She retained evident traces of her erstwhile vocation that would strongly influence the mature Ghelderode's dramatic work: One of Mme Martens's remembered "spiritual tales," concerning a child mistakenly buried alive who remained strangely marked by death even after her rescue, inspired most of the plot and characters of Ghelderode's Mademoiselle Jaire (1934) written when the author was in his mid-thirties.

Frequently suffering from poor health, around the age of sixteen, while pursuing his studies at the Institut St.-Louis in Brussels, he fell gravely ill with typhus.

[7] Ghelderode, who was born in Flanders, expressed a great appreciation for Flemish folk traditions and culture, which permeates his plays and stories.

His play The Blind Men (Les Aveugles, 1933) is derived from Brueghel's The Parable of the Blind, The Magpie on the Gallows (La Pie sur le Gibet, 1935) is derived from Breughel's The Merry Way to the Gallows, and The Strange Rider (Le Cavalier Bizarre, 1920) is not based on a particular painting, but, as the preface states, it is inspired by Breugel.

[10] A prolific writer, Ghelderode wrote more than 60 plays, a hundred stories, a number of articles on art and folklore and more than 20,000 letters.

Ghelderode began staging plays again in 1925, working with the Dutch producer Johan de Meester, a collaboration which lasted until 1930.

He wrote Pantagleize (1929) expressly for the Flemish comedian Renaat Verheyen, who died aged twenty-six, shortly after appearing in the title role.

Between 1946 and 1953 he wrote for Le Journal de Bruges.In Paris during 1949, productions of Ghederode's plays, especially Fastes d'enfer (Chronicles of Hell), caused huge uproar.

[11] Ghelderode is the creator of a fantastic and disturbing, often macabre, grotesque and cruel world filled with mannequins, puppets, devils, masks, skeletons, religious paraphernalia, and mysterious old women.

According to Oscar G. Brockett, Ghelderode's works resemble those of Alfred Jarry, the surrealists and the expressionists, and his theories are similar to those of Antonin Artaud.

"Corruption, death and cruelty are always near the surface [of Ghelderode's work], although behind them lurks an implied criticism of degradation and materialism and a call to repentance.

"[12] Ghelderode was one of the first dramatists to exploit the idea of total theatre—that is, drama in which every sort of appeal is made to the eye, the ear, and the emotions in order to stir the intellect.

Writing in October 1957 on the occasion of the first of his plays to be seen publicly in England, Ghelderode declared – The moral of this sad story – and the story of man is always sad, absurd, and void of meaning, as Shakespeare wrote – it is that in our atomic and auto-disintegrated age, this age from which dreams and dreamers are banished in favor of the scientific nightmare and the beneficiaries of the future horror, a fellow like Pantagleize remains an archetype, an exemplary man and a fine example who has nothing to do with that dangerous thing, intelligence, and a great deal to do with that savior, instinct.