My guess is that ghosts require a higher level of sentience to stay among the living. Or maybe the ghost dead have a bit more narcissism than the rest of the departed dead. To die and to choose the half-existence between worlds is to fail to imagine an Earth that could go on successfully without you.
I transferred trains in Chicago — the Capitol Limited to the Northeast Regional. I had a new iPad in my backpack courtesy of the attempted sexual assault settlement. I had the latest iPhone in my pocket, courtesy of Mama. She told me to call her every night. I negotiated until I convinced her texting would make my money last longer. Mostly, I just stared out of my window and watched the country roll by.
Lesson 20: if you, like me, see the dead, you’ll wonder why Fate chose you to see things you shouldn’t. Did you fall out of bed one night and hit your head on the floor hard enough to flick a switch? Or maybe you picture something more Disney, like a curse by an evil witch.
My advice is to follow Mr. Chang’s advice. Don’t worry about what you can’t control. At first, getting haunted always feels like a curse. How could it not? We’re told how the world works and then one day we discover there’s much more going on than we thought.
Worse? The dead are bothersome. They have no boundaries. They’ll interrupt you at any time, day or night, to plague you with explicit visions and cryptic messages. Also, they stare a lot, which is both rude and off-putting.
For reasons unknown (perhaps most of them are damned) it’s hard for many of them to communicate with us. They rarely seem to talk to each other much or maybe they aren’t even aware of each other. Maybe that’s more ghost narcissism.
Sometimes it seems to me it’s as if they’re shouting across too wide a chasm to reach us with desperate messages. Most of what I hear from the dead comes in short, emotion-laden bursts: word pictures, an ominous feeling, longing looks. Occasionally you will run into dead people who can speak plainly, which is always interesting…at first. Typically, they ruin it by not knowing when to shut up. Ghosts walk among us all day and night, after all. (The dead do not sleep and there’s a good chance one of them is looking over your shoulder, reading these words right now.) After being ignored by the Normies for so long, it’s natural, given the chance to gab, they tend to spew.
(If you are a ghost reading this, sorry, no offense meant. Don’t play with the lights or mess with the reader after the lights go out, please. I’m just saying.)
My point is, the dead need therapy and if they sense you can hear them, they choose you without any care for your personal life. Sometimes my life feels like I’m trying to watch my favorite television show and ghosts are toddlers running in front of the screen, trying to get my attention.
Which brings us to Lesson 21. It’s an important one. People who see the dead have all seen The Sixth Sense. If we had meetings and formed a union, our motto would be, “Yes, I see dead people. Now leave me alone!” What the kid in the movie didn’t get is that you can’t unsee dead people, but you can pretend they aren’t there. I recommend you ignore them as much as possible.
When you think about it, our world is built on pretend and make believe. Human rights is something we made up. Human rights aren’t real — life’s not fair, remember — but we do try to live by those make believe rules. We pretend our votes count. We pretend the dead couldn’t possibly be standing behind us, peering over our shoulders, reading along with you as you flip through this manual.
I didn’t get this at first. Sometimes a ghostly presence is so close and strong, you can’t help but react to them. That’s when they know they have you. Acknowledging their existence seems to make most of them think you owe them something. Therefore, if you want to be left alone by the dead, do your best to go on doing what you did before you got the power. Look busy and focused as if the boss is breezing through the office.
Lesson 22: you won’t always be able to pretend they aren’t there. Everybody wants something and the dead are no exception. What do the dead want? They want what everyone wants. They want attention. The ones who manage to work themselves up so much that they can throw things around and rearrange the furniture? That’s a temper tantrum from somebody who’s tired of being ignored. If you even glance a ghost’s way and they sense a glimmer of recognition, they can really be a pain in the ass.
Which brings up Lesson 23, I guess. We better delve deeper into how to avoid misty wistfuls. (That’s what some of us non-Normies call ghosts: the Misty Wistfuls. Poetic, huh? I can play classical piano, but if I had a little indie coffeehouse band, I’d call it the Misty Wistfuls.)
