“Who are we really? Combinations of common chemicals that perform mechanical actions for a few years before crumbling back into the original components? Fresh new souls, drawn at random for some celestial cupboard where God keeps an unending supply?
— Barbara Michaels
Ghosts
It’s October—a month in which many trees and plants begin their annual “death” cycle. Stores and homes will decorate with skeletons and tombstones. And the month will end with Halloween and, for people of Mexican heritage, the Day of the Dead. (Oh, how I want to adopt that holiday!)
All this is to say it’s the perfect time to tell you that I have had a few close encounters with souls after their death.
Recently I again found myself recounting my experience at the Alamo in 1979, to a colleague. I was trying to express the feeling I had when I walked in. I can still see visuals in my head. It was, in many ways, just another monument, with glassed-in memories and a gift-shop. But what I saw and what I felt were not in the room with the other tourists taking in the site. I was spooked, but nobody else seemed to notice what I saw—though my parents were aware that something was “off” for me. If not for them I might doubt my memory.
Once in awhile I sense a presence, and infrequently that presence is negative, fearful or angry. Only very rarely do I feel the strong desire to get away as fast as possible.
The Alamo was one such encounter. And a little over five years ago, when apartment hunting here in Seattle, we looked at a place that freaked me out. I still don’t know what was there, but I turned to my husband and told him I had to get out of there. Too bad—the location was good and the rent a lot less than what we wound up paying!
Despite these and many other, mostly smaller and more positive experiences with the other side of the veil, I struggle to believe in ghosts. I am theoretically open but, for whatever reason, skeptical regarding lingering energies, ghosts, what have you. In college, feeling that I must have imagined my own experiences, I took the opportunity provided by a folklore class assignment to go out and interview people about their true ghost experiences. Imagine my surprise that nearly everyone I spoke with had a story to tell—visitations by deceased family, pets, and even some unknowns.
And I recently noticed that disembodied spirits make their way into my writing with stunning regularity. They are always supporting characters. But they are not generally intentional literary devices. They are characters that write their own way into my stories, just as most of the “living” characters do.
In my published short story, Threads of a Tallis, several spirits, some the younger selves of still-living people, linger in a shrinking community, showing the new rabbi glimpses of the thriving community it used to be. Here, I was consciously (at least after the first draft) using those souls as a literary device.
However, the ghost of the dead wife in Living Kaddish, my story that was a finalist (but sadly not a winner) in the Tiferet Short Fiction contest, crept in without my expecting her to—not as a literary device—and the disembodied soul Nivia, in my current novel-length work-in-progress, pushed hard to be part of the story, refusing to be called a ghost, though I don’t quite know what else to call her.
So, I tell ghost stories? I’m not clear on that. But I am clear that the veil is thin between this world and that, and some people are more attuned. Halloween provides a playful time to consider spirits, and Mexico’s Day of the Dead a happy time to invite them for a visit.
No guts, no glory
If readership and recognition is glory for the writer, getting there takes guts. It’s time for me to take it to the next gutsy level with the project I’ve been working on. Seven people have already seen one draft or another, and I will be sending it off to two more people in the next couple of weeks. I’ve also begun to research literary agents, write a query letter, and put together synopses of various lengths to meet different requirements set by different people. It’s nerve-wracking.
I did this once before with another manuscript, got lots of rejections and some good feedback but no bites. Waiting is harder (for me) than rejection. I’m no less terrified this time around. A new manuscript. All the investment I’ve put into it. And knowing it’s a long, slow process.
It’s awesome to know I’m not alone out there. Two of my writing group members recently pitched agents at a writing conference and got lots of requests. We will be in this together over the coming months, sending out queries and pages. Here’s hoping we all get a piece of glory pie.
