Scattered Thoughts

Ghost Writing, Gar Lipow

I could always sense ghosts. Not see them; I was never that sensitive. But now and again I would walk into a room, and feel a sudden chill; I’d know that a tall redhead, or well-padded blonde, or an old blind man used to spend a lot of time there, and that part of them was still around. If there was someone around to ask, I could always confirm the first part.

I don’t know why I assumed that becoming a ghost myself would improve my sixth sense. But I still can’t see dead people—not even myself really. And neither the dead nor the living can see me. For obvious reasons I studied what a lot of religions had to say about the afterlife long before I entered it. But none of them advertised it as such a lonely place.

It was dark… , Beverly Leoczko

As were the others on the block, doors agape and windows staring. Charles stayed close as they wandered the first floor, knowing this was dreadfully difficult, but determined to make the visit possible. Her foot slipped, leaving a streak in the soot and a spark of color. She bent and picked it up: a photo as they had been then, before the plague. Human, her mother, her father, her brother, warm and living. Fire hadn’t completely washed away the old scent of blood and fear, but she was finished here. These ghosts wouldn’t haunt her again.

Beloved Stasi, in token of remembrance, Connie Neil

In later years, when people asked where she was, it was sufficient to say, “She died during…” People nodded and asked no more. They had names of their own, who had been lost during.

They’d been happy, those days in Venice. War was ended, there would be no more war. The news from reparations-battered Germany would come to nothing. They knew it was lies, but happy days in Venice were only possible on a sea of lies. Beloved Stasi, whose memory lived among tombs and photographs, never lost as long as someone knew her name.

Photo #10, Jillian Venters

A sure way to determine if someone is a true aficionado of urban ghost stories is to casually mention the Vetimert Quadruplets. The uninformed will respond with a blank stare, or nod their head and make up stories about four children joined at the torso, or other spooky nonsense.

The Vetimerts were, by all (scarce) accounts, perfectly happy and normal women. They passed into legend when the small diner they owned and worked at vanished. Overnight, where the diner stood became a park with a weather-beaten statue of a dog balancing a frog on its nose. Stories of the Vetimert Quadruplets appearing on roadsides across the country and singing prophecies in four-part harmony to startled passers-by have never been adequately verified.

Ghost Story, Deborah Grabien

The door into summer is laced with growing things, creepers and small roses. Sometimes, you’d swear you could smell jasmine. The garden stretches out on either side of it, verdant in June, sodden in November. Sheep move on the lawns; in the eaves of distant houses, rooks curl heads beneath wings.

No one admits to having seen the girl, heard the rustle of skirts or the snap of her parasol. There’s nothing to admit; she casts no shadow. The dead don’t. Unable to leave, too insubstantial to remember, she sways in the garden doorway like the summer wind passing through.

Untitled, Lori MacInnes

Mother chatted quietly to Dad. His work-roughened hands gripped his knees and he nodded gravely in response. I sat beside them but watched my brother where he knelt, leaning against his chair with his face hidden in his hands, all the tension gone out of him. His wife hid in the bedroom.

When they arrived, men in dark suits carrying a stretcher, they scanned the living room with anxious expressions then turned toward the bedroom. My mother called them back, waving gently at my brother. “He’s here,” she said. He wasn’t, though. He’d escaped. I could hear the bastard laughing.