On Modern Hauntings
We’re each invited to bring a scary story to the campfire, and I realize there exist different sorts of hauntings.
In a less science-seeking, less-skeptical age, we whispered about unexplained noises, things rattling that should not rattle, or spirits of those with issues left un-dealt-with, passing their own traumas on to the future naive inhabitants in whatever place they passed. Lights flicker, cars break down, people say, “If we split up we’ll have a better chance of finding help,” and maybe there are ghostly handprints of victorian children that appear on the fogged up window.
We still spook ourselves when we turn the basement light off; we run up the stairs full speed sometimes, heart pounding, though we know there’s nothing to fear, really, in the dark.
Once at 18 years old, getting home at a January midnight, I parked the car, killed the lights, and decided to take slow steps by the waning crescent moon out toward the forest in my parents’ backyard. I stood for a long time listening, feeling the cold nip in under my poorly-tied scarf, brushing itself like a cat against my cheeks.
I heard a faint sound… was that a scratching? Something dry, dragging itself along against the crusty snow drifts, trying to reach me, perhaps?
My eyes flit about as I still the beating in my chest. Something from before history within me whispers that the end approaches.
Then my eyes land on a fallen dead branch holding dry leaves barely out of the snow, scratching back and forth in the slight breeze. It is nothing but idle movement. No threat.
My hands cold as bone, I balled them in my coat pockets, which were also cold. I returned to the house slowly, step by step, the silent, shifting, unknowable forest at my back. I didn’t run. I didn’t look back. Fear raged, but I knew it meant nothing.
I don’t know that we, modern people, have faced our demons so much as we’ve simply categorized them, told them they’re irrelevant, and tried to store them away in bookshelves and DVD collections. I knew nothing in those small woods would hurt me.
This has left our modern selves with hauntings that are more depressing than scary. Our friends and partners go one way and we go another, but the fear is of loneliness and isolation, not violent death. We feel out of touch with the world, like a ghost stuck living in the wrong era. Our handprints fade like from a fogged window, and we fear our interactions and accomplishments won’t matter; perhaps all our strivings are just inexplicable noises, mumblings beyond anyone’s hearing. We break down in self-doubt, lights flicker in our brain, and we worry that those around us will tire of our rattling.
It’s rare to get jump scares from generational trauma, from the fear of letting down those around us, or from the general sense that we are living in end times, that everything is collapsing in slow motion, and that we’re simply going about our lives anyone, like the famous dog drinking coffee as the cafe burns down around him. This is fine.
So we sit around with friends as the campfire burns lower, and the people in our circle blur until we’re just a quiet collection of voices. The large and scary world beyond our cozy ring of warmth is only large and scary if you’re quiet and choose to let it in.
The spooks and specters are out, and they do still rage, but they won’t come near us here, so long as we keep talking and finding things to laugh about.
As we sit and reflect on who we are, who we want to be, who we have been, and why things so frequently don’t end up how we wish they would, it seems we’re mostly only haunted by ourselves.
Boo.
[After every article, I’ll supply a not-necessarily related musical pairing. Your song for today is “Zebra” by Man Man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBftmPwccjM]
