Ghost In the Machine...

When I was talking about what to write about in 2026 Louise said she'd like my take on ghosts. So here we go...

Do I believe in ghosts?

No. Of course not. Logically there is nothing that proves the existence of ghosts. My own personal philosophy on what happens when we die does not lend itself to thinking there are ghosts. There is no logical way there are ghosts. So of course I don't believe in them.

Which sounds great except for the fact that I've got my own ghost stories. Like actual, I have seen and interacted with ghosts. So that sort of throws a wrench in my whole logically they don't exist stance. Though I could logic my way through the encounters.

When I was a little girl I was at my Grandma Mary's house and I went in to use the restroom. While I was peeing I looked over and there was a little boy taking a bath. I was SO embarassed. How in the world had I not noticed him BEFORE starting to pee? He said hi! I apologized for bothering his bath and he said it was okay. He was very nice about it all but I was still just mortified. I finished and as modestly as possible got myself covered back up, avoided looking toward the bath while I washed up and got out of there as quickly as possible.

Not wanting to get in trouble for bothering him (though to be fair he should have at least shut the door if not locked it!) I made sure to apologize to his adult. I wasn't sure if he was a son or a grandson but I knew he had to belong with Margie. My Grandma Mary lived with my Aunt Lucille and her other daughter Margie was visiting at the time. I didn't know Margie so the boy had to belong to her, because I knew he wasn't normally there. I apologized and she had no idea what I was talking about. Nobody knew what I was talking about. There was no boy in the bath.

From that point on if I had to pee while we were at Grandma Mary I kept the door open a crack just incase I needed to make a fast break. He hadn't been mean, or scary really, but it still freaked me out.

Looking back as an adult I can say, well it was probably a dream. Like the whole thing, the visit to Grandma Mary's, the boy, the apology, it was all probably a dream. It doesn't feel like a dream, it feels like a memory. But I've told the story repeatedly through my life so now it is a memory. We all think our memories are these pristine little vaults of information but they aren't. They are malleable and implantable and forgettable. We can turn something that never happened into something we are sure happened and completely wipe out other things. So logically it could have just been a really vivid dream that has firmed up over time.

When I was a teenager the house we lived in was haunted. When the whole family would gather in the kitchen the fan over the stove would turn on. We would say, "Suzie's here now" Suzie being short for Little Suzie Homemaker. When I would go a few days without eating Suzie would bake bread. Not actual loaves but when I would get home from school or work I could smell the fresh baked bread. Fresh baked bread is my favorite. Like I could eat an entire loaf of it. So that smell would make me hungry and I would eat. Suzie looking out for my disordered ass.

Now, logically, it was a sort of beat down trailer and it was probably a short in the wiring. The weight of all of us in the kitchen/dining room probably shifted things so that the short hit and the fan turned on. The smell of the bread? I wasn't eating. Probably a delusion brought on by hunger. My own brain triggering it. YOU'RE HUNGRY STOP STARVING ME! sort of thing.

We also had the hall walker. As lovely as Suzie was the Hall Walker was not. You could sometimes hear him pacing at night. Heavy footsteps. Up the hall, pause on the other side of the bedroom door, back down the hall. Over and over. And it felt bad. Like gave you gooseflesh sort of thing. Don't go in to the hallway. Pull the covers up. The first time a friend of mine spent the night the next morning she was like "DUDE! I think you have a ghost." I was like, "oh yeah, I should have warned you."

Logically? Probably the house settling. Again, it was a beat down trailer. Why only some nights and not all of them? Probably weather related. Hotter or colder or bigger swings in the day and night temps would do it, right? That feeling of it not being good? Pop culture consumption. You know that something unexplained pacing in a hallway outside your bedroom cannot possibly be good.

Brent and I were out shopping for furniture one time and this woman showed up out of nowhere to warn us not to buy from them then she disappeared. Like poof, warning, poof. The salesperson we were talking with acted like she was never there. Brent and I were both like, what the hell was that? Ghost warning?

Logically? Probably a pissed off customer who wanted to vent. She probably just walked in the exactly right way for us not to have seen her coming and probably was quick enough to leave the store that we missed it while we were looking at each other. The salesperson acting like she wasn't there? Well, he probably had no idea what to say. You can't call past customers crazy while trying to build rapport with new customers but you also don't really want to get into why she was so pissed off.

Logical sure. But we didn't buy furniture from them. I mean if it was a ghost, and her experience had been bad enough that she was spending her afterlife warning people it would have been crazy for us to ignore her.

I've had other little pops of ghostlike activity here and there as well. Smelling my mother's makeup. She had a powder she used and there have been times I've smelled it so strongly I was sure she was there. But, memory and smell are really close to each other in the brain. Scent brings back memories because of that. So of course we will sometimes think we smell something that is so much a part of our memories. If you are a child of the 80s and watched Stranger Things I bet you know what Steve smelled like. I mean, picture him and think about it, and I bet you smell Polo cologne. Scent and memory are tied. He's that kind of 80s guy who would be dressed a certain way and wear a particular cologne. So it's not all that surprising that sometimes when I'm thinking of my dad I smell cedar.

So yeah, there is always a logical explanation, but no, a lot of times that logical answer doesn't feel like the correct one. Which is probably why a lot of my fiction leans toward "they were a ghost all along!" So logically, no I don't believe in ghosts. Practically? I'm not sure. I've had some things happened that I can sort of explain away but the explanations don't feel correct. So...maybe?

I can also do a whole philosophical discussion about how the people in your life don't die as long as you are alive so you carry their ghosts with you, but I'm pretty sure she was asking for actual ghost encounters.

The furniture store closed down, and nobody has put a new business in that building for over a decade so I'm still leaning toward haunted, by the way.