I recently talked about the fact that I now live in a haunted apartment. I don’t know who or what it’s haunted by, I just know that, on occasion, it gets all creepy up in here.
There have been new sounds added into the mix. We both heard the sound of something thumping on the side of the house, though when I went onto the porch to investigate, I didn’t see anything there. There are the usual creaks and moans as though someone was walking on the ceiling and doors continue to open and close of their own volition.
But here’s the thing about ghosts I don’t understand; why? Assuming that you have a soul and assuming that this soul survives beyond death, then why would you give a good goddamn about what’s going on here on Earth? Your very existence has been altered in a fundamental, mind-boggling way. The very matter from which you are made is completely redefined and you’re just going to hang out in some old apartment and bang the pans together?
I don’t think so.
I think we can rule out that ghosts are dead people just based on the fact that I would hope people had better things to do after they die, assuming the existence of an eternal soul. Also, sidenote, if you’re religious, how do you explain ghosts? Are they caught in Limbo? Did they get lost on the way to Heaven/Hell? Either way, it would seem to point to some weird loophole in the mechanics of the afterlife. “Oh! I’m going to Hell? No thanks, I’ll just hang out on Earth for a few more decades.”
I do like the idea of strong, emotional events (murders, suicides, explosions in the old mines) leaving a kind of resonance in the area. It’s not the actual spirits of people, it’s a discordant harmony worked into the aether of a particular place. That would explain why it stays so localized, as opposed to just wandering around at will, like I sure as hell would do I could go anywhere I wanted in a phantasmagoric vapor.
But I’m pretty sure that science hasn’t proven that emotions leave imprints in inanimate objects. Science HAS proven that certain sound frequencies (infrasound) can cause feelings of dread, uncertainty and fear and even cause hallucinations in a listener and that these infrasounds are not uncommon in places that were reportedly haunted. Which all makes perfect sense and I’m glad that science has finally put this ghost nonsense to bed.
But that doesn’t quite explain the strange slime I found oozing from the tap this morning. Or the ring of dark, dried…something on the ceiling of my office that comes and goes. Or the whispered screams that come from our closet at 3am. Or the sound of footsteps behin
