P.T.S.D.

- A Ghost Story -
Dear Mom, March 20th, 2022

I hope this letter finds you well and in the comfort of home. Oh how I miss our nights by
the fireplace. Dad watched football while we sprawled across the floor making photo albums
and petting the cat. Everything was so warm. The room was always how I imagined the
colour yellow to feel; Inviting and happy.
I guess I should stop dwelling on the past..
The Newspapers are still getting a kick out of the story; I've attached a clipping below.
Readers must be thrilled. Quite the spectacle I made. Anyways, I’m writing to let you know
that I’ve recently enrolled myself in a
study. It’s supposed to help.. you
know, with everything that
happened.
Today I had to go in for my initial
interview. It was nerve-wracking to
say the least. I had to willingly
consent to this 2 week program and
feel comfortable in sharing my story.
A concept not so pleasing.
I’ve felt such a weight on my
shoulders recently and the doctor
who interviewed me said I would be a
perfect fit for the study. He described
the weight as something called
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He
said it is a disorder that develops in some people who have experienced a shocking, scary, or
dangerous event and continued on to say it's in my head. But they can help me conquer it.
I loved the optimism but I’m not entirely convinced. If it were in my head, why can I see it
looming over me in the mirror..
I hope to see you soon!
Love,
Your Daughter
Dear Mom, March 26th, 2022

I’m officially five days into my treatment. The days have been long. It’s hard to tell
them apart most times. We start at 8:30am and go until 4:30pm. My lack of sleep probably
hasn’t helped much either. My symptoms since the accident; nightmares, jumpiness, feeling
watched… and others are being addressed everyday.
Did my last letter arrive? I haven’t heard back from you yet… But That’s okay. I
wanted to let you know about the second phase of treatment! The past few days, I have had
to be more open about what happened and describe the person, I mean event, that is holding
me back from recovery. I speak and they record, that’s the protocol. I’m trying my best to
stay optimistic, the doctors say that I’ve been doing so well.
It’s rather funny, you know. We’re drawing. I have had to continuously draw myself in
the car before the accident and then on a separate page, draw after the accident occurred. It’s
supposed to help us come to terms with the 7 sense of intensive trauma response, or ITR. I’m
trying my best to keep up with all these fancy doctor words, sorry if they don’t make sense.
I’m sending you one of my drawings. It should be enclosed in this letter. I know it's
not the everyday drawing you’d put up on our fridge like you used to, but I wanted to let you
know, I’m still here and I'm still me, even with everything going on! Don’t mind the
smudges, no matter how careful I am, they just keep appearing. It’s quite odd that they tend
to keep a figure like stature to them.
I hope to hear from you soon!

Love,
Your daughter

Dear Mom, March 30th, 2023

Hello, it is now day 9. I haven’t heard back from you yet. Maybe my letters are getting
lost in the mail. However writing this letter is the only thing letting me know I’m sane.
We’ve moved on to phase three of the treatment and I am scared. The past few days they
have sat me down to have “conversations” with the recordings they took earlier and want me
to connect to the “person I was before the trauma”. They described it as a procedure using
video recording and replay to promote a dialogue between the person in the present and the
self who had been left behind due to the trauma. I was optimitsc. Going in I wasn’t even
stressed. But, Mom what you don’t understand is.. The voice in the recordings isn’t me. It
was telling me the accident was my fault and that I shouldn’t be here. The doctors won’t
listen. I was talking with someone or something… who sounded like me but spoke of horrors
and pain. The doctor have claimed I’m in denial. They won’t listen to the tapes back. Am I
really in denial? My voice has continued to haunt me. It speaks over the doctors’ but they
never seem to hear. It tells me I will never recover.
It makes my whole world feel blue.
Please reply. Please bring my yellow back.

