This is the third letter in a six letter correspondence series between writer J.E. Petersen and me. Links will be added as the letters are published: Letter 1, Letter 2, Letter 3, Letter 4, Letter 5, and Letter 6. Read Jordan’s Letter 2 here:
Reconsider the Bark, Redefine Ghost, Doubt Our Doubt
Dear Jordan,
Don’t dismiss your friend’s canine ghost story so quickly! What your friend heard as a bark might have been, in fact, an eloquent speech, full of alliteration and inner rhyme, but one that may have unfortunately had to be condensed and distorted to travel from the spirit dimension to our own. If I remember the science-fiction of angelic beings in C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy, their bodies move so much faster than our own that they appear invisible to us - perhaps the best example of this (possibly questionable) physics is a superhero speedster, like Quicksilver of the X-Men. Your friend’s ghost dog could have been any Being imaginable making actual noise, but moving at such a quick rate that your friend moving in a much slower state experienced it as a bark.
Or have you considered the ‘everything is fairies’ explanation? That aliens, ghosts, etc. are all contemporary interactions with this world’s hidden Tinkerbells, described in medieval texts as using their “glamour” to trick us into seeing whatever they want, like Professor X telepathically creating images or sounds in your head! The ghosts in Netflix’ The Haunting of Hill House seem very much of the type that create sight and sound and other sensory illusions in the minds of the haunted, rather than engaging with the physical world like you or I.
Or maybe, most probably, yeah, it was a real dog that ran off. But I’d wager in addition to the noise, your friend felt some change in the atmosphere, some sense of unusual presence that caused him to remember the moment as more profound than us skeptics want to allow.
Incidentally, skeptic gets haunted is my favorite genre of ghost story! Let me recommend my absolute favorite (and conveniently, thematically relevant). It’s a memoir piece by Chuck Palahniuk, reprinted in his nonfiction collection Stranger Than Fiction as ‘The Lady,’ and also available (copyright questionable) here. It used to give me chills every time I read it. You should read the whole thing, but if you can’t, here’s a picture of the end that always hits me BOOM in the heart, and which also captures what I think is my biggest struggle with ghost stories.
I just reread it. Did I say it gives me chills? I meant to say tears.
All right! Back to our project of sharing (mostly) true ghost stories!
Consider the following true ghost stories that - while specific - I don’t believe are unique.
Measurable? [shrug]
Observable? Oh yeah.
Consistent? I’d argue that while the individuals involved don’t experience recurring hauntings, the stories seem fairly common.
I still lean to disbelieving in ghosts. But the more I explore, the more I worry the question might need to be reframed from ‘why do these haunted believe?’ to ‘why do I not?’
Bethany’s Story
My friend Bethany said her mom raised her to not fear ghosts. Her mom said ghosts were comforting, like old friends checking in, and if you saw one it was because you were special. I asked Bethany if her mom saw many ghosts. Bethany said, “I didn’t think so growing up, but you don’t know it’s weird until you tell someone else and discover no one else’ parents ever talked to ghosts.”
I asked Bethany if she ever saw a ghost. “Only once,” she said. “And it was kind of a disappointment. I woke up and knew someone else was in the room. At the foot of my bed stood a little girl. I didn’t feel comforted, but I also wasn’t scared. I said hello. I asked her to tell me her name. Then I looked away for a moment and when I looked back she was gone.”
I asked Bethany if she hoped to see that ghost again.
“Well, not that one. She was boring,” Bethany said, laughing. “But yeah, sure.”
“I’d like to see a ghost again sometime,” she said. “Because I feel like I was cheated, not feeling anything, neither comfort or fright. Like, what was the point? Shouldn’t seeing a ghost mean something? I did not feel special. I definitely did not feel comforted.”
“What does comfort you?” I asked.
And my friend Bethany laughed and said, “Well, that’s one explanation.”
What Won’t I Do to Stay In the Presence of a Pretty Girl’s Smile
During Welcome Week at my university, First-Year-me met a girl at an event at the Student Center. Me and another boy followed her back to her dorm room. Me and the other boy were friendly with each other, but each hoped the other would leave. You know how it goes. He would tell a joke and I would follow-up with a better one. He would find some reason to flex and I would roll up my sleeves and do some pull ups from the door frame. This girl we were following, she seemed to really enjoy our competitive and escalating attention.
