A Ghastly Correspondence - Letter 5
In Which I Share My Scariest (Mostly) True Ghost Story
This is the fifth 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 unnerving Letter 4 here:
Jordan,
Wow. Your last letter (Letter 4) was unnerving, unsettling, and uncomfortable as it dug under the uncalled for bravado of scoff that is my ghost-mocking heart. Your epistle impressed me with its honesty, its questions, its language, and its content. In trying to make sense of it, my thoughts have split into two seeming (but not really) distinct responses:
Everyone lies.
Jesus Christ! (I mean both a cry for help (and callback to my Letter 3 Ouija board chat disrupted by praying experience) AND the more Boomer usage as a synonym for ‘WHAT THE FUCK!’)
The Scariest True Ghost Story I Know
In between my AmeriCorps*NCCC years, I worked as a cabin counselor at a school-trip-meets-camp program that hosted 3 day overnight sessions for Maine junior high school students. The program was a mix of ropes course leadership challenges, nature walks, and positive self-esteem/anti-bullying activities. My role was being the responsible adult in a cabin with 15-20 boys at night. Most of these kids had never camped before. Some may have never even slumber partied.
One night, a kid asked if he could pretend to discover a letter that he wrote pretending to be from a camper the previous week. The letter warned about a ghost, a woman in white, that walked through the woods beside the cabin, singing a mournful tune at 10:00 pm every night.
He asked me at 9:45 pm.
I said sure. Seemed like a good prank.
I grew up attending Boy Scout camps where we told spooky stories around the campfire. In Worth Ranch, there was a story about a mad scientist’s escaped experiment - a gorilla whose head had been surgically replaced with the head of a woman, who roamed the woods looking for her children. (“Don’t hike alone!”) There was an “Oooo-ah bird,” who laid square eggs and whose wingspan was the size of a pterodactyl, able to fly off with smaller boys. (“Don’t hike alone!”) At night, there was the sound of drumming from a slaughtered Native American tribe, returned from the dead and hungry for revenge. (“Don’t hike alone at night!”) Actually, the camp did have a “bum bum bum bum” echoing through its woods at night, but the older boys knew it to be from the underground oil pipes. Finally, there was the mist that creeped along the river in the morning, which would snatch away anyone who camped on its banks and littered. (“Leave your camp better than you found it!”)
So when I told the boy he could find his fake note, my thought was spooky stories are a part of the camp experience.
He “found” the letter stuffed in the boards of the bunk above him. He called the other boys around him and handed it to another boy to read out loud. When that boy read ‘look out the window around 10:00pm,’ the boys noticed the time on the clock hanging above the screen door of the cabin.
“Oh my god, it’s fate,” one gasped.
The boys rushed to the windows. Someone shouted, “I see something!”
Another boy screamed, “I see white! I see white!”
A third boy yelled he heard whistling from outside.
I heard sobbing. I turned around. The mastermind, the boy who wrote the letter, he’s bawling. Tears ran down his cheeks as he struggled to catch his breath. I asked him what was wrong.
“I’m afraid of ghosts,” he whispered, gripping my wrist.
I chuckled, unsure how dedicated he was to his ruse.
Another boy shouted and pointed out the window, screaming, “There! There! Look there!” and the instigator flinched.
I realized his cowering was no act.
“You made this up!” I whispered.
“But someone saw something in the woods!”
“He’s making it up, too!” I whispered.
“No, why would he do that?” the instigator cried.
I whistled to get the cabin’s attention. I told everyone to calm down. I told them it was a prank. I told them there was nothing to fear. I asked the terrified mastermind to confess. He hung his head and spoke softly in starts and stops and between wiping his eyes and groaning, he finally admitted that he wrote the letter. The boys got back in their bunks. I turned off the lights. In the dark silence, laying in my bed, I felt their doubt, heavy like a blanket, press down on me. They thought I was lying.
Looking Back at this Obstacle to Belief
What got me most, what haunts me still, was that the boy who designed the scare terrified himself and I, the by-way-of-permission collaborator, could not talk him out of his self-inflicted fear.
And it’s not just how I understand ghost stories that this experience distorts.
