Our denial and patience have reached their limit. We must do something about the ghosts.
Postings on them have gone through the roof. It’s a nationwide thing, like anxious, depressed kids. In many cases, they first manifested to children, and were written off as symptoms of anxiety and depression. More drugs were prescribed. But they turned out to be deficient at ghost blocking.
Who knew that so many were dying with unresolved issues serious enough to keep them hanging around? Some are pathetic, like the ones still stewing over a prom snub. More often it’s about money. A cousin who felt cheated out of an inheritance makes the rounds scooping up loose change into a coffee can. The jangle can be more annoying than scary at 3 a.m.
Much as you try, some of their behaviors are hard to ignore. Maybe they lick the bacon, or scratch all the boxes on your lotto tickets, or spook the dog, having gotten good at vacuum-cleaner sounds.
If you know who it is, you can leave a bribe on their grave. Ghosts get hungry, right? Who wouldn’t enjoy chicken nuggets and a smoothie after time underground? Or perhaps all they want is an apology. Sorry my success highlighted your failures. I never asked to be Mom’s favorite.
Not all hauntings are so obvious though. That’s when we dust off the Ouija board and place nervous fingers on the planchette.
“What have we got so far?”
“MYFFWRL CWYLLA DRNDL.”
“Is that Welsh?”
“No, this spectral asshole is just screwin’ with us.”
In the movies a plucky, marginal team from the local college hauls in equipment to measure temperature drops and identify garbled noises on the baby monitor. An actual ghost profiler smiles at such hocus pocus. “Your revenant is a classic case of fury over a rejected insurance claim, aggravated by a bad experience at keno.”
A spirit genealogist, on the other hand, will want to sample the ectoplasm on that bacon and cross-reference it with DNA databases. Proprietary algorithms allow translation between genetic and apparitional markers. A ghost that can be dealt with by name and life history is a ghost at a disadvantage.
Child phantoms are usually harmless. Not understanding that they have passed on, they simply search for playmates. Sidney M, however, who fell down and broke his crown pogoing, tried to lure unsuspecting tykes into the horse pond.
A high grudge quotient explains much recent activity. Social critics may point to heaped injustice to account for all the street ghosts that can be hard to distinguish from the homeless and transient. “Move along,” we want to say, “and don’t blame us that life seemed such a swindle.” Wraiths and panhandlers alike give the willies.
The ones that really creep us out just stand staring on the lawn or at the curb. Of course they’ve vanished by the time the cops arrive. Yeah, we’ve carved a share of domestic comfort out of an uncomfortable world. So sue us.
You can’t bargain with these things en masse the way you can with a pigheaded trade union. Ghosts are free agents, and it’s up to you to figure out their weird, aggrieved ghost logic one haunting at a time. And don’t fool yourself: you can’t round them up and dump them down a volcano crater, or somehow designate a salt flat or bayou an approved ghost landfill.
If worse comes to worst, we may have to reconcile ourselves to living with these phantom squatters for the foreseeable future. The prize goes to those who can adapt. In the natural ebb and flow of things, many of them may eventually grow bored with this realm and drift toward the light. Sick as we are of being their psychic baggage handlers, maybe we can dig down and wish them some peace, however much we might prefer a moth’s fate for them.
James Fowler has published a volume of short stories, Field Trip (Cornerpost Press, 2022). His short fiction has appeared in such journals as Caesura, Jokes Review, Aji Magazine, Gambling
the Aisle, DASH, Southern Review, Elder Mountain, and Cave Region Review.
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