You know all those stories of poltergeists you hear about, typically around Halloween? Late October is the one time of the year when a lot of stories suddenly surface in the media about ghosts and goblins. FYI: To my knowledge, though I thought they were wonderfully creepy in the Harry Potter books, there is no such thing as a goblin. There are many horrors waiting to be discovered between living monsters and the dead (but not quite gone) but you can scratch goblins off your list of things to be terrified about.
Anyway, each October the media report all the occult stories they ignore the rest of the year. Make no mistake: those scary and weird stories you only hear about around Halloween are going on throughout the year, everywhere, all the time. Haunted houses are big with media and loom large in our imaginations. There’s at least one house in every town everyone knows is haunted. There’s a lot more than one, actually. Those reporters giggling about the plight of the trapped dead have no idea how many haunted houses there really are.
Lesson 23 A: if you don’t want to live in a haunted house, get the ground blessed, build new and not over an old Indian burial ground. If a contractor doesn’t have a heart attack on the premises while he’s hammering nails or putting in the wiring, you’re probably fine, at least for a while.
Lesson 23 B: if you don’t want to live in a haunted house, don’t die in your house.
Many states require that realtors disclose to potential buyers a house was a murder scene. What people don’t know is that some states require full disclosure if the house for sale is haunted, as well. That’s for real. Isn’t it crazy that the rest of the year we act like paranormal, supernormal or supernatural stuff — whatever you want to call it — is only for loony people with no life skills trying to sell you something?
Remember Lesson 13? Denial. Civilization lives and breathes as it does because of the power of denial. No one can explain ghostly phenomena, but anyone, even your closest friends and family, will be eager to try to explain it away. Reality is too scary.
Lesson 24: sometimes you won’t be able to tell the difference between what’s accepted as common reality and the Unseen. You’ll worry that you really are crazy. You aren’t, so don’t let that worry drive you insane.
Radio waves were always with us. The burst of the Big Bang left radio static that washes over earth forever. While cave people wandered around chasing food and tried to figure out fire, radio waves were filling the air. Somebody had to build a radio receiver to catch that static for the first time.
That’s what the Unseen is. Someday we’ll figure out a lens to look through so anybody and everybody can see the world as you and I do. (I’m assuming that, if you’re reading this, you probably already see the dead. If not, you can continue to pretend it’s a work of fiction if that makes you feel better.)
Or perhaps you’re waiting for some kind of lens to be built so you’ll see the dead, too. Then this book will be more useful to you as a manual. (Things are much more twisted than simply worrying about the dead wandering around, but I’ll get to that soon.)
When you can see the Unseen, you’ll want to look away. There are good reasons why the Powers That Be do not want everybody reminded how close death is all the time. The Powers That Be also have terrible reasons to hide the truth from us.
Lesson 25: No matter what, everyone afflicted with the sight thinks it’s the worst thing that could ever happen to them. You’d have to be a maniac to th
ink seeing the dead every day everywhere is a happy thing. There’s too much sadness and yearning among the dead. They aren’t optimistic about the future because all they’re really doing is looking at the past. If you like seeing all that naked need too much, get help. There’s an excellent chance you’re a killer robot sociopath.
On the other hand, over time and as you get used to it, it’s not all bad, either. What first feels like a terrible curse may eventually soften to a rotten annoyance (if you study these lessons and apply them.) You may even change enough to look on your power as a gift. Probably not, but maybe.
Or maybe I’m just a killer robot sociopath.
9
I awoke as the train rolled into New York, headed for Penn Station. I was as excited and nervous as you’d expect so I texted Mama to let her know her little girl was about to step off the train in the Big Apple. You can always tell when a rube hits NYC. They’re always looking up and they call it, “The Big Apple.” I was no exception.
