Ghost Stories

nobody@vox.com(Jay) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:12:29 -0500

Everybody's got one. Maybe more than one.

Usually they happened to a friend-of-a-friend. A conveniently removed acquaintance. Or a family member, or heard in passing. It rarely seems to happen directly to us, and so remains in the grey area of disbelief, slightly above campfire tales but below firsthand memories. Still, they're as old as time and always intriguing, regardless of the personal beliefs of the listener.

Ghost stories.

Whether they support or conflict with one's religious tenets, it's undeniable that the concept of life-after-death is a universal curiosity. As humans we can comprehend a lot of things, but the concept of not existing is nearly impossible to grasp. When the body dies, what happens? We have come up with countless theories over the millenia, and yet have no hard proof of any of them. Still, it's hard to imagine the cessation of life, of perception, of emotion. It may be the scariest concept of all. So we create images of afterlives, places where the souls of our dear departed can travel to, to await our inevitable arrival, where we can all be together again, as we once were. Or places of eternal punishment, with which we can frighten others into a certain type of behavior that suits our society, and feel that some form of cosmic justice will be served. Or perhaps there's some sort of spiritual recycling plant, where the life forces of the deceased are inspected for quality and reissued to another material form as deemed appropriate, in some kind of ethereal resource-recovery system. Or none of these, or maybe a form of all. Since no one's managed to investigate very far into the matter in an empirical way, we're left to speculate and believe what we like.

For the most part.

Still, there's something about the idea of a face in the window, a movement in the corner of the eye, a whispered voice out of nowhere, an unexplained breeze in a still room.....it will put even the most jaded and wooden mind at unease. And make one question everything they believe.

We need ghost stories. They define us, I think, as a species. I doubt that animals ponder the fates of their dead. Do dolphins fear the dark, do gorillas pray at shrines? I don't think so. But we have built entire mythologies - and civilizations - around the idea of eternal existence, and how to deal with it. Fear? Reverence? Adulation? All three? At its core, it probably boils down to one thing: curiosity.

We've all seen supposed "ghost photos", online or printed in Time-Life books. We've heard stories we know are fake, but are still fun to tell, and manage to send a little chill up our spines anyway. The photos are mostly all faked too, and yet get the same response. We watch movies where the phantom children stare from the dark corners of rooms, or swoop vengefully from the sky, or direct us to their maligned remains, or long for some form of earthly closure or merely want attention. Murdered lovers seek their mates, confused spirits don't know they're dead, maniacal killers wreak more havoc from the grave. Most of these stories are closed up neatly at the end of a couple of hours (until the sequel anyway) but they often leave us a little unnerved about what may be lurking around us, watching us, peeking through floorboards or waiting around corners. It's hard to not think that way, at least for a little while. But eventually things are back to normal and nothing has leapt from the shadows or crawled out of the TV at us, and fears are forgotten. And dismissed as "silly".

Courtney_and_meehan

Are they?

I don't know. But again, everyone has a ghost story. Or knows someone who has.

And so the idea lives on, if not the spirits themselves.

My uncle supposedly had a poltergeist in his house. Back in the 70s, he lived in a very old colonial home in Rhode Island. I mean like, late 1600s-early 1700s old. I looked for it online but I can't find a photo of it. It's historic anyway. Just a little house, no big deal, but really old. I had never been inside it, he moved out around the time I was born. I hear it had little hiding spots in it, where they'd hide the women and children during Indian raids. Or so it's said. Anyway, my uncle, who was the world's biggest hardass when it came to having his way and was not prone to fanciful imaginings, would hear things falling and being thrown about in the house at night and would yell out to "knock it off". He didn't live there long, but my grandmother says stuff got broken a lot. Could it have been a restless spirit, of some former inhabitant or perhaps an irate Native American soul? Who knows. I never really talked much to my uncle, and he's been dead for over ten years so if he gives me an answer now, you'll be sure I'll let you know.

A friend of mine from college knew a girl who moved into an older home in my town (again, in RI) with her husband after they got married. It was a bigger home, with three floors and an attic. Maybe two and a full attic. I forget. But the attic stairs were in a closet off the bedroom. Anyway, her husband was an EMT and left very early every morning. One morning she awoke to see the closet door open, and who she thought was her husband sitting on the attic stairs. Since it was past his time to leave for work, she asked him what he was doing. When he didn't respond, she realized it wasn't her husband at all. Frightened, she ran downstairs, called her husband - who was at work - and told him what happened. He came home and they went upstairs and checked it out......no one there, and the door to the attic was left open. There were a few sightings after that, and some music heard in the background sometimes.....older rock-n-roll music....and they started calling the ghost "Vinny". (Hey, it's Rhode Island.) Then one day the girl was at a gas station filling up, and another customer mentioned that she was the one who moved into the old house on her street. The girl replied that she was. "Ah," said the other woman. "That used to be Vinny's house."

Turns out a guy - Vinny - lived there all his life, with his mother, and after she died he kind of made the attic his personal space, hanging out up there and listening to music. Eventually he passed away. When the new couple bought it, they started renovating it. The sightings started when they began working on the attic. After they found this out, they decided to leave the attic alone. As a result, they didn't see Vinny anymore. She said they still feel as if he's there, but they don't see him or hear any more music. And they don't go in the attic much.

Eerie. But again, it's hearsay. I have never had anything like that happen to me, and although it would be pretty freaky, it would also be nice to have some first-hand experience to maybe change my perception a bit. Then again....once you open that door, where do you stop?

Anyone else have any experiences like that? A figure on the stairs, or some mysteriously shattered dishes? It would be interesting to hear some other stories. Whether we believe them or not, they're always entertaining.

**passes the flashlight**

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Ghost Stories