What is your favorite cryptid?

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Family Ghosts

Ghosts are real! My grandma says so. Her maternal uncle, Martin B., was a real jerk. He was demanding, selfish, cruel, and despised by his daughters. According to Grandma, he is now enjoying the fruits of his time on earth doing laps in a fiery lake.
After his death in the old family house in Boston, his wife moved from their old room to another part of the house. The room was, stripped, clean, and painted. Yet, Martin's lingering scum of nastiness could not be scrubbed away or painted over. The crucifix in his room would not stay attached to the wall. Anytime someone would enter the room, the crucifix would be on the floor, near the opposite wall from which it hung. Being good Irish Catholics, they'd replace the crucifix; being the site of Martin's death, the crucifix would not remain replaced. Not until the family priest totted his bible and holy water into the room, did his groove thing, and pronounced the room, finally and truly, clean, did the manifestations of Martin's mean personality cease.

Ghosts are real! My mother says so. When I was very small, two or so, we lived in an old pioneer house with my other grandma. The first floor has one foot thick stone walls and enough history to choke a horse. In the sixties, it was partially burned, the only reason it has not received an historical plaque from the city. Before my grandma, grandpa, and the four boys started living in the house, Mrs. O lived there with her husband. He died in the house, along with who knows how many more. Pioneers were not known for their impressive life spans.
One day, my mom put me down for a nap. She walked down the stairs to lock the front door as she intended to nap as well. After performing this simple duty and heading back up the stairs stretch out on her own bed, she heard me shrieking from my crib "Scary guy! Scary guy!" she rushed into the room (lion-hearted little woman that she is) to find me wide awake and pointing back into the hall. She made sure I was alright, then went to investigate. As she descended the stairs, she saw the front door ajar. The door she had just locked. She relocked it, made certain it was locked, then went back upstairs to get me to lie down again. Alas, more shrieking. This happened two more times, before she finally left the door unlocked. She got her nap.

Rationality tells me the supernatural exists only in the imagination and horror movies. My heart (and my mother and grandmother, god help me), tells me there are things on this Earth that exist whether or not we understand them. Just because something is not understood by science, or universally accepted as fact, does not make it unreal. To be honest, I don't think it matters. I'm sure ten different people could give you one hundred rational explanations of the above stories. But I'd rather believe in ghosts and bugbears and mummies' curses because the world is much more interesting with those things in it.