Your Dear Friend Lisa
So, regarding your dear friend Lisa? I believe her. Mostly. Why shouldn’t I? It’s not like everyone lies to each other and to themselves all the time. But also? My guess is years and years and years from now, one of the boys will confess they played a cruel prank, including resetting the clocks while the girls were in the bathroom. Because somedays in some moods I am convinced that everyone lies all the time to each other and to themselves.
I’m curious though, did she tell you how the experience has affected how she lives her life today? Like, does she refuse to go back to her childhood home? Does she burn sage or hang iron or line all her entrances and windows with salt?
(Yes, I was a big fan of the TV show Supernatural and learned all these defenses from the handsome characters of Sam and Dean Winchester).
However
When we started this exchange, I hoped to avoid discussions of faith so I would not alienate my religion averse readers. Then I foolishly shared ghost stories from my own lived experience and I cannot be honest without acknowledging how I understand myself and the world where I love without admitting the all-encompassing role of my own faith.
If I’m being honest, the thought of ghosts flitting about removes the sting of death and undermines the doctrine of the resurrection, so I’m always going to doubt stories of hauntings. But a quick google search reveals mainline denominations and the Catholic church taking a much more open, eh, who knows, God does what God does and sometimes it gets weird, shrugging attitude.
I’m willing to concede that reported hauntings could be angels (good or fallen) playing dress-up as ghosts. So maybe that’s what happened with your friend Lisa? You mentioned she was a Christian? My hope is that her scary experiences were necessary to grow her faith. I don’t know if this view is explicit in any catechism, but I like to imagine the devil (or other fallen angels) intent on doing evil and cursed to find their every action only resulting in good.
Alternatively, have you read C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce? It’s one of the few books I wish I reread once a year. The influence of his allegory on my understanding of heaven, hell, earth, and how I view my neighbors and myself cannot ever be over-emphasized enough. The set-up of the story is that the damned can visit heaven whenever they want; Lewis then presents a series of character studies to show how quickly any of us could prefer the comfort of our own eternal solitude. Lewis makes clear in the preface and the closing that no one should build a theology around his dream-like vision; but I’ve yet to come across anything that makes more cosmic sense to my existentialist leanings. At one point in the allegory, a character mentions that when the damned get bored, sometimes instead of vacationing to heaven, they visit earth and amuse themselves by haunting the living.
So, when I hear a story like Lisa’s that seems too sincere and detailed to dismiss - well, then, shrug, I guess I’m (very) reluctantly willing to allow that explanation as well.
Back to My Story (and More)
I began these letters as a request to collect (mostly) true ghost stories for a story I was writing that was a framework story of (mostly) true ghost stories. What I didn’t mention before is my plan is to include epilogues at the end for each teller that reframes their story into something darker. So, the Dr. Pepper ghost story? The teller’s dad admits the name for the child they lost before the teller was born had been Charles. Wooo-oooh! And the character who can not/will not/need not believe? He secretly wishes he could because his lack of faith extends to any story that can’t be measurably observed - like the praise of his art or the professions of love from his family. Woooo-OOOO! And also, boo-hoo-ooo-ooo!
Knowing more of my plan, would you please vote on a title!
Other ghost stories I am currently (very slowly) working on?
“Ghost With A Boner” - typical exploration of a haunting as a metaphor for grief, but also hopefully, fun and funny.
“Ma Ma, That’s Not Pa!” - a widow and her daughter get visited by the ghost of their recently deceased dad, but the daughter recognizes the ghost is a pretender and is furious mom doesn’t notice.
Bonus Boos
I made a playlist for this post:
Please listen and enjoy! And if you’ve enjoyed this conversation, please like, and comment, and share!
This has been fun, if perhaps a bit more soul-searching than I imagined when we started. Thank you! I look forward to reading your final letter of this exchange.-Wil
There's a good chance my final letter won't even include a ghost story. There's already so much to respond to here! Excellent penultimate letter, Wil. This has been a real pleasure.
My favorite explanation for supernatural sightings comes from the Matrix 2. They're rogue programs running amok inside the simulation.