I have been able to see ghosts since I was a young boy. Not everyone can do that. My parents certainly cannot. They never believed me when I said that Grandma Marion watched mom while she did things and kept complaining about how the spaces between the oven and the wall were not clean enough. So, they sent me to therapy. I was pretty functional, all told, despite this. I managed to keep myself off of any medication.
Not everyone who dies makes a ghost. I suppose it is like anything else, just luck, or lack thereof, of the draw. Some people have a leg up when playing baseball or talking to people, some people become ghosts. Also, ghosts are not all that much like they are in the movies. Weirdly, a lot of them act more like zombies than anything. They just kind of stand around and stare off at nothing, or wander aimlessly, like your grandfather with dementia. Most of them are not sure of where they are or what is going on around them. When I try to talk to them, they just go off about something from the past. It can sometimes be super helpful. I found someone who was willing to tell me about being a scab in the 1910's during a strike, which allowed me to write a report about it. Got a B+ on it, which was not too bad.
Most ghosts are at least a little transparent, though. Some are more transparent than others. I think it has something to do with how long they have been ghosts. The more zombie-like the ghost, the more transparent. But more than that, ghosts are just people. Some are good people, some are absolute bastards about everything. One found out that I was able to see them and chose to scare the shit out of my ten-year-old self at every opportunity. It started in the bathroom, which was honestly really convenient. I was sitting on the toilet and suddenly, my legs were overtaken by a black mass of hair and then eyes and a long, screaming mouth. I panicked and my bowels practically exploded. The man fell back to the ground laughing. From then on, I would find him everywhere where he thought I would not expect him to be. Inside my locker at school, inside the fridge, inside my lunchbox. Eventually, when I stopped reacting, he got bored and stopped bothering. Anyway, I do not have many friends because of this. Most people think it is a little weird when I talk to the open air or avoid walking through certain spaces that I guess to them seem empty. I have walked through a few ghosts before and it is uncomfortable. Kind of like when your leg falls asleep but cold somehow. Except everywhere they are touching you. I have a few people that occasionally invite me out for a drink or listen to my stories. They think that I am some kind of writer just making up stories about myself to entertain me. They laugh and clap me on the back but usually just do not invite me out to anywhere where I might embarrass them.
But I have a good enough job. I make enough money, for the time being at least. And no, I am not a Ghostbuster or anything like that. I actually am just an accountant for a small firm. Overall, this ability of mine does not affect my daily life. Or, at least it did not. Basically, there are only two times in my life where it has ever mattered that I can see ghosts. The first time was when The 6th Sense movie came out and everyone thought I was just copying that for attention and the second time was when I went on vacation a couple of years ago and met a new kind of ghost.
I went somewhere close to home. I do not have a lot of money. I live in the Midwest and just went to a mountain resort where I could get some fresh air, do some hiking, and relaxing. On the second day of my little trip, I went down to a hot tub to soak for a while. A woman was standing near the towels and just throwing them everywhere and cackling madly. It is sometimes pretty hard to figure out who is and who is not a ghost. Especially when hipsters were a thing for a while. They are just people who dress a little anachronistically. But that became a trend for a while. Dressing up in suits and fancy hats. People referencing swing music and using weird slang. But sometimes, it is pretty easy. Like when a woman is wearing a Victorian dress at a pool.
I just sighed and started picking up the towels, folding them, and putting them back. The woman stopped and glared daggers at me. She did not say a word to me and just started making weird, mocking faces at me. Until I looked up directly at her and said “You really shouldn't be making a mess. It's pretty rude.”
She froze, which was pretty funny actually because her tongue was sticking out of her mouth, and blinked after a few moments. I asked a ghost once why they still blink and he just shrugged and said that he still had to. She walked up to me and said in a confiding voice. “You can see me?”
