A Ghost's "Life"

A Ghost’s “Life”

Being a ghost sucks.

It isn’t just the being dead part. Sure, that isn’t great, but lots of other creatures of the night have this problem as well. Vampires are dead. So are zombies. Werewolves all wish they were dead (the curse of killing seems to be a bit too much for them -we call it werewolf angst). Certainly the Frankenstein monster isn’t alive. I mean, he was sewn together from dead body parts. You don’t get any more dead than that. Being dead just goes with the brand.

What really sucks is that I can’t do… well… anything. I don’t get to chase scared kids. There’s no growling and gnashing of teeth to petrify a weary camper. No pouncing from around a corner at a naive girl. Not even the ability to raise the hair on the back of your neck. I have no ability to interact with anyone at any level.

No, I just spend my day floating around. Observing. I can’t touch anything. I can’t make any noise. Forget what you hear and see in those ghost stories and movies, there’s no “things that go bump in the night” for me. Anyone that tells you we have the ability to make things fall off shelves, or make you feel a chill…that’s all hogwash. Want real proof? Just watch the show Ghost Hunters. At the end of every show it’s the same thing. They find…nothing. I know for a fact that they’ve been to actual haunted places. Why? Because I was there! But they didn’t pick up anything. No EMP. No change in the temperature. No mysterious sounds. No chains, rattles or moans. Just a blank screen and decreased TV ratings.

Don’t even get me started on the movie Ghost. It made a lot of us ghosts think that if we tried hard enough, we’d actually be able to get something to move. Apply enough brainpower and you can get that penny to slide across the floor. Open a door. Maybe kick a soccer ball. A way to let someone know you are there. But guess what? It doesn’t work. I’ve tried it over and over and end up with the same results every time. Nada.

The movie was almost right on one thing - the talking “through” a medium bit - but not in the way you might think. Only this: they’re all fake. I guess maybe there might be that one human out there that is able to hear us, but that “hope” is what leads many ghosts to hang around in one place for years. We’ll head around the city and try and find the “speaker to the afterlife” only to sit in front of them screaming “here I am!!!” They don’t even blink. Liars. Cheats. Fakes. All of them.

So why am I even sharing this with you? Of course, I don’t even know who “you” are. Probably just a figment of my imagination at this point, but I have to talk to somebody. Why? Because I’m losing my mind and think I’m ready to move on. Like I noted earlier, I, like my contemporaries, have been hanging around this old house for too long, hoping to be seen or heard. I’m not really sure why anymore. What would I even have to say at this point? My parents have moved on (probably ghosts themselves, but I’m not sure since they aren’t here) and my kids are out of the house as well (as best I can remember, I had two). Time works funny here so I’m not sure exactly how long it has been, but I assume they’re at least in college. Now that I think of it though, I’m not sure how old they were when I “left” that plane of existence.

So that leaves my wife. I think I had a wife. If I had kids, that would make sense. I’m pretty sure she’s still alive, but I haven’t seen her in the house lately. In fact, I haven’t seen anyone in the house at all. It is dark and empty all the time. And that means she can’t be here because when she was around, that woman left no light unpowered. I swear we had a constant fight with the light switches. I guess I won. Sitting here in the dark. Every now and then a light will peak through the shades, and I’ll note dust floating in the air. I try to move through it, to stir it in some way, with no luck. I’m alone here.

So yeah, this sucks and I’m tired of sitting around in the dark waiting for nothing to happen. When I first got here I thought “oh, this will be cool.” I loved scary ghost stories as a kid and now I got to be one. I would be able to mess around with family, even my own kids. It would even be more exciting when Halloween rolled around. But no. I just got to be a bystander. To watch the kids come through and ask for candy, dressed in their costumes (ok, now that I’m dead, I really don’t get what the sheet with two eye holes is all about…I have yet to see any ghost that looks that way…maybe if they died with a sheet over them at the time?). I hate it. If there is a job of any “monster” at Halloween, it is to scare somebody and I CAN’T DO THAT.

So what’s the point?

Where will I go then? Well, I’ve never been been to England. I’ve actually never been to a lot of places, but England was a place I always wanted to go to and never made it. I’m not really sure why I wanted to go there. At this point, things are fuzzy, but I think my family came from there a long time ago. There’s a town down near the coast and Portsmouth, called Waterlooville. I think I want to go there. I believe it was the place where the British troops massed before heading over to fight Napoleon. Surely there’s a ghost or two there.

I’m not sure how I’ll make it. Since I’ve never left this house, I’m not sure how travel works. If I can just hop in someone’s car, take a plane (or even a boat), or if I can just think about it and appear there. That will be part of the adventure. Or it will be one very short trip.

I hope that once I get there I might find a few ghosts with a bit more knowledge regarding what this is all about. Everything is so much older over there, castles and what not. Surely there is a ghost or two that has been trying his or her hand at this thing for the last thousand years. Maybe they know how to actually scare someone.

Of course, I might just find I can’t even make it out of this house. Maybe that’s why I’m still here. Maybe I’ve tried to leave a thousand times before and just end up back in the same room. Maybe the house was torn down ages ago and I’m still part of it. Like me, the house is a ghost. Stuck in a nebulous world without the ability to interact… to be part of anything.

I hope that isn’t the case. I’d really like to see England. Moreover, I’d really like a chance to do what the other monsters get to do. Scare someone. That’s all a ghost really wants at this point.

A job. A purpose. Recognition.

Like ourselves, everything else has faded away into the background.

Transparent. Unseen.