the Internet.
CHAPTER 12
One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that myriads have believed it—they also believed the world was flat.
Ghosts are not spirits of the dead. Ghosts don’t have innate intelligence. Ghosts are merely the hopes, fears, and emotions of the living, recorded on the psychic plane and replayed in an eternal, endless loop long after the person who inadvertently made that recording is dead.
Such was the hypothesis of Dr. Frederic Haxan, author and paranormal researcher, as typed in a message to me by a graduate student with the self-explanatory screen name SPOOKSCIENCEGUY.
For the past hour I had fruitlessly surfed the cyberwaves, using the keywords “ghosts” and “haunting.” After hopping from one search engine to another, and one crackpot Web site to another, I’d finally stumbled onto this site, sponsored by the Department of Parapsychology at Wendell University (wherever that was).
I entered their active chat room and met SPOOKSCIENCEGUY, KARDECIAN, DOYLEFAIRY, M. BLAVATSKY, and the rest of the “Ghostbusters.”
At last, I could talk freely about my problem. I mean, honestly, how could I tell anyone that I was having an ongoing conversation in my head with the voice of a dead private eye? They were sure to assume I was suffering some sort of post-traumatic stress from witnessing my late husband’s leap.
Going to a doctor was out for the same reason. Diagnosis of nut job might land me in a straitjacket. And forget my in-laws, that’s all the excuse they’d need to take Spencer away from me for good.
I took a long sip from my mug of lukewarm coffee and shifted my gaze from the flickering computer screen to the dark, rain-swept street. An SUV swished by, splashing water on the soggy curb, then the thunder rumbled in the distance, and I imagined storm clouds gathering miles off Narragansett Bay, brooding over the surface of the ocean.
Okay, so “dark and stormy night” is a total cliche, but it really
I was about to pose a question to SPOOKSCIENCEGUY—ONE of the thirteen people now chatting—when screen name DOYLEFAIRY crashed our conversation.
“SPOOKSCIEGUY, YOU ARE FULL OF POO-DOO,”
wrote DOYLEFAIRY in big, bold, irritated letters.
“The 1957 Pevensey Castle incident proved ghosts do not exist. The psychic phenomena attributed to specters are really the work of elves and fairies.”
Elves and fairies!?! I suddenly wondered what planet or dimensional plane DOYLEFAIRY hailed from.
“Way off base, FAIRY,”
screen name VENKMANN flashed a moment later.
“The Pevensey Castle photos are a hoax. That whole incident is about as real as the Cardiff Giant.”
GHOSTHUNTER jumped into the fray, followed quickly by COLDSPOT, WENDIGO, and GHOUL-LISHOUS.
I sat back and watched the argument scroll down my computer screen through bleary eyes, my too-fuzzy brain trying to make some sense of what these participants in the
Terms like “manifestations,” “elementals,” “poltergeist,” “exteriorization phenomena,” and “ur-spirits” were flying—most of them landing somewhere over my head. Meanwhile, the patter of rain against the arched front window was lulling me to sleep.
I blinked my eyes. My computer monitor began to flicker, and the sound of the rain receded. Against the scrolling banter of chat room text, I saw a man’s powerful profile. Jaw square. Fedora pulled low over the eyes.
I jumped, fully awake now. The vision vanished. Onscreen, the debate continued about my topic: sudden visitations from an outspoken ghost.
GHOSTHUNTER suggested an explanation for my “friend’s” problem. (Yes, I tried that transparent ploy, and no one who responded to my questions even pretended my “friend” was anyone but me—evidenced by the fact that they always put quote marks around the word “friend.”)
GHOSTHUNTER said my “friend” might be experiencing a form of demonic possession. This theory was predicated on the evidence that my “friend” was the only person to hear the entity, witness its physical manifestations, and its evil trickery (the upside-down chairs).
GHOSTHUNTER even had two suggestions: read Malachi Martin’s
Gee, what a comfort.
DOYLEFAIRY conveyed that “exteriorization phenomena” like turning over chairs and turning them back again was more indicative of poltergeist activity—none too subtly adding that poltergeists, though known as “mischievous spirits,” could be far more dangerous than the definition suggested—the word “mischievous” connoting, to me anyway, the sorts of things one might see the Peanuts gang doing in a Sunday comic strip.
DOYLEFAIRY also suggested that some “hysterical female” in our household was partly to blame because poltergeist activity required human energy to perform their antics. An anxious adolescent girl might provide such energy—or a mentally unstable woman of childbearing age, in some cases.
How nice, I thought, to be informed that I was mentally unstable by a woman who believed in elves and fairies.
I was getting increasingly frustrated. If these parapsychologists were any indication, then the “experts” in the field couldn’t even agree on the definition of the word “ghost.” How were they going to help me with my “dilemma”? (I will also confess that I seriously began to wonder if I needed to be a Roman Catholic to summon an exorcist.)
Suddenly, a newcomer joined the chat room: WANNADATE. “I’ve got huge breasts and a tiny skirt, and I’m looking for friendship.”
What the heck was that? I thought, supremely alarmed. But before I could type a thing, the entire chat room told WANNADATE to take a hike.
Major obscenities came across my screen before the chat room moderator ejected WANNADATE from the group.
“Who in the world was that?”
I typed.
“Sorry, HAUNTED,”
SPOOKSCIENCEGUY typed back to me,
“every now and then some jerk gets our address and crashes.”
“No problem,”
I typed.
“. . . but elves and fairies are considered elemental spirits,”
DOYLEFAIRY was now typing, amid some sort of parapsychological argument with KARDECIAN.
Okay, I thought. I’ll bite.
