A strange walk...

Yesterday upon the stair

I saw a man who wasn’t there.


He wasn’t there again today

Oh how I wish he’d go away.

Lately I've been thinking about ghosts and ghost stories. I've been thinking about they are found in every culture around our planet. Admittedly, I've always had an interesting in that particular aspect of the super natural (and through this particular entry, I hope to explore that fascination a bit more).

One of my first memories of Junior High, I was exploring the school library and I was thrilled to find the Time Life series on the enchanted world hiding there. Well, not so much as hiding, but being displayed a bit early with Halloween coming up. I was also thrilled because the commercials for that series were airing on television quite a bit at the time. So, that started me on the path of showing up for school early to get into the library as early as possible to pick up one of the slick looking books (and to get one of the comfortable seats). By the way, this showing up early would turn in to a life long habit of arriving at events and meetings early. It started to aide me in helping me focus on the up-coming event/meeting and day. Nowadays, I even show up to work early to grab breakfast and read. Some people would call that a sickness, but I find it a helpful routine to sort out some of the details of the day in my head.

It was toss up between ghosts and vampires as to which of the two topics help my rapt more often. Over time, ghosts won out. They seem more real to me, then and now. While I won't dismiss the possibility of other super natural beasties roam the landscape, my experiences have lead me to put more faith in ghosts than others most of the time. Most of the time.

One of the reasons that ghosts appeal to me is that they just seem natural.

We know that death is a part of life. And no matter what one thinks of death, we know that happens. What happens after death, well... that fuels a lot of versions of spirituality (and religion). At this point, I should clarify that by using the term ghost, I refer to supernatural entities that are not defined as demons, angels or other monsters. Doppelgaengers, phantasms, spooks, wraiths, lost souls... those can be included in my broad strokes of the usage ghost.

I should also point out, that I figure that ghosts and the haunting that they do, are not always malicious in their intent. I think they can be confused as to their surroundings and as a part of that, they doing things that are not always in line with our normal day to day lives. However, given that we are also beasts of many faces and attitudes, ghosts can reflect almost any temperament we can achieve.

I'm also not sure that I consider ghosts to be scary. The situations that we encounter them in definitely influence our psychology and our interpretation of what's going on, but I'm not sure that they themselves are scary. This could just be the way I "see" them. Or, don't see them. I tend to feel something different in the area and do a quick series of tests to figure out what I'm feeling. Ghosts tend to be the most responsive/communicative. I have experiences sudden and localized drops in temperature and I've "heard" voices that could not be explained away by the people around me (or the location I was in). After that, my personal experiences dwindle. I'm fairly convinced that we can record ghost voices (EVP), but the samples I've heard that I believe were of other origin are rare. Our brains are very good at finding patterns in chaos. We also like to label stuff to make ourselves feel comfortable in the world.

Okay, so what is a ghost?

As per my exclusions above, I believe that ghosts were once living people (and animals ... no soul discussions are necessary for me). Living people who are dead and who are now "living" on Earth. They can wander from location to location or be grounded/tied to once specific place. More often than not, are tied to a place they are "comfortable" with. What do ghosts do? They usually have a routine that they get into, but strangely enough, they also react to what's going on around them. It doesn't usually alter their routine, but it their reactions usually more of mood swing. Tied to a habit and when some outsider tries to mess with them, they can be put off. I'm sure you readers can relate.

Why have ghosts been on my mind recently? I'm still not too sure. Maybe it's me trying to go back to comfortable topics as I deal with other changes. Maybe.

Ghost resources that I would recommend. Hans Holzer has kept my attention throughout the years. Sometimes a bit too detached when he recounts his own experiences. The Most Haunted team has intriguing to watch (even if some of the cast are more excitable than others and their success record is suspect).

I haven't really read much on the web about ghosts. Mainly, due to the lack of finding credible people to read. I might be skeptical about an individual account, but if I cannot put even the smallest amount of trust in whomever is telling the story, I'll have a tough time getting through even the smallest of stories.

Speaking of stories, I lean towards reading the non-fiction ghost accounts rather than ghost horror stories. Generally, I don't like horror anything anyways... so that kind of drives a nail into that genre for me. I have recently enjoyed some short ghost stories by Joe Hill, so maybe there's hope still.

I think that's enough for tonight. Tune in next week.

Oh, if you're wondering about the first lines in this post. It's from the poem Antigonish by Hughes Mearns, one of the few poems that is almost constantly in my consciousness.

Sleep tight.