Ghost stories．．．
by rebecca ~ January 12th, 2006. Filed under: Poems & art, Space is the Place.
I had a dream a few years back that an unseen force, shall we call it a ghost?, picked me up by the back of my bed clothes, and I hung placidly in its invisible jowls. Such dreams seem ｓｏ real, physically felt, and I am always wearing exactly what I had chosen to sleep in. I remeｍber feeling at peace…
I have also been visited by an old man, in tattered fisheｒman sweater and knit cap, weaving and laughing beside my bunk at a youth hostel in Lagos, Portugal (housed in a former army barracks on the most SW point of ‘the old world,’ or the place 14th C Europe believed to be the end of the world). I was just 18 and backpacking through southern Europe at the time. I felt ｍｕｃｈ better when two young, female backpackers came in later that same evening, chatting about how relieved they were to have arrived at last, to sleep in bunk beds a few down from mine. When I awakened the next day, I was the only one there ａｎｄ, clearly, only my bunk bed had been slept in.
In my bedroom in our apartment now I awoke one evening to see a Japanese woman with no face in a long white flimsy gown dancing in circles, spinning as she straightened and lowered her thin frame. She transformed into a small boy my son’s age, floating upward with its neck skewed at a sickly angle, as if it were hung. I am not one to be afraid of ghosts really, but I shouted, Go Away!, since the hanging child disturbed me a great deal. My husband burned incense and hung a tiny god’s eye in the corner where the ghosts had been…and ｔｈｅｎ ｔｈｅ ｇｈｏｓｔｓ ｗｅｒｅ no more．．．