I wasn’t prepared for the crush of people. Anywhere in Iowa, if you want to go somewhere, you can do it by walking in a straight line. You can stroll as slowly as you like. In New York, the sidewalk is for brisk paces and weaving around people. I was weaving around people, the living and the dead.
We’ve already covered ignoring them. Conveniently, that’s what you’re supposed to do with live people in the city, too. In small towns across America, the locals will think you’re stuck up if you don’t smile and say hello as you meet. In really small towns like Medicament, it’s bad manners to refuse to wave at passing cars. In NYC, ghost or not, avoid eye contact. The fear is the living will ask you for money or hit on you. The dead might tell you their life stories. Sometimes they have a problem they expect you to fix. Mostly they just stare, hoping for a sympathetic eye. Sometimes they follow you home.
I fell into seeing ghosts. I wasn’t on some kind of quest. I fixed Petra’s problem because I didn’t have a choice. What happened at Shibboleth wasn’t heroics. I was just trying to avoid being another of Moorely’s victims.
The job of ghost detective doesn’t pay so it’s more of a hobby than a part-time job.
But what happens if you fail to avoid a ghost? At some point, by accident or on purpose, you’re going to walk through one. Lesson 26 is about personal boundaries: keep your shields up and avoid close contact if you can.
My first time was by accident. I bumped into a couple of people in my first few minutes in New York. I didn’t know the rhythm of city sidewalks yet. I was used to more space around me. Around Penn Station, at least, people are always in a hurry, squeezing between others and, failing that, sometimes even shouldering people aside.
I got shoved into somebody. Or, rather, through somebody. He was a large African American man looking down the street, hand raised, trying to hail a cab. I didn’t get what happened at first. I just felt cold. The words, “bone chill” come to mind.
Stumbling through a person is, as you might expect, surprising. It’s also confusing and, for a moment, I felt a stab of a headache. My stomach felt bloated and I had pain over my kidneys as if someone punched me there with two heavy fists. I stopped breathing for a moment. As soon as I was on the other side of the big man, I coughed and sputtered and spit.
I looked up at him. He smiled down at me. Then he stepped into the street and threw himself in front of a speeding cab.
I shrieked but the cab moved on. The driver remained oblivious and undisturbed. The streaming crowd spared me a look of surprise and annoyance. I won’t say shock. Nothing seems to shock New Yorkers. When they encounter anything horrific or unnatural, they tend to shrug and say, “It’s New York. Anything can happen here.” And it does.
I blinked and the big man was standing at the curb again. He looked at me and smiled wider. I stood there shaking and listened to my pulse pound in my ears as he peered down the street. Then he threw himself in front of the next cab that drove past.
Some suicides are just sad people hoping for an audience. I was annoyed with the man’s exhibitionism at first. Then, as I rubbed my kidneys and gritted my teeth against the last throb of the headache, I realized he’d been a dying man in a lot of pain. His name was Johnny. I’d received a quick pulse of the disease he had endured every day and night. No wonder he killed himself. And now, for some reason I could not fathom, he seemed condemned to repeat his suicide as fast as New York could supply Yellow Cabs.
For ten bucks, I once asked a medium on Coney Island for her take on the ghosts of suicide. (Be careful whom you tell the truth to, for obvious reasons. See Lessons 1 through 4. There are other reasons not to ask, too. See below.)
Mistress Sasha (not Mr. Chang’s daughter Sasha) was an older woman who worked as a Coney Island medium. She informed me that, in her spiritualist tradition, “suicide is an affront to God.” She told me in confident tones that the successful suicide is condemned to spend the rest of the time that would have been their lifespan, “awake and regretting their choice.” Mistress Sasha said. “ Life is a gift. Reject a gift from God at your peril.”
My gaze lingered over the scooped gold lame dress that pushed her boobs up and out. Across that shelf of flesh was a display of various crystals and totems, each hanging from a separate necklace. A small, white price tag was attached to each of those necklaces. Several gold chains spilled into the cavern of her cleavage. It occurred to me I was seeking serious advice from someone whose fashion tips would be hideous. “What do you mean by ‘awake and regretting?’”
