Taken Somehow By Surprise

The All-Dressed-Up-and-Going-Nowhere Ghosts

29 The All-Dressed-Up-and-Going-Nowhere Ghosts A question that ghost researchers are trying to answer: If ghosts are residual human spirit energy, why do their full-body manifestations so often include the societal convention of clothing? —from an article in FATE Magazine i. The Body Electric Because we are, oddly, in the flesh, so relentlessly electric— full of pulses and charges and static, even the occasional spark— and because the body is so immutably three-quarters water, it’s a wonder that a lot of us are around for as long as we are, always pushing our luck. We’re the live radio in the bathtub. And because the body generates electromagnetic energy, a field that must conform to the body’s actual contours, then, more days than not, that energy has to look remarkably like us. What fervent, nineteenth-century Spiritualists insisted on calling the etheric body may be more like an animated Jell-O mold of whoever we are, corporeally speaking. And when the body dies and there’s nothing else in the world we can think of, we give up the ghost, as literally as possible. And who’s to say that part of us, suddenly left to its own otherworldly devices, isn’t exceedingly conscious, with newfangled metabolic power? 30 If disembodied spirits have a sense of self-control and can rearrange their energy any way they want to, eyewitnesses might see those dispositions as the spirits see themselves: paler shades of human beings, maybe, but no less modest for that. No less self-conscious than ever. And so: wearing clothes. They’ve dressed for the occasion as a way of helping us, too— we who are still living and so often seem to need it. They’re hoping to be recognized for exactly who they are this time and that, by their clothing, we shall know them. 31 ii. A Less-Than-Full-Bodied Experience Ghosts that can’t quite manage human forms don’t worry about getting dressed. They do what they can as energy less fully realized, more abstracted than defined: a fleeting light, a vapor, a haze, an inexplicable mist or, even more vaguely, a whisper of air, a sudden cold spot in a room where the intangible might be absorbing heat in an effort to energize further, to manifest itself as anything even the slightest bit visible. And it just so happens we’ve wished for that kind of viability ourselves. Whole days and nights of trying, and we understand—a lack of attire is the least of their problems. If you’re an orb, you already know you haven’t got a thing to wear. But still: when researchers are ghosting at the next night’s haunting grounds— presuming ghosts will always show up better in the dark— they should try a more sartorial approach. Along with the requisite latest in spook-finder electronics—the magnetic-field meters, thermal-imaging cameras, motion-sensitive digital video recorders— they should be equipped with needle and thread, some scissors, an infrared sewing machine. A few bolts of cloth—a nice cotton, maybe. Material that breathes. Bring a haberdasher, a milliner, a tailor. Show the spirits something drop-dead gorgeous in a 42-long, in a form-fitting angora sweater, in a snazzy snap-brim hat with a feather in the band—anything a cut above the usual thrift-store spectral garb. Something they might gladly consent to be seen in, now and again, if only they can pull themselves together, somehow try this whole new image on for size. 32 iii. Unfinished Business One school of spirit-realm thought says ghosts don’t see themselves as dead. There wasn’t enough time to try on that idea and live with it, even for a day. They were taken somehow by surprise, or else they surely would have packed a change of clothes. They act as if they’re feeling more alive than ever, flying in the face of the incredibly long odds against their being anything more than illustrations of our mostly wishful thinking. When spirits linger here among us, it’s likely some troubling matter of unfinished business—apparently no small thing when you’re a ghost. Many hauntings have been known to stop completely when someone still alive discovers what’s been left behind, undone— an unaccomplished mission no ghost can possibly see through, alone— and...