How many of us are afraid to look under the bed?
We might be scared of seeing an oddly-angled shadow or a glowing figure, but despite our strong fears, some of us still scour every corner for ghosts.
If we don’t want to catch a glimpse, why do we continue to scan grainy footage and audio recordings to see and hear evidence of the supernatural?
On a trip to Savannah, GA, a modern city infused with the apparitions of history, I started thinking about the search for the paranormal.
I wondered why, despite that icy chill on the nape, we might actually want to believe that things still go bump on the night.
The Ghosts of Our Past
Perhaps we hope to catch glimpses of spirits because it’s an assurance that the past lives on.
We secretly desire to know that our lost loved ones still show up at time-locked locations to dance, gather around a table, and assemble a crib.
We hope that our cherished memories still unfold nightly in overgrown neighborhoods. To enter a two bed room house from your childhood.
To discover that versions of aunts and uncles escape the confusion of the afterlife for an evening to replay the Christmas you received nearly everything on your list.
We want a crumbling sanctuary to hold services for whoever may show up on a charged night during an electrical storm. Spirits ducking out of the horrors of war for moment. Mothers who still seek justice in the beyond sitting on the back pews.
We take solace in the thought that echos may yet twirl across our Grandma’s living room. Scary perhaps, and something we’d never choose to witness, but yet we are curious.
The Ghosts Spread Across the Night Sky
Perhaps our minds are primed to instinctively fill liminal spaces. With spirits. Liminal Spaces are spots we encounter that feel transitional. Where people should be and it’s a bit creepy to see them unoccupied. Like a school auditorium in summer. Like a waiting room off-hours. Where kids should be laughing and clients should be reading out-of-date magazines.
These spaces may cause uncertainty and make us feel ill at ease.
Maybe that’s because these spaces are empty and our minds tell us they shouldn’t be.
Space is the ultimate liminal space. A grand diorama, backlit like a theater, but seemingly no one on the stage but us. Is it empty?
We stare at distant galaxies and place phantom civilizations along each string of lights.
We send out radio signals hoping a lonely soul will tune in one day and receive a bit of cold comfort. We listen for responses from deep space, and lose faith when the dial remains dead.
Our minds struggle to fill the darkness with characters, misbehaving droids, ghosts, so we don’t experience some cosmic dread. This is the true Eldritch Horror.
Opening Ourselves to Memories and Ghosts
I hope that things still bump around in places I can no longer visit. Keeping alive those loved ones I can no longer reach. Providing a community for forgotten souls and wayward apparitions.
In places overgrown, rotted, falling down, and disregarded. In transient hotel lobbies, lit so brightly, dimly glowing spirits can sit undetected all night long. Or perhaps along galactic arms that we can never visit.
If ghosts exist, they probably vacation in Savannah.
A modern city built on history’s bones, river bogs, and endless current, and creative neo-southern dishes. A city of upscale new shopping centers and abandoned malls stained by mildew and time.
It’s a place you can get a low-country boil on a flatbread. Enjoy a peach cobbler. Fried shrimp or shrimp gumbo.
It’s a bargain vacation considering you visit two destinations at once. A vibrant, modern city with new tastes and creative brews on every block.
But step into a historic home, or make your way down those precarious stone stairs to river level, and you may get your wish. You may see a ghost of the past, waiting for the next stage of life, just like you. END
I wrote about the ghostly estates that may still be visible to the eye in your local city and state parks. Check it out as a field guide for locating echoes of the past on your next hike through a local forest.
I also arranged some thoughts on how black holes can help us deal with liminal spaces and fear of the unknown.
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