.
Sometimes it makes them vulnerable.
Lillie has to navigate a situation where what she knows, what she believes and what other people are prepared to accept may be very different things.
That creates tension beyond the supernatural element itself.
Because when readers care about a character, they don't simply want the mystery solved. They want to know what solving it will cost.
3. A setting that becomes part of the story
I've always believed that the places we choose for our stories matter enormously.
An abandoned mansion might seem an obvious location for a ghost story, but an ordinary terraced house, a quiet village or a familiar workplace can be just as effective.
Sometimes more so.
The reason is simple. We tend to feel comfortable in places we recognise, particularly those associated with everyday routines. Introduce something inexplicable into that environment, and the contrast can be deeply unsettling.
A strange noise in a supposedly haunted castle is almost expected. The same noise coming from your own kitchen at three in the morning is rather more difficult to dismiss.
But setting should do more than create atmosphere.
It can influence the characters' decisions, shape their relationships and determine how the mystery unfolds.
When I created Misthaven Island for Whispers in the Fog, I wanted somewhere that felt like a real community, with its own history, relationships and secrets.
An island offers physical isolation, but the psychological isolation interests me just as much. People may have known one another for years, yet that familiarity doesn't necessarily mean they understand one another.
Someone might have spent decades concealing an uncomfortable truth. Another might have accepted a version of events that turns out to be completely wrong.
And when a murder mystery begins to unfold, those relationships can become particularly important.
The fog adds another dimension, changing the appearance of familiar places and making distances, sounds and movements difficult to judge.
But I didn't want it to become merely a convenient way of making everything look mysterious.
The setting needed to influence the story itself.
I explored this in more detail in my article, When ordinary places become extraordinary: The importance of setting in supernatural fiction.
I've also written about the development of Misthaven Island in Behind the Fog: Creating the World of Misthaven Island, exploring how its isolation, community and atmosphere contribute to the mystery.
For me, the most memorable fictional settings are those readers can imagine visiting.
Although they might think twice about staying after dark.
4. Uncertainty that allows the imagination to work
One of the most powerful tools available to a supernatural mystery writer is uncertainty.
I don't mean deliberately confusing the reader or withholding information simply to make the story difficult to follow. I'm talking about the uncertainty that arises when something happens and nobody, including the reader, can be entirely sure what it means.
Is the strange figure at the window a ghost?
Could someone be playing a cruel trick?
Is a character remembering an event accurately, or have their experiences influenced what they believe they saw?
Those questions encourage readers to participate in the story rather than simply observe it.
Our imaginations are remarkably good at filling in missing information. A shadow becomes a figure, a sound becomes a whisper and an unexpected movement becomes evidence that someone else is present.
Most of the time, there's a perfectly ordinary explanation.
But fiction allows us to explore what happens when there isn't.
I think this is one reason supernatural mysteries can be more unsettling than stories that reveal their threats immediately.
Once readers know exactly what they're dealing with, they begin to understand its limitations. While something remains unexplained, almost anything seems possible.
That doesn't mean a writer should avoid providing answers.
A mystery needs to deliver on the questions it raises, particularly when readers have invested time trying to solve it. But there's a difference between resolving the central story and explaining away every last trace of uncertainty.
Sometimes a small unanswered question can be more effective than an elaborate explanation.
Perhaps a character discovers the truth behind a haunting, only to encounter one final detail that doesn't fit.
Perhaps an apparently rational explanation accounts for almost everything, but not quite.
The reader closes the book, considers what happened and begins wondering whether the story has another interpretation.
That's a wonderful outcome for a writer.
I explored the way uncertainty influences our reactions in my earlier article, The psychology of fear: Why the unseen frightens us most.
The imagination can be a far more effective source of tension than anything described explicitly on the page.
And occasionally, what we don't see matters most.
5. A truth that changes everything
For me, the final ingredient is perhaps the most important.
A memorable supernatural mystery needs a revelation that matters.
That doesn't necessarily mean a spectacular twist, a shocking death or an ending designed to make readers gasp. Those things can work, but only when they grow naturally from the story.
I'm more interested in revelations that change our understanding of the characters and their circumstances.
A secret from the past might explain why someone has behaved strangely for years. A seemingly insignificant decision might turn out to have devastating consequences. A character might discover that the person they trusted most has concealed something that changes everything they believed about their life.
The supernatural can provide the means of uncovering that truth, but the consequences are often entirely human.