Love,

Your daughter

Dear whom it may concern,

It is with deep worry and haste that we write to you today to confirm the treatment
and hospitalization of a recent patient of our Intentivse Trauma Therapy study. We have
wish to keep you informed of her situation. Patient 005 came to us presenting signs of Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder after a roll over Car Accident on the date of February 2nd, 2022.
The intention of our Therapy is to help patients of this nature recover through a two week
programs with focalized treatment methods of art therapy, hypnosis, and video therapy.
Patient 005, passed our intital study interview and was granted access into our
treatment program. Her initial symptoms were typical of most PTSD patients and included;
frequent nightmares, insomnia, loneliness, and descriptions of feeling watched or “as if she
was never alone in the room”. While, the last symptom is not of PTSD, we worked to combat
the feeling, and deduced that she may be embodying her emotions in the form of a ‘physical’
presence as to not face them head on.
Within the second phase of treatment, it was become more and more apparent that
the entity that Paitent 005 has created with her feelings was more significant then we
originally anticipated. From a series of drawings we had her create. All but one had a figure
appearing next to her self-potrait or scene. The one without was a deception of Patient 005
not surviving her car accident. Let the record be cleared, that our team had not intructruted
her to draw this.
 Upon our third phase of treatment, Patient 005 became increasingly irritable and
adamant on our recordings of her in the early phase not being her. She described the voice as
being her own but not being what she truly said. While we listened back to the recordings in
privacy, we could not seem to find what Patient 005 was talking about. All recorded
responses are what she has spoken prior. When looking at surveillance videos of Patient 005
going through phase 3, it was noted that she became upset and glanced repeatedly at the
corner of the room and past the designated area of treatment. Her eyes became gloosed over
and our team members reported an eerie weight once walking into the treatment room to
recieve Patient 005.
It is with great dismay that we write that Patient 005 did not make it to phase 4 of our
treatment. While we tried to remain optimistic and inform her that the symptoms he was
facing were strong but not out of the ordinary for her condition, denial being one of the, she
refused to see it this was. As the course of the rest of the 2 weeks followed, Patient 005
reported stronger feelings of being watched and of even “being haunted”. She was losing
sleep and was often found in her room staring at the drawings we had had her prepare. We
were forced to admit her to the local physocological hospital as she was threat to herself and
staff.
The hospital

. Though, It was every intention of

ours to see her fail.
Let the record reflect that Supernatural beings are not real. The looming figure is not
real. Patient 005’s mother is not real nor alive. Why else would we be keeping her letters she
so desperately tried to send out? No one can know what is truly taking place. Afterall, only
44% of our patients recover from our therapy, what’s one more percent unrecovered.

With love,
PTSD

Reflection
The idea of horror, of jumpscares, of the supernatural is not everyone’s cup of

tea. Yet the idea of mental health awareness, for the most part, is. With a society that

is progressing more rapidly in terms of research and awareness towards mental

health, I wanted to create a storyline that intertwines the psychological effect of a

scary movie with the effects of PTSD on an individual.

To translate genres was not an easy task. I chose to translate the scholarly

article “Intensive trauma therapy of PTSD and dissociation: An outcome study” into a

ghost story. From this ghost plot line I was able to write a series of letters detailing a

patient of the study becoming increasingly haunted throughout the course of the

study with many ghost story conventions that would correspond with the study

research addressed in the article.

As a writer I had to come into this project prepared to engage my audience,

reflect on my writing choices, and the constraints that could potentially be held on my

piece as said by Laura Bolin Carroll in her text “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps

toward Rhetorical Analysis”. With a topic disorder that can vary for a range of people

and events that have happened to them, trying to relate the storyline with accuracy

to the article proved to be a challenge of its own. However, it was not hard to place

myself in the shoes of the patients examined as I too have once been in their

position. Thus taking on the role of the patient to validly translate the necessary and

vital information of the article, was one big step closer to reaching my goals of a

successful translation.

For the reader to understand what the translation is truly about, they must

first understand what PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is. By definition of the

MayoClinic, “[PTSD] is a mental health condition that's triggered by a terrifying event

— either experiencing it or witnessing it. Symptoms may include flashbacks,

nightmares and severe anxiety, as well as uncontrollable thoughts about the event.”

(MayoClinic Staff Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)). Now what is a ghost story?