From under her bed, she pulled out an Ouija board. She asked if we had ever used one before.
“I love these,” he said.
“Let’s do it,” I said.
But I had never touched a Ouija board before. Once in the high school choir room, my pinky finger had joined my classmates’ to raise another student while we chanted “light as a feather, stiff as a board,” but I’d never tried to talk to the dead. I had tried to repeat the “light as a feather, stiff as a board,” trick on a Minnesota island with my Boy Scout patrol during a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters; but it didn’t work. I assumed the island was more sacred ground than my choir room.
But here in this dorm room, first week of college, pretty girl smiling at me, some other dude thinking he’s braver, some other dude waiting for me to leave - no way. I didn’t believe in ghosts, but I could pretend.
We put our fingers on the triangle. The girl said the ceremonial hellos. The room was quiet, except for our nervous breathing. She asked if anyone is there. And, of course, the triangle moved to yes.
Have you ever played with a Ouija board? Has anyone reading? I know being afraid of them is easy to mock. But I won’t mock you for being wary. In fact, I implore you - ghost skeptic I may be - please, please, please - don’t ever do it.
The triangle moved, but it didn’t feel like anyone of us was moving it. Everyone seemed equally shocked when it jerked suddenly across the board and paused over a specific letter. The spirit “selected” three letters of its name before I got scared. I prayed. Silently, in my worried heart I pleaded, “Please Jesus, Stop This.”
And the triangle stopped moving. The girl’s pretty smile faded.
“That’s weird,” she said.
It was weird. If the triangle had continued moving, I could have gone back to my dorm believing either the girl or the boy had been moving it. But the triangle stopped the moment I prayed. And I wasn’t even gung-ho Jesus yet! That would come the following year. But at the time, I did pray when I was scared. And this was the first time it seemed like I got an actual answer.
“The spirit must have left,” I said, standing. “I should go, too.”
And I turned away from the confused pretty girl and the smirking boy, and I went back to my dorm alone, glad to take the L.
Something Resident Assistant Training Doesn’t Cover
My junior year, my second year as a Resident Assistant (RA), a girl from the second floor of my building ran through the hall and down the stairs onto my floor, screaming in a t-shirt and her underwear. She ran into one of my residents’ room, pushed my resident into the hall, slammed shut the door and locked herself inside. When I arrived on the scene, my resident was banging on the door of her own room, shouting, “Let me in!” and the girl in distress inside was shouting back, “He’s after me!”
I told my resident I would get the master keys. She told me the girl inside wasn’t wearing pants. I called the female RA on the fourth floor for assistance and my Resident Director. Eventually, we also called campus police and the paramedics. When we finally opened the door, the girl in distress was terrified. Wide eyes constantly darting around us, searching, searching, searching for the man after her.
The tragic reveal? The man after her wasn’t another student, wasn’t a man she’d ever physically met at all, but was the spirit of a man she and another student on her floor had chatted with during a seance in her room the previous week. Other oddities of the incident: papers left on the desk of the girl in distress had two distinct handwritings, with one much more scribbly and childish. The girl in distress had also unraveled a cassette tape as she ran down the hall screaming. The student who had held the seance was defensive when questioned, worried the girl in distress’ actions might make her a pariah in the building. “I was only trying to help,” she said. “She seemed like she needed a friend.” In my duty report of the incident, I wrote ‘mental health concern.’
University life seems so idyllic in movies, but it can be incredibly stressful, especially after the initial glow of the first couple weeks recedes and students discover they must navigate innumerable challenges without the support network they probably took for granted back when they lived at home.
However, my Resident Director suggested to the girl in distress’ parents that maybe supernatural forces were at play. I have no idea how the parents reacted to his advice. I would be livid if an administrator hinted my child suffered from otherworldly influences. But my Resident Director was a graduate student at my university’s Divinity School. I thought very highly of him because he thought very highly of me. He once told me that my writing would be a blessing to strangers because I was honest, but for the same reason it would hurt the people I loved most. My junior year, I respected my Resident Director’s opinion more than anyone else’. Our relationship is probably why I eventually became a Resident Director myself. But his telling the parents of the girl in distress that maybe they should consult their priest/pastor/whomever because “maybe more is going on than what the Counseling Center can address,” - well, that bothered me.
