ghost stories.

(can you see the ghost between the cars?)

Everybody knows a ghost story. The best ones happened to you (first person), but most people will settle for a story with one or two degrees of separation, i.e. your babysitter’s haunted basement or your aunt’s housekeeper’s ghastly prank calls.

My dad told me a story once: He was up very late. He was reading a scary book and he finally got up to go to bed. He was walking down the dark hallway to the bedroom when he saw a swirling mass of darkness up near the ceiling. His heart began to pound and his mouth got dry. Then he said he shook his head and told himself to “stop being silly.” The mass disappeared and he went on to bed.

Also, when I was a kid, my cousin’s and I would tell a story about my great grandpa who was in the field plowing (because that’s what great grandpas do) when a huge red thumb came up out of the ground and thumbed in the direction of his shack (because that’s what great grandpas live in). He tried to ignore it (really?) but it continued to thumb at him. Finally he went back home to check things out and he found my great grandma burning up in the fireplace. I’m pretty sure my cousin Jamie made that one up. But still it used to send shivers up and down my spine…

I was never really sure whether or not I should believe in ghosts. Obviously I’m fairly susceptible to far fetched scary stories, which always made me second guess myself. However, now that I have matured a bit and really put my head to the question, I now know that I do believe in ghosts, I just needed to figure out my picture of them. I met a man named Andrew in a college religion class. He was the first “real pagan” that I’d ever met. He told me that he believed that whenever a person walks on the earth, that person’s soul leaves behind something like a fingerprint (I suppose it would be called a “soul print” though) of energy that sometimes shows its face to the people who are still here. That made sense to me. It feels like that’s right, because sometimes I can feel the energy of people I’ve known who’ve died, even though I know they aren’t here anymore.

I also recently read here (a super cool blog) that praying and meditating and speaking to your ancestors is another form of necromancy. I’d never thought of it like that. I always just picture Edward Kelly lying on the ground in a burning pentacle at midnight with his eyes rolled back in his head. Necromancy seems so dramatic, but it’s really just talking to dead people, whether you have a burning pentacle or not.

Ghosts are no different. You can get all Aleister Crowley/burning red thumb with it, or you can stick to knowing that people are made out of energy and that when they leave, they might leave some here, and you might see it. It’s not a bad thing, or a good thing, it’s just something that happens. At the very least, you get a good story out of it. At the most, you get to experience first hand the mysteries of the other worlds…

ps. If you have a good ghost story tell it to me! I love them, red thumbs and all.