That's what fascinates me about combining supernatural fiction with mystery.
A ghost might be frightening, but discovering why someone has returned can be far more unsettling.
In The Last Caller, the impossible telephone call leads Jacob towards events and relationships that challenge his understanding of his own history. The supernatural provides the initial mystery, but the emotional consequences of what he discovers are just as important.
Similarly, in Whispers in the Fog, Lillie's visions draw her towards a murder investigation in which suspicion, trust and concealed information become central to the unfolding story.
I enjoy writing mysteries where readers can look back after the final revelation and recognise that the clues were there all along.
Perhaps they interpreted something incorrectly. Perhaps a character's apparently innocent remark carried more significance than anyone realised.
The best revelations don't simply surprise us.
They make us reconsider what we've already read.
And when that happens, a story can remain in the imagination long after its final page.
Bringing the five ingredients together
Of course, these elements don't work independently.
A compelling mystery needs believable characters, because the answers must matter to someone. Those characters need a convincing world to inhabit, while the setting can create opportunities for tension and uncertainty.
The unexplained events draw readers into the story, but the emotional consequences give them a reason to stay.
And the final revelation needs to bring those threads together in a way that feels satisfying.
That's the challenge I enjoy most when writing supernatural fiction.
It's relatively easy to imagine something strange happening. A telephone call from someone who has died, a disturbing vision or an unexplained figure appearing in a photograph can all provide intriguing starting points.
Turning that idea into a story that readers care about is another matter.
It requires decisions about character, motivation, atmosphere, pacing and how much information to reveal.
Sometimes the smallest detail can make the greatest difference.
A character hesitates before answering a question. Someone notices an object that has moved. A familiar name appears in an unexpected place.
At first, the incident seems unimportant.
Later, it might change everything.
What writing GHOSTED taught me about suspense
Writing shorter fiction has made me think carefully about how these ingredients work together.
In a novel, there's room to develop relationships, explore a setting and gradually reveal the connections between seemingly unrelated events.
A short story doesn't offer the same luxury.
When I wrote GHOSTED, I wanted to create an atmospheric supernatural mystery that readers could enjoy in a single sitting.
That meant being selective about what mattered most.
You don't need to explain every aspect of a character's past to make them believable, just as you don't need pages of description to establish an unsettling atmosphere.
Sometimes a single observation, an unexpected reaction or a carefully placed detail can achieve more than an elaborate explanation.
The challenge is knowing what to include and what to leave to the reader's imagination.
I think that's a useful lesson for novelists as well as short-story writers.
Every scene should contribute something, whether it's developing a character, advancing the mystery or changing the reader's understanding of what's happening.
And if a scene does several of those things at once, so much the better.
You can read more about the inspiration behind the story in GHOSTED: The story behind my supernatural mystery.
Discover my supernatural mysteries
If you enjoy stories that combine unexplained events with human secrets, psychological tension and mysteries that gradually reveal their connections to the past, you might like to explore my fiction.
Whispers in the Fog
On the isolated Misthaven Island, Lillie's disturbing psychic visions draw her into a murder mystery where concealed secrets and growing suspicion place her in danger.
Read Whispers in the Fog on Amazon
The Last Caller
A bereavement support worker receives an impossible telephone call from a woman who should be dead, leading him towards a devastating fire, concealed family relationships and disturbing truths about his own past.
Read The Last Caller on Amazon
GHOSTED
An atmospheric supernatural mystery short story exploring the unsettling space between ordinary life and the unexplained.
You can also find more articles about writing, supernatural fiction and the inspiration behind my stories on my author website.
One final thought
Think about the last supernatural mystery that really stayed with you.
Was it the ghost, the setting or the unexplained event that made it memorable? Perhaps there was a revelation you never saw coming, or a character whose experiences felt uncomfortably familiar.
I suspect that, more often than not, it was a combination of things.
A mystery that made you curious, characters you cared about and an atmosphere that encouraged your imagination to explore possibilities the author hadn't explicitly described.
And somewhere beneath it all, a truth waiting to be discovered.
That's what I try to create when I write supernatural mysteries. Not simply a collection of frightening events, but stories where the extraordinary reveals something meaningful about ordinary human lives.
Because a ghost might make you turn the page.
But it's the story behind the haunting that makes you remember it.
And perhaps that's the real secret of an unforgettable supernatural mystery.
E.M. Wallis
Author of Whispers in the Fog, The Last Caller and GHOSTED