But, what did I know? I wouldn’t have said it, but maybe he was right too? Isn’t that the plot of The Exorcist? The doctors, the psychologists, the priests, the police, they all keep offering rational explanations to dismiss the modern mother’s concerns about her little girl twisting her head fully around?
But honestly, I don’t think I want people who believe in ghosts in positions of authority!
Could this be another reason for my doubt: My desire to hold a role where I have power to help others?
And does this mean I got to shrug off my Ouija board answered prayer experience? I’m cool with that. My faith can easily adapt to expecting Jesus to embrace resurrected-me by the shoulder and saying, “that time during Welcome Week, when you thought we answered your prayer? That wasn’t me! That pretty girl was a telepath!”
My Best Guess on Motivations?
Bethany’s mom wanted her daughter to be brave. Bethany now expects an unpredictable and supernatural-filled world, and struggles to be content with the predictable and material world we all live in.
Jesus loves me, this I know! I was weak, but he was strong!
The girl in distress got overwhelmed; she couldn’t run away from the challenges of college life, but she could run from a ghost, so she did. Wanting to be thorough in his assistance, my Hall Director couldn’t live honestly without sharing the totality of his opinion, regardless of how superstitious and naive he knew he would sound. He preferred risking his credibility in the department if there was even the smallest chance his suggestion might help the girl in distress get better.
BONUS: More University Haunting Ephemera
At Indiana University, where I got my MS in Higher Education and Student Affairs, several buildings are supposedly haunted. I remember there being a building you didn’t want to visit at night because, supposedly, you might see the hanging bodies of ghosts there. How did all these ghosts affect my supervisory role as a Graduate Assistant in Residential Programs and Services? On Halloween, we made our RAs include flashlighting the cemetery beside our building in their duty rounds to ensure no drunk First-Year Students were passed out behind a tombstone.
At the University of Maryland where I worked professionally for six years, my RAs often complained about searching for the room where the sounds of a basketball bouncing would be disrupting the sleep of their residents wanting decent rest before an exam. The students who lived there blamed the ghost of basketball great Len Bias who died there in 1986. I made my RAs hang additional flyers about quiet hours.
Google “HAUNTED [YOUR ALMA MATER OR HOMETOWN]”
Did you already know the stories that populated your browser?
Are you unnerved yet?
Are you comforted?
So I guess I always thought I'd never seen a ghost, but actually, over the years, there have been many occasions in which deceased loved ones have visited me in my dreams. Nate, my first kiss. Ryan, my boyfriend for two weeks in the seventh grade. Great Grandpa Otto, who gave me some advice that hopefully I wrote down somewhere.
But the most vivid came in 2021 after my beloved Wendy (cat of eighteen years) died in my arms. My heart still aches when I think about her. It may sound silly, but aside from my parents, this cat had lived with me longer than anyone else! (Still the case, to date!)
To cope, I read about pet owners being visited by the ghosts of their dearly departed fur-balls. I wanted so badly for Wendy to come. And then one night while I was half asleep--I felt her there next to me. Pet her soft fur and could feel her purring. And then she was gone, but the house that had felt so empty after she'd left, didn't feel so empty anymore.
A friend of mine, he has those Alaskan dogs that race in the Iditarod. He keeps seven or eight at a time, and recently one of his old-timers had to get put down. He had an in-home vet come to do it, and the rest of the pack was in the other room. But he started filming when, after the old-timer had gone, the dogs in the other room started howling, like his spirit had just passed.
I'm not a believer in a lot of things, but stories like this bring me comfort. Because I do fear death, and its finality. I don't want this life to end. I love it so much, all of it, the ups and downs.
So are there ghosts?
I hope so.
And when it's my turn to go, I'll be damn sure to tell my sons.
My favorite (mostly) fictional ghost story? Sea Oak by George Saunders: https://www.barcelonareview.com/20/e_gs.htm
What’s yours?