“Yeah, I can hear you, too,” I said, matching her tone. I put the rest of the towels up and she just stood there watching me for a moment, horrified. She was pretty, for a ghost. A little shorter than I am, which is not tall, with dark red hair and dark green eyes and a maroon dress that billowed out. Her chest was lifted up pretty high. I tried not to notice. It is pretty difficult. I am kind of shy around people in general, especially women. And I try not to see ghosts in that way especially. I mean, it is one thing to see someone that way when there is a small chance that something may come of it. But with ghosts? You just pass right through them. I learned that lesson when I was younger. I met a ghost who had died around my age and we hung out constantly. She was my first love. I tried to kiss her, tripped, and slammed my head into a wall. Broke my nose.
“H-how! I know that people can't see ghosts! I tried talking to, like, so many people!”
“I don't know. Just can. Always have been able to,” I said, already bored of this conversation. When you have had to explain the same thing a thousand times before, the novelty wears a little thin. She followed me to the hot tub and dipped in. Her dress barely reacted to being submerged in the water and she sat next to me and stared at me. I tried my best to ignore her but she just kept staring and getting closer and closer to me. “Please stop. I'm trying to relax.”
“You can't just say that you can just talk to ghosts and not talk to me! I haven't spoken to anyone in ages! Who are you? I'm Lona! It's nice to meet you. Er, like, anyone honestly.”
“I can, have before, and will continue to ignore anyone I please,” I said in a low voice, eyes still closed as I leaned back.
She huffed and turned to the side a bit and muttered to herself. “I know that people are totally rude nowadays, but not even introducing yourself seems like a new low.”
“I'm John,” I responded with a despondent sigh. I don't really like introducing myself to ghosts anymore. It opens the floodgates. They tend to get really attached. I had a ghost follow me everywhere for six months one time. I just had to ignore him until finally he just went away. Oh, and by the way, no religious rituals work to exorcize them. I have tried everything. Shamans, priests, salt lines, all of it. Mostly the best option is to ignore them until they leave you alone. Occasionally, you can just ask them to leave you alone. I did not ask her to leave me alone and she followed me around for the rest of the day. She sat down across from me at dinner and we made conversation. I would talk quietly into my meal and she would talk normally. I got a bunch of weird looks and people thought that I was insane. But that is hardly a new occurrence.
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It was not really an issue until the next morning. I woke up with her eyes staring directly into mine. I jumped and fell out of the bed and she also fell out of the bed on the other side, laughing. I got to my feet and crawled over the bed and glared down at her. She stared up at me, her face red with laughter. Oh yeah, ghosts do not really have that gray filter that a lot of media puts on them. That is mostly just a holdover from the fact that we only developed color cameras in the last seventy years or so. Most ghosts in movies and TV shows are from the 1800's for some reason when in actuality ghosts can be from any time period. There are a lot of ghosts from the 1800's just because that period sucked and people died all the time, but the same can be said for a lot of times. Oh, and ghosts are not just a bunch of white people. If you watched movies, you would think that almost all ghosts are just Victorian white people, but there are a lot of Native American ghosts and a lot of black ghosts of slaves and the descendants of slaves. I have never traveled out of the States, but I imagine if there are ghosts everywhere, then everywhere has all kinds of different ghosts.
“What the hell was that about!?”
She eventually stopped laughing and sat up. “What?”
“Why are you in here? Why were you in my bed?”
“Oh. Like, I was standing there for a while, but my legs got tired and I sat down on the bed and watched you sleep.”
“You were watching me sleep? Wait, your legs get tired?”
“Yeah. And . . .” She paused for a moment. “I'm sorry. I don't mean to be creepy, but . . . I've been so lonely since I died. I'll do anything for attention. That's . . . Well, that's why I was throwing towels around. So that, like, someone has to deal with me at least a little. And you . . . You can totally see me and, like, talk to me. I just miss it.”
I felt a little guilty. I forget that I'm the first non-ghost that these people can actually interact with a lot. If there are no other ghosts, it must be a pretty solitary existence. And from my experience, only maybe one in every five hundred thousand become ghosts. So, if you live in a small town, you may be the only ghost there ever.
“Besides, like, I'm not the one who wrapped my arms around me and started to cuddle.”
“Wait, what?”
