Postscript: on the lack of ghost stories in "Ghost Stories," and because you asked

While I was writing what became a story in three parts, my criticalreader started chirping. Time, it told me, for some bits of these old, forgotten sixth grade ghost stories. In fact, the criticalreader was pinging for one just, here, and here, and here...usually where, if you read the story, you find yourself suddenly hanging with Hamlet through no fault of your own. Hamlet? I ask you. My criticalreader whined and sighed and ground its gears in unfulfilled need for a few snippets, a shred or two, just a splinter or single shiver from the past. People, it warned, are going to be unhappy. And sure enough, as people read they chided gently, for being left out of the stories. Even went so far as to suggest that I was holding out on them, or that if I really were so deficient in the memory department, certainly I was more than capable of fabricating a false but convincing shard or two. You see what happens when you start to make things up?


What do you read, my lord?

Words, words, words.

So, here's the thing. I wanted to read those stories myself. Well, not really read them, certainly not for the reading's sake, but have access to them. Editorial access to bits and pieces that I could use for depth, for color and (I'm sure) humor. Not just mention a little girl on the basement stairs. I hate ghost "stories" like that. I hate grabbing a book called "Ghosts of Old New York" or "Haunted Hotels of the Gold Rush" like it's made out of flourless chocolate cake and I haven't eaten since Thursday only to find that it's nothing more than a glorified a list of sightings. Pish! Those aren't stories! Tell me the Why-and-Wherefores! Who was the woman in the lavender dress often seen walking up the stairs from the lobby of the Geiser Grand Hotel and then turning to pass smoothly out of view and into the wall?! If you don't know but you expect me to pay good American currency for your book, speculate in a satisfying and forthcoming fashion! Do your research, draw conclusions! Make it up, for crying in the night!

But. I could not. Remember. The stories.


I would have had to lie. I really can't make things up like the sixth grader I was. I can remember, if I am careful to work without distractions and with the criticalreader's threshold set at an extremely high tolerance, what certain moments of being in sixth grade were like. And I tried to live in those memories as I put together, from the bits I had, a coherent (I hope) telling of just one strand; one single part of how, from where I set out one day, I ended up where I am. If I had tried to create stories for this new telling I don't think I would have been able to maintain the thread. I would have unconsciously, despite my fervent intentions and efforts to the contrary, charted a new course, made comments and created agendas that just weren't there for my sixth grade self. Simply having grown up to be a bigger person in the boat causes it to sit differently in the waters I sailed as a child, to move more quickly sometimes and sometimes more slowly. I was so curious to find out why on earth I was telling this tale at all, and where on earth we were going to end up. I kept waiting to see what this one was about. I so didn't want to tell the story, I wanted it to tell me.


Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak, I'll go no further.

Perhaps that's how the cast of Hamlet wormed their way onstage. Hamlet, of all the people Shakespeare made, is closest to my heart. Not the character I would most like to play but the one I am most like. Seriously. Ask my children. Of the many ways we two are like, this one most applies here; he also lived in a haunted place and came of age grappling with the ghosts of stories that overlapped, but really were not, his own. These aren't any ghosts any one can tell about with absolute certainty no matter how closely we comb through the bits of their stories. The only person, in a story about clashing and competing stories, who gives everything in his mind and heart to an audience of powerless onlookers is Hamlet. The original blogger. And the essence of a reliable witness. Right?


...unpack my heart with words...

Once upon a time there was a story of a little ghost girl who got stuck, somehow, on the stairs that go down to the basement of the old State Capitol Museum in Fillmore, Utah, and I think she kept some piece of me with her, there below where the living are wont to assemble. Once upon a time there was a little girl who made a rule for herself that she would never tell but then on a day without a thought she told after all. And got stuck in the telling, the real making of stories about dead people. And what came of it. If the people were never born till I told about them, are they still dead?


Who is to be buried in it?

One that was a woman, sir, but, rest her soul, she's dead.

If I'm going to the trouble to make up a ghost for a story and then more effort making a story for that ghost, I will want it to be a good one, both ghost and story. And I will want it to fly free of my personal anchor lines and guide ropes. Otherwise, I'll just stick to the dead people I actually know. And make of their stories what I can remember.

The way I remember them.

Alas, how is't with you,
That you do bend your eye on vacancy,
And with th' incorporal air do hold discourse?...

Do you see nothing there?

Nothing at all, yet all that is I see.




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