A Ghost's Story

A Ghost’s Story

                                by Paul Crehan

“So, Mr. Simmons, I see from your chart that you believe you’re a ghost.”

“Because I am one,” I said.

Dr. Teague wrote something down on the legal pad in his lap. “I see,” he said.

“But that’s the thing,” I said. “You do see. You see me. You see that I’m a ghost.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, noncommittally, because of his training—as in, don’t upset the crazy person. But I wasn’t crazy. I was a ghost.

“Well, if you don’t mind, let me ask you,” Dr. Teague continued, “how do you define ‘ghost’? What is the nature, what are the characteristics, of a ghost?”

“They don’t have material form,” I said. “They were once not ghosts but living things. They’re not made of anything, particularly, and I guess a word like ‘spirit’ captures it well enough. Although, I myself don’t feel like a spirit. I feel like a presence. That’s the best word I’ve come up with, anyway. Presence. I’m a presence.”

“I see,” Dr. Teague said. “But, if I may, the thing is, you must have material form if I am seeing you. I can’t see something invisible—right? And I can touch you: I shook your hand when you entered the office. I hear you, and though I can’t smell you, I did note the smell of toothpaste on your breath when you said good morning—on your breath, you see? In all, you are, in fact, a physical being, a physical entity. Yes—you may also be a presence—we all are, of course, since we’re comprehensibly present—but you’re also a physicalized entity.”

I nodded, taking all this in. Dr. Teague wasn’t entirely wrong. But he didn’t have it right. “Look,” I said, “I understand all you’re saying. But—how shall I put this?—the thing is, I’m a non-conforming ghost. I’ve always been a bit of a rebel, you see. Tell me I have to be this or that, or do this or that, and I just can’t. Can’t do it. Can’t be it. But I assure you, I am a ghost. I may have physical form, although I don’t see it or feel it—or smell it, for that matter—but I am nonetheless a ghost.”

“I see,” Dr. Teague said, and I had to roll my eyes at that—the repetition of a phrase that had no meaning, since he didn’t see at all. But he ignored the eye-roll, or it’s possible he didn’t see it. “Tell me, Dr. Teague continued, “can you do something only a ghost has the capability of doing?”

I flew around the room. Then, I hovered in the air three feet above my chair. I dropped into it. “How’s that?”

“I see,” Dr. Teague said and wrote something on his legal pad. “Can you go through walls?”

I went through the wall of his office to the commissary in his building, retrieved a package of beef jerky from a cupboard, and brought it back to him, coming back in through a different wall (the one where he had all his diplomas and certificates) to more demonstrably make my point.

“Thank you,” he said, giving the jerky a puzzled look, then looking at me, he said, “You didn’t see any jalapeno-flavored jerky? I’d have preferred that.”

“I can go look,” I offered.

“No, no,” he said. “Regular is fine. Thank you.” He put the jerky aside and wrote for a while. “Well, I must say,” he said at last, “that was an impressively evidentiary display.”

“I should imagine,” I said.

“But I don’t know that that makes you a ghost. Maybe you’re just really good at materializing and dematerializing. In fact, that seems to be the case. Doesn’t a ghost have a permanent state? A permanent state of…well, ghost-ness? They’re not shape-shifters, as in, from something visible to something invisible and back.”

“Doctor,” I said, and I exhaled out of frustration. “I’m trying to tell you—even show you—that your idea, your definition, of ‘ghost’ is wrong. It’s…shallow. That’s a good word, actually. Shallow. There are depths of ghost-ness you haven’t thought of. No one has. You’re not alone in that. Your idea comes from the movies, from TV, from ghost stories. But what is all that? Just what people have written; what people have said. Not ghosts. If we could write stories, you’d see how incredibly, how shockingly different, we are from what you believe we are.”

Warming to my point, I leaned forward and said, “And that’s the thing, Doctor. When people say they don’t believe in ghosts, they’re saying they don’t believe in their idea of ghosts, an idea they’ve created out of all they’ve heard or read about what a ghost is—and that idea becomes their reality of a ghost; which, by the way, is no trivial thing, because every now and again you actually see that ghost—the ideated ghost—because every now and again, we do conform to your thoughts and expectations. But anyway, that’s rare—conforming to a person’s idea of us.”