“Yeah, you totally turned in your sleep and wrapped an arm around me and pulled me close to you.”
“That's not possible,” I said.
“What? Am I not pretty enough to cuddle!?” She demanded, outrage coloring her words and contorting her face.
“No, it's not that! I can't touch ghosts . . . I still walk through them. Just like you can walk through water or walls or whatever. It feels weird . . . but I have never touched a ghost like I could a . . .” I stopped. Talking about the living can be pretty upsetting to ghosts sometimes. And I was stuck. It should not be possible. I reached my hand out and pressed a finger to her cheek. It bent in and she took my hand and opened it and pressed her face against it, smiling softly. I sat there in abject horror as a ghost snuggled into my hand. It took me a minute to pull my hand away and she looked disappointed when I did. I backed away into a wall and closed my eyes.
“What's wrong?” She stood up and walked a little closer. Then she giggled softly. “Like, you look like you just saw a ghost!”
She burst out laughing and slapped her knee at her own joke. As she did, I tried edging away, but she grabbed my arm. Or rather she tried to and went straight through and I shuddered. I stopped and looked back at her hand and my arm. Ghosts can cry. I knew that already. What I did not know is that when they cry, it can cause some other issues. She stomped her foot as tears leaked down from her face and the lights dimmed a little bit. The TV turned on and staticked out. The room got colder. It should have been terrifying. But she was crying. And it is really hard to ignore a crying person. Even when the alarm clock and a lamp starts to float. I reached out to her and my fingers started to go through her then met resistance. I was pushed back out. My hand rested on her shoulder. She looked up, sniffing, and then tackled me.
I mean. That is not what she was trying to do. At least I don't think so, but ghosts are weird. She slammed into me and wrapped her arms around me and we flew into the wall. She was still crying and I put my hand in her hair and patted her back. The alarm clock and the lamp fell back down to the night table. The TV stayed on, which I thought was a little weird. We sat like that for a little while longer until she stopped crying. She got up and sighed softly, wiping her face. “I'm sorry. I just . . . It's been so long since I touched anyone. Since I felt that kind of warmth.”
I nodded. It made sense. And now I knew a couple more things. Apparently, poltergeists exist. I had never met a poltergeist before. I mean, there are tons of stories about them and movies, but it is really difficult to parse fact from fiction. I also remembered that I slept naked. I disentangled myself from her and scrambled up, grabbing my pants and putting them on. And I had a thought about something else. “Hey . . . Forgive me for this question, but . . . When you were alive, did you wear a lilac perfume?”
She looked taken back. “I . . . When I was alive . . .” Her face became somber and she looked away from mine. Tears brimmed in her slightly transparent eyes again. Talking about the living and what they did when they were alive can be hard for a lot of ghosts. Not all of them. Some of them are having a ball. They get to know so much more. But it was obviously pretty hard on her. Her voice was strained with the effort of not breaking down again when she spoke. “Yeah. I wore some the day that I died. I tried a lot of different perfumes, though. How did you know about the lilac?”
“I could kind of smell it when you hugged me,” I said. It sounded really weird when it was vocalized.
“You were smelling me while I hugged you?” She said, her tear-streaked face breaking into a smile. “That's totally creepy, ya know?”
“You know, you don't really talk like someone from the 1800's.”
“Oh, yeah. I know. I, like, died in the 90's.”
“What? But your dress.”
She looked down at the dress and smiled even wider. “Yeah. I was dressed up for a play. I was an actress. I guess this really just goes to show you to be careful with how you dress and smell because you might die that way and be stuck with it forever.”
I thought of the shirts that I owned with anime women printed on them and shuddered in horror as I thought about spending an eternity explaining to other ghosts why I was wearing a busty cartoon girl. Or some poor sap dying and ending up wearing crocs for the rest of their existence. Then I realized that I had seen some ghosts change their shape a little bit here and there. Some made their legs disappear so that they could float up. The ghost that haunted me in a toilet could make his head bigger for a moment, stretch out his jaw into a gaping maw, and make his eyes black voids. “I have an idea.”