The Dead Road

 

I wasted some time the other day reading negative reviews for one of the paranormal reality shows I watch. I don't know why I do this -morbid curiosity? Just to see what the nonbelievers think? Maybe even to see if I agree with any of them? At any event, I read one particular sentence that stuck in my head. Not exactly verbatim, the reviewer complained that "every house this medium goes to is haunted.The first thing I thought was, Well, duh. She's been hired to go there because the owners are having a problem. Of course it's haunted.

The second thing I thought was a bit more disturbing. I came across an idea, at some point in my life, that EVERY place is haunted. That there are drifting souls who haven't quite crossed over, or who have and then have come back for some reason, present EVERYWHERE. There's a thought to curl your hair. The dead are present everywhere.

That would explain why new construction can be haunted. Why empty, undeveloped fields can be haunted. Why train stations, movie theaters, schools, and garages can be haunted, although I admit some of that seems a bit strange. I mean, really, if you crossed over and were no longer limited by physical dimensions, would you spend time hanging out in an empty field or someone's garage?

However, if people from beyond the veil are just passing through, that kind of explains why any place could have a spirit or ten. (It's the ones who keep coming back, or who never leave, that become problematic, I think.)

My house must be like Grand Central Station. People in and out regardless of doors and locks. Presences that knock on my walls or shift things in the rooms down the hall or perhaps do no more than cause a passing draft of cold air could all be wayfarers along their particular journeys. Why my house would be included on that path is beyond me at the present moment, but anything is possible. I guess it's sort of like the fact that a lot of states in this country look to me like places to pass through as opposed to places to set up housekeeping. Life is frequently described as a journey: maybe death is, too. And so random folks wind up slipping across my property, never mind the house in the middle of it, on their paths to elsewhere.

If I must have hauntings, I guess I'm lucky that I'm not dealing with a permanent resident, so to speak. Not like in the house where I grew up. I'd guess we had at least three permanent residents there, and one of them was not very nice. In my current house, hopefully if something like that turned up, it wouldn't be here for long. Fingers and toes crossed.

I tell people all the time that I firmly believe that everyone has a ghost story. 

But it's a lot more disturbing, having thought about it for a while, to consider the idea that every place has a ghost.