The Ghosts We Author Ourselves

A Late-Night Encounter

A while ago, on a walk late at night, I unwittingly wandered past a disused cemetery. It occurred to me that I was looking at tombstones left unkempt in grounds untended, ensconced between a road junction and a cluster of residences.

I was immediately in a heightened state of anxiety, expecting, through the power of mental suggestion, to see something, and yet dreading whatever it might be. My rational mind insisted there was no reason to run; and on reflection, I determined there was none to be afraid either.

An Impressionable Mind

Even so, I know how my impressionable young mind, in the past, has conjured apparitions, visible only to me, of dreadful things I find difficult to talk about.

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For this reason, I avoid anything that invites paranormal phenomena, including horror films, since I am perfectly capable of dreaming up anything without the need for a prompt.

Back in March, when our apartment overlooked a Jewish cemetery from the seventh floor, we would close the windows and draw the curtains once it grew dark, refusing to let our avoidance of the unknown take hold.

Why Fear the Peaceful Dead?

There is a strange irony here worth pausing on. A cemetery is, by any rational measure, among the most peaceful places we might ever be; quiet, still, and given over entirely to rest. And yet we fear it.

That fear, I have come to think, is not something the ground itself emits; it is something we bring with us, inherited from the tales, fables, and stories we absorbed long before we could question them. We frighten ourselves with a script written by other hands.

The unknown, in many senses, is precisely that: we have no inkling of what is out there, or of who that patch of land once harboured or memorialised. But that very lack of knowing should work in the opposite direction.

If I have no association with these graves, no bond with those who lie beneath them, no shared history at all, then why on earth would the dead, or any other world, take the slightest interest in me? Why would they trouble to cast me as the leading player in some living horror film, with themselves as the supporting cast?

Nothing Buried Here

Put plainly, the less connection there is, the weaker the hold it should have on us. Then I found myself wondering about the humorous placebo effect of a tombstone planted as a prank, with nothing buried beneath it, yet still exerting the full graveyard effect on anyone whose imagination readily runs wild. It is proof, if any were needed, that the fear lives in the beholder and not in the stone.

The least association, then, should leave no true affinity, only a sheer, willing victimhood scripted by a fearful mind. How hard it is to unlearn the tales, fables, and stories of ghosts, ghouls, and banshees. On that night, I also knew that if I were confronted with anything, I would engage with it and stand my ground.

The Voice in the Dark

Then, out of the recesses of a nearby building, someone appeared and said hello. This time I had the presence of mind not to jump out of my skin, and as I made sense of it, I realised it was a homeless man. He most certainly had not come from the graves; and if he had, it was nowhere near as bad as I had imagined.

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