I stopped. That was a lot to give the poor man. “For instance,” I resumed—out of enthusiasm more than prudence, because how much more could the man absorb?—“here I am, choosing to play an institutionalized psychiatric patient just so I can show you—you ‘experts’—how different, how broad, how protean, ghosts can be. Meaning, in fact, shape-shifters—which you have erroneously said we cannot be. In fact, if there were to be one thing other than ‘presence’ which a ghost is, it would be a shape-shifter. We shift into all kinds of things that once were, and can become that thing for however long we like and for whatever reason. I have a friend who was a Beagle for 15 years, and another who was a duck, until he got shot and decided to be a coelacanth—another thing people had difficulty believing in, until they caught one—that is, my friend.”

I sat back. There was so much more I could say and wanted to say, but poor Dr. Teague looked overwhelmed. He looked as if he didn’t know what to say, or do. Fumblingly, he reached for the package of jerky. He opened it. He extended it to me.

Was this some kind of test or a polite gesture? It could have been both, of course. But it didn’t matter, because I did want a piece of beef jerky, and personally, was very glad that they didn’t have the jalapeno-flavored kind on hand. “Thank you,” I said, taking a piece of the jerky.

He took a piece, too. We chewed in contented silence. Well, I’m not sure how contented I was, in truth. I had just shown the man that I could fly and could go through walls, and still he couldn’t grant me that I was a ghost. Couldn’t allow it. There I was, doing ghostly stuff right in front of his eyes, and he basically brushed it off, in order that what I’d done could conform to his idea of what a ghost could and couldn’t do.

I guess I had worked myself up a little bit thanks to these thoughts, because I frowned and said to Dr. Teague, “You know, Doctor, you’re a bit…territorial about your ideas. You guard them by putting up walls.”

He simply said, “No,” he said, “I take walls down, brick by brick, question by question. I take nothing for granted. For instance, just because you can appear as a human and fly doesn’t necessarily make you a ghost. It makes you something unique and certainly surprising. But what is that thing? Is it a ghost, a kind of ghost, i.e., a non-conforming ghost, or something else entirely—which may even escape your knowledge? In fact, you may think you’re a ghost, call yourself a ghost, but how do I know you’re not self-deluded; have become territorial about your own notions of who and what you are?”

It was a fair point. “It’s a fair point,” I said.

“How do you know,” Dr. Teague continued, “that you’re not another kind of creature—or creation—that simply shares characteristics with a ghost? Or, to get at my own way of thinking, how do you know that you don’t exist as a ghost but do as something equally marvelous in one’s conception, or in creation itself? In other words, what if you’ve given yourself the label ‘ghost’ because it conforms to some ideas that you yourself have about ghost-ness? What if,” Dr. Teague said, re-crossing his legs and leaning forward himself now, “you and all your friends have settled on the idea and term of ghosts but you’re something much more amazing. And unheard of. And maybe even relatively new in the landscape of reality.”

“We could be super-ghosts,” I offered. “Ghosts 2.0. Evolved ghosts. The next phase of ghosts, like homo sapiens are the next phase of man.”

Dr. Teague thought this through. “Not a bad thought,” he said. He glanced at the little clock on the end table near his chair. “Well,” he said, “I see that our time is up. And I see on your chart here that you’re to meet with me nine more times—at a minimum. So. Until next Tuesday at 2pm, yes?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m looking forward to it.” And I was. I extended my hand to shake his. We shook. Then the two guards, whom I liked, Larry and Bob, came in and took Dr. Teague away and back to his own cell. Larry took down Dr. Teague’s diplomas and certificates off the wall. He’d bring them back next week for our session, or ‘session,’ in my cell. I appreciated very much this extra-step kindness Larry always took. Poor Dr. Teague, I know he was a really good psychiatrist before he himself went, well, nuts, as they say.

When I saw that everyone was gone from my cell, I disappeared through a wall.

                                               The End