The main thing about ghosts – most of them have lost their voices. In Asphodel, millions of them wander around aimlessly, trying to remember who they were. You know why they end up like that? Because in life they never took a stand one way or another. They never spoke out, so they were never heard. Your voice is your identity. If you don’t use it,’ Nico said with a shrug, ‘you’re halfway to Asphodel already.’…He hated when his own advice applied to himself.
At dusk in the Temple Gardens the barrier between past and present turned fluid and ghosts walked. Here and there if Buckler looked closely he caught a glimpse of knights filing toward the ancient round Church, heads bowed in penitence…Buckler didn’t mind the spirits. In fact, he preferred their company to that of the general run of human. For the ghosts reminded him that man’s petty cares, so all consuming in life, would one day become nothing more than fit matter for an amusing story.
The tales of pure terror, of course, are completely naturalistic in their content, and must stand or fall by their merit alone. But what about the supernatural stories? Can we, the children of a scientific age, give any credence to these medleys of devils, ghosts, and other psychical invasions? There is only one answer: we can and do. We are dealing with stories, not with scientific dissertations. And if, as stories, they have the ring of truth, we'll believe them, as stories, implicitly.("Introduction")
You hear stories like that all your life and think: cool, a ghost bus. But now we have to look at this stuff analytically... a ghost bus?! The “ghost” of a motor vehicle? A public conveyance, presumably, which didn't head towards the light, move on to join the choir invisible in... bus heaven, the great terminus in the sky, where all good buses go when they... I don't know, break down, but instead is doomed to … drive eternally the streets of Earth! How can there be a ghost bus?!
Those places where sadness and misery abound are favoured settings for stories of ghosts and apparitions. Calcutta has countless such stories hidden in its darkness, stories that nobody wants to admit they believe but which nevertheless survive in the memory of generations as the only chronicle of the past. It is as if the people who inhabit the streets, inspired by some mysterious wisdom, relalise that the true history of Calcutta has always been written in the invisible tales of its spirits and unspoken curses.
One need not be a chamber to be haunted,One need not be a house;The brain has corridors surpassingMaterial place.Far safer, of a midnight meetingExternal ghost,Than an interior confrontingThat whiter host.Far safer through an Abbey gallop,The stones achase,Than, moonless, one's own self encounterIn lonesome place.Ourself, behind ourself concealed,Should startle most; Assassin, hid in our apartment,Be horror's least.The prudent carries a revolver,He bolts the door,O'erlooking a superior spectreMore near.
The terms we use for what is considered supernatural are woefully inadequate. Beyond such terms as ghost, specter, poltergeist, angel, devil, or spirit, might there not be something more our purposeful blindness has prevented us from understanding?We accept the fact that there may be other worlds out in space, but might there not be other worlds here? Other worlds, in other dimensions, coexistent with this? If there are other worlds parallel to ours, are all the doors closed? Or does one, here or there, stand ajar?
Someday, I’ll gain telepathic powers like every other regular movie ghost and I will go all Freddie Krueger on his bony, little, rat arse!”I rolled my eyes, but kept marching down the street.“Then I’d have to go all Ghostbusters on yours.”, I tried to keep my voice low to keep from drawing attention to myself.“No, you wouldn’t. You love my arse, darling!”, he walked backwards few feet in front of me.His big smile was enough to make me grin and roll my eyes again at him.
Ghosts! […] I almost think we are all of us ghosts. It is not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that ‘walks’ in us. It is all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we cannot shake them off. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sands of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light.
As she walked to the stairway, he pulled her back with a light tug on her shoulder. "They're responding to you now."Turning to face him, she said, "Responding to me? What did I say?""The hallway was full of them. When you said we were going downstairs to eat, they started filing down the stairs.""They all took the stairs?"Eddie nodded, his shining, gifted eyes watching the ghostly procession.He said, "They don't want to be far from you, Jess. And I'm not entire sure it's well intentioned.""Come to use," the voices whispered.
If the creek predates the city deep in time, then is it right to identify the creek solely with the city? The city has forgotten the creek, as it's forgotten those who walk its side, but the creek didn't need to be known all that long time before the city ever was. Maybe now Hogan's Creek is too steeped in history to claim an independence grounded in prehistory, because the city has too deeply poisoned it for far too long. Then again, there was all that time the creek flowed and had no name. Without a name you belong solely to yourself.
I don’t believe in ghosts and neither should you, Kingsley.””Why not? I’ve been in love with a ghost for thirty years.” Kingsley strolled over to the armchair and sat on the ottoman between the other man’s knees. Soren narrowed his eyes at him. “The body’s not even cold yet. Eleanor’s been gone one day and you’re already trying to get me into bed again?” ”Again?” Kingsley laughed and rolled his eyes. “Always. Are you surprised?” Soren shrugged. “Not really.
After breakfast the host takes the young man into a corner, and explains to him that what he saw was the ghost of a lady who had been murdered in that very bed, or who had murdered somebody else there - it does not really matter which: you can be a ghost by murdering somebody else or by being murdered yourself, whichever you prefer. The murdered ghost is, perhaps, the more popular; but, on the other hand, you can frighten people better if you are the murdered one, because then you can show your wounds and do groans.("Introduction" to TOLD AFTER SUPPER)
While he attends to his rats, Persinger gives me the lowdown on the haunt theory. Why would a certain type of electromagnetic field make one hear things or sense a presence? What’s the mechanism? The answer hinges on the fact that exposure to electromagnetic fields lowers melatonin levels. Melatonin, he explains, is an anti-convulsive; if you have less of it in your system, your brain —in particular, your right temporal lobe— will be more prone to tiny epileptic-esque microseizures and the subtle hallucinations these seizures can cause.
Anachronism is not the inconsequential juxtaposition of epochs, but rather their inter-penetration, like the telescoping legs of a tripod, a series of tapering structures. Since it's quite far from one end to the other they can be opened out like an accordion; but they can also be stacked inside one another like Russian dolls, where the walls around time periods are extremely close to one another. The people of other centuries hear our phonographs blaring, and through the walls of time we see them raising their hands towards the deliciously prepared meal.
