It's sort of sad, but the public is no longer afraid of ghosts.

Hear, O seekers of mystery, the mournful yet piercing words of Peter Lorre, who observed: “It’s sort of sad, but the public is no longer afraid of ghosts. They laugh at them instead.” What seems at first like a lament for a shift in cinema or storytelling is in truth a meditation on the changing spirit of humankind—on how fear, once sacred, becomes mockery, and how reverence for the unseen fades when the soul grows numb.

First, let us dwell upon the ghosts. For centuries they were the embodiments of the unknown, the restless voices of the dead, the haunting proof that there is more to existence than the eye perceives. To fear a ghost was to acknowledge mystery, to accept that human life was not the measure of all things. Fear, in this sense, was not weakness but humility, reminding us of the vast and hidden order that stretches beyond the grave.

But now, says Lorre, the public laughs. The ghost has become costume, caricature, entertainment. What was once trembling awe is now comedy, what was once reverence is now parody. This change speaks not only to the stage or the screen but to the condition of the human heart: when people no longer fear the unseen, it is not always because they are brave—it may be because they are dulled. Laughter here is not joy but dismissal, a refusal to take mystery seriously.

History itself gives us examples. In the Middle Ages, the dead were honored with prayers and rituals; the spirit world was treated with dread and awe. But in the so-called Age of Enlightenment, reason sought to banish such fears, and the supernatural was scorned as superstition. The same happened with the Greek gods of old: once worshipped with sacrifices, later they were reduced to comedic figures in plays. Reverence decays into humor when belief fades.

The sadness Lorre names, then, is not the loss of fear itself, but the loss of depth. For fear, properly held, keeps the soul alive to mystery. When we laugh too quickly at what is strange, we shield ourselves from wonder. We say, “It cannot touch me,” and in doing so, we close the door to awe. Ghosts, whether real or imagined, represent the parts of life that defy control. To strip them of their power is to pretend the unknown does not exist, and this pretense robs us of humility.

Thus the meaning of his words is a warning: when a culture ceases to fear or respect the unseen, it grows shallow. To laugh at ghosts is to forget the reality of death, to dismiss the mysteries of existence, to blind oneself to the eternal. In trying to make ourselves fearless, we risk making ourselves thoughtless.

So let the lesson be this: do not lose your reverence for mystery. You need not tremble at shadows, but you should not mock them either. Allow yourself to feel awe, to let the unknown remind you of your smallness in the vast design. Take practical steps: read the stories of your ancestors, sit in silence with the mysteries of life and death, and when you encounter tales of the supernatural, do not dismiss them with laughter alone. For as Peter Lorre teaches, there is something sad in a world that has forgotten how to fear—and in forgetting fear, it may also forget wonder.