Been thinkin’ about…Springtime ghosts

A clearing sky. A blackberry winter, again. The moon is a timeless thing cradled in the midnight above. The hubris of the day slowly passes into night, into forgetfulness. The day is done but the night is alive with the dead. Too often the dead of past regrets, of half-remembered thoughts, of memories sweet and bitter all.

Ghosts are troublesome things. They don’t exist, of course. Just the result of an overactive imagination. A bit of neuroses with that fragment of potato that Ebenezer Scrooge mumbled about in Dickens’ Christmas novel. 

The poor person who made the unfortunate choice of moving into a haunted house would disagree. The pitter-patter of disembodied feet, the voices, the laughter, the slamming doors, the shadows darker than the dark, a sense of deep foreboding, of eyes watching from the corners. Normal people don’t ask for any of that, especially not at home — home, the very word of which is meant to evoke safety and comfort. No, hauntings are often not comfortable. Back in my days of — briefly — becoming a recognized paranormal researcher, the encounters were becoming frequent. No, not ghostly encounters. Instead, the encounters with those who lived with ghosts.

“Those people just want attention.” Not these people. Not the quiet woman at the gas pumps. Not the troubled mother and her young daughter. Not the elderly man, leaning in, all but whispering, “I don’t want you to share my name, but I need to tell you this….” Too many regular people, too many ghostly experiences, too many indeed to discount.

“That was just a demon.” Everybody, it seems, is an expert. People on their spiritual high horse have everything buttoned up just so, drawing tidy lines in their mind that allow them to sleep at night, even as the great, starlit dimensions wheel overhead. There is discomfort in our smallness, our fragility, our all-too brief lives in the great expanse of the ages. The idea of a ghost — a disembodied, real spirit is troubling. To the atheist, the idea is blasphemy, if there is such a thing. Far better to believe we just wink out at the end, leaving behind all of materialism and modernity. To contemporary Christians, the idea is problematic. Ghosts represent an existential crisis of sorts. At death, we tell our ourselves emphatically, all Christians end up in heaven, quickly, simply. The messiness of life is quickly compartmentalized away, free will be damned.

Some hauntings seem to be quite benign, seemingly lovely people who simply “stick around” because they want to. Maybe they loved the house they built. Maybe they wanted to stand watch over a child. Maybe they’re mad about the new paint and wallpaper in their old kitchen. Investigations are weird. Life (and death) can be messy. 

After the Resurrection, as Jesus appeared to the disciples, He said, “Touch me. You can see that I have a living body; a ghost does not have a body like this.’ (Luke 24:39). Interesting choice of words. He could have said, “Hey, dummies, stop being scared. Ghosts don’t exist.” Yet He didn’t.

The real risk of ghosts is our own arrogance, our readiness for fast, convenient answers to go along with fast convenient food that has converted us into a nation of Goodyear blimps slowly encircling each other. Perhaps we should be more inclined to the eternal of spirit. The diabetes and heart disease will claim us soon enough. But there is more importantly a poisoning of the soul, the desperate need to — much like petulant school children — always have the answers first and to throw those answers in the face of anyone who looks doubtful. 

Those in real grief get it the worst — “God has a plan / They are with Jesus / You’ll be fine / It’s a God-thing ….” There is awful, heartless callousness in trite answers to deep grief. Heartless, dehumanizing answers, too quickly given. The real dead aren’t the ghosts but rather the living walking carelessly, having given up their own souls in order to stand on the mountain and proclaim it their own.

The cold spring snow is melting, dark glossy water puddles on the dark hardwood floor. There is but one lamp light in the living room, a room now cold and forgotten. The snow outside is coming down in dark torrents on the blushing crabapple blossoms, burying the daffodils and crocus and aptly named snowdrops. There will be towels hurriedly placed on the melted snow to keep the dark hard wood floors from staining. And cold words unspoken, a chill in the past air. A ghost of a memory, a memory that almost never happened. How little we know of lives and words and the great starlit dimensions which wheel overhead. 

And again, I lift a glass of wine against the cold. A slice of crumb cake waits on the old, green china, a ready defense against the emptiness, a ward against the dark. The warm memories are again aglow, a toast to our eternal springtime ghosts.