The Confuser-in-Chief

A spirit, one who has been a spirit longer than I, once said, "it's an eternal truth, that a newly departed spirit that was neither very good nor particularly bad in life, will be wanting a place to haunt." At least that's how I remember it. I don't know what the fellow was getting at, to be honest; it sounded a bit stilted and rehearsed to me. Also, a neither-good-nor-bad recently departed spirit does have a choice about haunting; more on that later.

Being a ghost is nothing like what's portrayed in TV shows and movies and so on. A ghost must create their own fun; otherwise, it can be excruciatingly boring most of the time. To begin with, a ghost is tied to one place: with luck, it's something big, like a hotel, or at least a big, rambling house. Insane asylums, contrary to popular media, are exceedingly rare. A hotel is really the best one can hope for, although those big, rambling houses in the better neighborhoods have mostly been cut up into little apartments, which means the opportunity to peek in on several different people, couples, or even small families. From what I hear from my peers at the annual Southwest Region Resident Spirit Conference, these apartment-dwellers are often younger people with quite interesting lives. 

I, however, am tied for eternity to a small, single-family, single-story tract home somewhere in the desert southwest. Both the adults—Greg and Emma—work, and their son Connor is away at school much of the day, so honestly there's not a lot to do most of the time. 

The spirit I spoke to at the Spirit Career Guidance Center (SCGC) didn't really tell me this when they met with me to give me the choice of becoming a Resident Spirit and haunting a specific location forever, or joining the staff of the Ever After for the Good, the EAG. The staff of the EAG help cater to the ever-changing desires of those deemed good enough to land there. So if you're thinking "staff of EAG more-or-less equals servant," you're quite right.

Perhaps I should explain the classification system. Contrary to what many people think, there are actually three tiers to the Ever After, not two; and forget all that twaddle about reincarnation. 

Those deemed good go to the EAG. There they can experience anything and everything they want. The less imaginative among the Dear Departed do things like travel to exotic locales, which always--always--look exactly as they imagined them, or eat exotic foods that always taste exactly like they thought they would. The more imaginative will opt for less certain outcomes. They may find themselves, for example, in a fiery crash in a Formula One race, or being buried in an avalanche on a replica Alp. The fear is very real, and the pain is too, for about a half second. Then everything re-sets and all is well.

Those deemed bad go to the Telephone Solicitation Chamber, where they are subjected to an endless (and I do mean endless) stream of sales calls, which they must answer. They have to listen to the person (or, increasingly, the bot) at the other end until person/bot is bored enough to end the call. The phone will then ring again immediately. I'm told the most maddening of the calls come from either political campaigns or life insurance salesmen. Talk about gnashing of teeth.

For the large majority of the recently living, who are neither especially good nor particularly bad, the first stop in the Ever After bureaucracy is the SCGC. There one is given the choice of becoming a Resident Spirit or, you know, a servant. The servant gig is tempting; after all, before they left the mortal plane, the residents of the EAG were basically good people. Because of this, most EAG residents tend, by and large, to be reasonably kind to the staff. 

And so, based on the incomplete information I was given, I chose to be a Resident Spirit, better known as a ghost, haunting not a grand building but a modest home with a thirty-year mortgage.

I have not been doing this for very long, by the standards of eternity; it's tricky to track time in the hereafter, but the boy who lives in the house gives me useful clues. When I first began, Connor was fretting about the challenges of fourth grade and hoping he didn't have to sit next to "that Wayne Poophead" (his words) like he did in the third. He's now started middle school--sixth grade--so I've been at it for a bit over three years. (I have every reason to believe Wayne is still a poop head.)

Connor, honestly, makes my chosen eternity much more bearable, sometimes even enjoyable. He's a lively kiddo, and seems to have a fine sense of humor. 

That leads us to something else you might not have expected: my duty as a ghost does not require me to actually frighten people. As it was described to me by the spirit in the SCGC, I am to "just knock them off balance from time to time, make them wobble a bit." 

It's understandable that many ghosts would leap to "scare the crap out of them" as the quickest way to introduce the wobble, and I admit I tried that at first. But in life I was a person who wanted to be liked by other people, and I've carried that with me into my forever career.

To the Benton family, I appear as a yellow-orange haze, but with human (or human-like) features. The preferred shade for ghosts in so much popular media--a greenish hue, reminiscent of slime or mold--is one of the many things they've gotten wrong. The exact shade depends, believe it or not, on the temperature. The cooler it is, the more orange; the intensity is also dialed up. This is the desert, so in summer, even with the air conditioner running, the house stays fairly warm, and I shift to a much paler, more yellow appearance.

I began my "haunting" career with Emma. I chose to ooze out of a wall behind her in the bathroom, so she'd see me in the mirror. I made some moaning noises I thought ghosts might make, and elongated my mouth grotesquely. It worked, in that it did knock poor Emma for a loop. She screamed and dropped her hair dryer in the sink, which gave the electric circuit protector a nice real-world test. I also caught sight of myself, and I didn't like what I saw. I didn't frighten myself, to be clear, but while I was alive I took some pride in my appearance, and the creature I saw in the mirror looked so misshapen that I was taken aback.

After a few more scares, I decided to take a different tack. I've refined my technique over the last few years; I now like to think of myself as "the Confuser-in-Chief of 1013 West Mesquite Lane."

One of my first big successes with my new approach was with Greg. I chose the bathroom again, but this time I extruded out of the ceiling, head-first, smiling broadly. He jumped; I formed my hands into a heart shape--thumbs together, fingertips curled and pressed fingernail to fingernail--and blew him a kiss for good measure. He yelped and went pale, but mostly seemed embarrassed. I realized I was onto something.

The next day I squeezed inside the dishwasher. When Emma opened it, I pretended to scrub under my arms. "Little privacy, please? A gentleman's in the shower here," I said, or at least attempted to say. I'm not quite sure how it came out--forming actual words can be tricky for a vaporous apparition--and I don't think she heard the whole thing anyway. She slammed the dishwasher closed; when she reopened it a moment later, I had vapored myself somewhere else. I call this the "shock and flee" approach; variations on the theme are endless.

I tried various things with Connor, but after an initial startle, he just rolled his eyes and walked away. In desperation, I decided to flip our roles: when he came out of his room into the hall and saw me, I jumped, screeched, and ran frantically, arms pinwheeling, to the other end of the hall. Rather than simply passing through the wall, I pretended to thump into it, bounce back, and roll to the floor.

Connor was delighted. He hooted with laughter and gave me the ultimate compliment: "AWESOME!"

And so it's gone for the last few years. The challenge now is to innovate; I can't have them get used to me and my goofy stunts. That's what keeps it interesting: the need to constantly produce new, novel bits of kookiness. Maybe if I let them catch me spooning up Thanksgiving gravy and eating it like soup...