I don’t believe in ghosts. Not really. I don’t think.
Maybe I do.
More and more lately, I’ve been running into people who speak of ghosts as a simple fact of life. They are things to be tolerated or endured, like crab grass or indigestion. Some people enjoy their ghosts and welcome the specters as unexpected visitors. Others are wary and take pains to rid their homes of the floating groaners as if it were a mere flea or mold infestation.
“Elwood and I are really enjoying our new house,” a woman wrote on Facebook. “We’ll need a new roof soon and there’s the ghost of a little boy roaming the second floor, but overall it’s quite cozy.”
Seconds later, friends of the haunted woman weighed in with suggestions on the care and feeding of a household ghost. Several passed along their own experiences with visitors from the other side.
My dead mom sometimes turns the hall light on for me while I sleep.
I’ve got an entire ghost family living in my attic.
My ghost sometimes rearranges my furniture and, gosh, what decorating style he has.
My ghost smokes a cigar. I’m trying to help him quit.
In my social circle, I suspect there are more who believe in ghosts than those who don’t. And it’s not just belief, but a prosaic certainty. These people accept that there will be black flies in springtime, hot nights in summer and the occasional ghost making the floorboards creek and groan in the darkest hours of night.
“I’m positively dragging today,” I once heard a friend remark. “My ghost kept me up all night.”
I’m not one to scoff. My mind is as open as a fresh-dug grave, and as deep and dark, too. It’s just that I’ve never had the experience, and damn if it doesn’t bother me now and then.
Is there something wrong with me? Am I somehow repellent to ghosts? Is it my personal hygiene or something I said?
When I was a boy and my father had died, I wondered — in the not-quite-focused way of a child — if he might come back some night, an ethereal presence hovering at my bedside, perhaps wearing his postal uniform and carrying a bag of ghost candy.
I would later wonder the same thing about my oldest brother and about the handful of friends who passed in between.
No shows, the lot of them.
I’ve stayed in a fair share of homes where violent deaths had occurred. At night, with shadows creeping across walls, I’d think: Oh, geesh, Oh, gosh, Oh, golly. I hope an angry ghost doesn’t come to my room in the night with its cold breath and endless quest for retribution. Then morning would come and I’d awake to sunshine and I’d think: Hey! What gives? Where are all the ghosts at? I’m pretty sure I paid for ghosts.
The ghost lovers among you will surely opine that I’m simply not open to the presence of ghosts. Some of you have it, some of us don’t and that is that. And ultimately, that’s just fine by me, because when I stay at a Motel 6, I don’t want to be visited by the hooker who overdosed in that very room a year before. When I visit a cemetery, for one reason or another, I don’t want the dearly departed rising up from their graves to follow me through my day and watching all the weird stuff I do when I think I’m alone.
Ghosts? No thank you. I may be allergic.
Only, I may have changed my mind about that.
Last week, I had the misfortune of burying a cat that had been with me seemingly forever. (If we didn’t bury our dead for practical reasons, we’d do it for the therapeutic benefits. Nothing clears your mind like attacking the hard ground with a pick and shovel.) As I stared down at the top of the box, down so deep within that cold, dark hole, I found myself hoping — in a vague and undramatic way — that the cat might someday come back.
I’m not talking about some screeching Stephen King hellcat bent on murder. I’m talking about maybe just the soft dance of paws across the foot of my bed from time to time, or a faint brush against my legs while I’m gazing at myself in the bathroom mirror. Maybe just a soft mew in the night, or a ball of yarn battered across the floor with furry ghost paws.
Does it work that way, though? Are you allowed to formally request what kind of ghost you get? Probably not. The story of Jesus calling Lazarus forth comes to mind, but so does the hapless couple with the monkey’s paw getting exactly what they wished for.
Who needs it, man? I’d love to see my cat again, but if I go ahead and wish for it, how do I know all those other long-lost pets won’t rise from their graves decades after I’d put them there?
None for me, thanks. I’m OK with my ghost-free lifestyle. If you want to spend your life riddled with ghouls, I fully support your decision and would happily spend a night getting acquainted with your favorite haunt.
Unless you’re serving lasagna, that is. That stuff gives me indigestion.
Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. Email cat condolences and ghost-raising spells to mlaflamme@sunjournal.com.
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