To say “They’re stories about ghosts” is an understatement and doesn’t take into
account the conventions of suspense, of haunting, or of the emotional toll taken on to

characters. This is where I saw the correlation of what PTSD and what we believe

haunting is. Thus, PTSD, in its entirety, took the form of a ghost in my story that has

come to haunt the main character as she navigates a treatment plan to get rid of it.

The new audience of my translation is the thriller lovers of our time. Those who

live for the undead and supernatural and seek out fear to elicit emotion. They are my

target audience as they tend to be a group of people always straining to find the

hidden meaning behind the text or scene. They pride themselves in understanding

the backstory of the villain and why what is happening is happening to the main

character. They differ from the original audience as the intentions of the scholarly

article were to address the medical field and those seeking help on the affects of

PTSD and treatment throughout a 1-2 week program. While it is not to say that our

thriller lovers couldn’t be within the medical community, they however were not the

first audience chosen for such a daunting and experimental study of Post Traumatic

Stress Disorder.

Trying to integrate information from the article into the letters was perhaps the

hardest part of this assignment, even compared to the research hours themselves. I

chose to highlight 3 essential parts: the purpose, the phases in which the treatment

plan followed, and the inclusion of the authors as doctors defending their study. I

included a few direct quotes from the authors throughout the phases and created a

sppokier aspect of the letters by not allowing the patient to finish off her story and

rather the doctors doing it for her as a way of letting the haunting get the best of her,

like in many ghost story conventions. Originally, I had toyed with another article that

was still along the lines of this one. It, though, lacked the mental health awareness
features that the authors of this article display prominently and accurately. As they

are a big aspect of the translation I have created, this article was a clear winner.

For the letters to make sense to an audience that is interpreting the translation. It

is vital to look at key phrases within the letters. As mentioned above, I tried to create

a focus on the four main phases of the therapeutic program/experiment given to real

patients. For example, the first aspect of the letters is the initial interview. Patients in

the study would complete an entry interview that included “evaluation, baseline

testing, and preparation for Trauma Therapy” (Gantt and Tinnin). I translated this by

abiding to the context in which both someone being haunted and someone with ptsd

would fit in. I asked myself the questions, “Do you know the author’s purpose for this

piece of writing? Do you know who the intended audience is for this piece of

writing?” as explained in “How to read like a writer” by Mike Dunn, to better my

understanding of fitting contextual information in. This is where I found my answer.

Therapy. Just like in the in person study, patients came to the program to receive

help for a mental disorder. In ghost stories conventions, individuals always choose to

believe they are going crazy rather than believe they are haunted at first, and seek

help. I thought by making the help an outlet for the entity, PTSD, to be confronted,

and also be a part of the original article, the translation would operate a lot smoother.

While in the end, I make the villain out to be the Doctors, or

authors/researchers of the article, this is quite the contrary in real life and the

research they created was fantastic. The villain plot twist was more of a thematic

choice to vit the genre conventions.

Overall, I found this assignment to be interesting and unlike anything I have been

tasked to do before. Originally, this project consisted of a movie trailer and script that

I had made. While these were fun and exciting, they did not accurately promote my
learnings and the fundamentals of the Writing 2 class. Therefore, with feedback from

my classmate and professor, I made the switch into a more accurate ghost story

telling. The creative freedom gave me a way to research a topic that I am interested

in and have an emotional connection to and was outlet to express new writing

conventions that I have learned throughout class and within activities.

Citations

“Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).” Mayo Clinic, Mayo Foundation for

Medical Education and Research, 13 Dec. 2022,

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder/s

ymptoms-causes/syc-20355967 .

Gantt, Linda, and Louis W. Tinnin. “Intensive Trauma Therapy of PTSD and

Dissociation: An Outcome Study.” The Arts in Psychotherapy, vol. 34, no. 1,

2007, pp. 69–80., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2006.09.007 .

Carroll, Laura. Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis.

https://wac.colostate.edu/books/writingspaces1/carroll--backpacks-vs-briefcase

s.pdf.
 Bunn, Mike. “Writing Spaces.” Writing Spaces, 2022,

https://writingspaces.org/writing-spaces-volume-2/.