If the WIB was evil, how did she enter the church?
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — The Woman in Black
deimos-13 — 10 years ago(October 05, 2015 11:47 AM)
I often wondered this, the ghost was obviously evil and yet, she was able to be in the church for the funeral
You'd think given that it was/is hallowed ground/property, she wouldn't be able to get in there lol -
the_holy_ferret-126-91027 — 10 years ago(October 30, 2015 08:41 AM)
That particular rule you reference is present in a lot of the lore around all kinds of evils, post-Christendom. But the mechanics of The Woman In Black are never disclosed in the film, story, or play. The only rule that is set in stone is the one about the children dying, but there's nothing in the narrative to suggest she can't enter churches. Medieval European ghostlore would have us believe that she could have been dispelled simply by askin' 'what you up to then?' and then being told to 'go back to hell in the name of yadda yadda yadda'. Our lady in question though doesn't appear to have much care for the clergy! She definately has human motivation, rather than demonic, for example, but the rules that govern her must remain purely matter of speculation.
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deimos-13 — 10 years ago(October 30, 2015 09:22 AM)
Very true
Although, wouldn't there be no children at all in the village at this point?
I mean that group of 4? children saw her in the cemetary, the vicar guy must've noticed her when doing his preaching
So that's like 5 people already lol -
the_holy_ferret-126-91027 — 10 years ago(November 05, 2015 07:00 AM)
Logically yes! She would eventually have wiped out everyone under the age of whatever constituted a child in the early twentieth century I guess! Even if the curse didn't get them, parents would probably take them away somewhere I imagine. In which case they're still no longer in the village. On the other hand, knowing her malicious nature, it may be that she chooses to wreak her vengeance only every now and again. Just enough to instill fear in people, but long enough so that some forget about her, or write it all off as superstition. The story seems to suggests she's a fairly calculating ghost, and I can imagine she'd take pleasure in killing people off when they least expected it.
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combatreview — 10 years ago(December 29, 2015 01:32 PM)
It sounds like you may be conflating things with the feature film, where any child who sees the woman kills themselves. The book, the play, and this TV movie don't have that device - instead the ghost's manifestations are extremely occasional and they herald the sudden death of a single child. So it wouldn't be quite so thorough and destructive as to wipe the village out.
However, the feature film does show the ghost as being much more systematic and complete in her wrath, and the sequel shows the village as having pretty much died out through lack of children -
DreTam2000 — 9 years ago(September 08, 2016 04:50 PM)
Within the context of this story, we don't even know if churches or religions have any power. Just because the ghostly entity in this film exists, it doesn't mean that some God or higher power does. A church is just a building.
It's sort of like
Poltergeist
or
The Exorcist
, where religion is implied as obsolete or irrelevant (in the case of the former), or approached as indifferent or even ambiguously ineffective from one to the next (in the case of the latter, which begins in Iraq with the Islamic holy prayer for a reason, and ends with a Catholic exorcism that doesn't work).
I'm not a control freak, I just like things my way -
Mr_Ectoplasma — 10 years ago(December 10, 2015 09:23 AM)
The assumption that she wouldn't be able to enter the church doesn't really have any basis for being made in regard to the story; I don't think it's ever communicated that she is a demonic, burst-into-flames sort of entity, so I never even questioned it. I'm really into the supernatural and have read a lot about haunted places in the world, and many of them in fact are churches and cathedrals.