Random Hallowe'en Musings

I've never seen a ghost.
I've felt one, or at least the cold spot that is commonly linked to ghostly activity. That happened a quarter century ago, and you can be forgiven for thinking I imagined it; I can only assert that I didn't, and that the
sensation of sweat freezing on you in midsummer is a helluva persuader. It scared the crap out of me, I don't mind admitting.

If you haven't guessed, I believe in ghosts. I believe in ghosts on the grounds that there have been entirely too many sightings of ghostly phenomena for me not to. Even if 99.99% of these sightings are fraudulent, that still leaves a goodish number of odd events for which "ghosts" are as good an explanation as any.

I've read a great number of accounts of 'true' hauntings over the years, and one of the common denominators in most of these stories is a specific sort of death. Heart failure is unlikely to lead to a haunting, whereas if someone dies of a broken heart...that's another story.  And if death is violent, expect a spectre...at least, according to the tales.
This makes a kind of sense, within its own logical framework. If you can accept the idea of psychic energy--and perhaps you'd accept it more readily if I call it electrical impulses--you'd probably grant that sudden, violent death should leave some sort of trace. And further accepting that human will may transcend human life--which is, granted, a difficult proposition for those who think that this life is all there is to existence--it seems plausible that one could, perhaps, leave something of oneself behind.

Ghosts, if they exist, are supposed to be frightening. That cold spot aside, I can't think why. If an apparition flits into my bedroom tonight, I think I'd be more curious than scared. And if the traditional definition of ghosts is the true one, viz. a soul that has not fully 'passed on'...well, I don't know about you, but I'd find that more sad than anything.

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The scariest book I have ever read is undoubtedly The Shining, by Stephen King. If your only exposure to this masterwork is Kubrick's adaptation, do yourself a favour and read the novel. Kubrick's version was gutwateringly scary in spots, but he missed the emotional core of the story entirely. You'd never know it from Nicholson's portrayal, but Jack Torrance loved both his wife and his son dearly.

I would love to be a hotel caretaker for a winter. I'm not prone to the shack-wackies...even if my Internet connection went down, I'd have any number of books to escape into. But I'd bloody well hope I was as much of a psychic zero as I seem to be. I do have a fairly vivid imagination, and I'd hate to imaginate myself right into the Twilight Zone. I don't believe myself to be capable of murder under all but the most extreme conditions...but that's not a statement I'd care to test.

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I just read another Stephen King story, "1922", from the collection Full Dark, No Stars. I don't know of any other author who can so effortlessly make the horrific seem normal and the normal seem horrific.
This novella concerns one Wilfrid Leland James, a farmer with deep ties to his land. His wife, Arlette, intends to sell off the land she inherited and use the proceeds to open a shop in the city; Wilfrid enlists their teenage son Henry to put a stop to those plans...and to Arlette. (It's disturbing how inevitable King makes murder out to be, almost as if distaste at your wife's habitual "pert little head-toss" is just one more excuse to slit her throat.
James--and his son--manage to get away with the murder: the law pokes around, but only halfheartedly, buying their fiction that Arlette ran off. (At one point, the sheriff says something to the effect that if she's found, he'll drag her back by the hair to face her husband's justice. It sure was a different world in 1922.
So yes, they commit the perfect crime...except their victim won't stay dead. Madness ensues, and you'll have to read the story to see how it turns out. Suffice it to say I had an awful nightmare last night concerning rats.

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I've actually had more than my share of nightmares recently, some of them so terrible that I scrub all vestiges of them out of my head within seconds of waking up. Nightmares are strange, or at least mine are. Unlike my wife's, my dreams are almost always firmly rooted in prosaic life. They could happen, ergo, when I wake, I often think they did. I came downstairs once crying over a dead cat only to find her alive and well and twining 'tween my legs.

Happy Hallowe'en to one and all.