“They get buried,” Mistress Sasha said. “Suppose you kill yourself at twenty and you were meant to die at eighty. That’s sixty years, rotting in a pine box and thinking about the worms swimming through you before you’re allowed to progress to the next evolution.”
“The what?”
“Reincarnation. You get to try again.”
“After all that torment, why would you want to come back?”
Mistress Sasha shrugged and offered to continue chatting with me for another ten dollars. Since what she had to say didn’t reflect anything I’d seen, I thanked her for her time. As I stood to go, she pressed a homemade business card into my hand. One side advertised her clairvoyant services. The other side of the card pushed her dog walking service.
“Call me,” Mistress Sasha said. “I’ll be your personal suicide hotline, honey. I only charge $2.99 a minute.”
I couldn’t take Mistress Sasha seriously. Petra had been trapped at the hospital after she committed suicide, but I felt far too close to her to think she deserved any more punishment. As for the man in the street by Penn Station, he’d been in too much pain to deny him relief from suicide. But I don’t know why the man who threw himself under the cab did so after death. I can tell you all sorts of things about what to expect when you’re alive. But motivations? That’s not always clear.
I looked up the neuroscience of motivations once. According to the leading minds in leading minds, no one really knows their true motivation to do anything. If you’re hungry, you eat, sure. But what cascade of chemicals leads someone to dream of becoming a quantity surveyor, dermatologist or cost accountant? Motivation needs a capital M for Mystery. Many neuroscientists think everything is, by some process we don’t understand, determined before we actually have a cogent thought. Put simply, we do things. It’s not logical. It’s pre-logical. After we do something, that’s when we come up with the rationalization of our choice (if you can call that a choice at all.)
If the neurologists are right, then this life is a play and our roles are already set and there is no free will. We’re just actors, reading someone else’s lines. That sounds kind of hopeless and lacks room for improvisation and joy, doesn’t it?
That’s why I decided my motivation is to try to make life and death better for the living and the dead. At least, I think that’s my motivation.
Lesson 27: Charlatans are of no help, but science may one day answer all our questions about life and the afterlife. Until then, no scientis
t will take questions and problems surrounding our ghost world seriously enough to be useful. They just give you a smug laugh and act like dicks about it.
While we’re waiting for an intelligent, sincere and better dressed medium to stand up and lead us forward with deeper answers, we’ll have to get comfortable with ambiguity.
I threw Madame Sasha’s business card away. Lesson 28: Don’t trust advice from people who say they can see the future but dress like a billboard for New Age knick knacks. A real medium would get rich off the stock market and betting on the Super Bowl.
Think you’re a real medium for the spirit world? To test your skills and sensitivity, go down to Penn Station at the Southeast corner of 33rd and 8th. Day or night, Johnny’s still there, throwing himself under every Yellow Cab that comes along.
10
Lesson 29: Ghosts are often, but not always, tied to a place. Johnny doesn’t budge from 33rd and 8th, for instance. Petra was stuck in Shibboleth Mental Hospital, apparently incapable of taking a walk outside to enjoy the sights of Mason City, Iowa. Brad stood his watch in Medicament, outside in the grass or under the tree in my backyard. I never once saw him go inside his family’s farmhouse.
Ghosts work by rules, but no one really knows what those rules are. Each phantom is an individual. However, it seems that many souls are tied to place by the trauma of death. Therefore, wherever you end up dying, plan carefully, just in case. For instance, I’d choose to be murdered in a place with a nice view. If you go ghost, no one knows how long you’re going to stand around, haunting.
If it comes to that, maybe I’ll watch the end of the world from the spire of the Freedom Tower or from an observation portal on the International Space Station. It might take some doing to arrange that, of course.
The Haunting Lessons: 1, 2, 3, 4, I Declare a Demon War (The Ghosts & Demons Series) Page 5
