Chapter Four
Most of the day was spent at the bookstore reading and taking notes on some stationary I’d acquired from Katie, helpful sales associate extraordinaire. After a few hours I found a few books I felt were somewhat helpful and a lot which weren’t. There was apparently a large market for people to pour out all kinds of strange experiences onto paper. Many of the accounts I had read that afternoon could easily be explained by reasons other than ghosts. Several had talked about feelings and senses, which I could identify with but these reports had referenced these things as their only evidence for their experiences.
Other people had reported how they had always believed in ghostly encounters before they had ever experienced anything. I knew what this was about. It was about people who desperately wanted to believe in something and manufactured their own evidence or twisted the way things were in order to fit their assumptions. One story involved a woman whose husband died of a heart attack and how she believed he was still with her, watching over her. She provided no reason other than she “wanted to believe.”
The book went on to praise the woman for her bravery in believing what others did not. It had talked about how her children had distanced themselves from her because they chose not to believe and how they were misguided because they were not open to the possibility of their father living on in a different way.
I didn’t think she was brave, nor her children misguided. She was irresponsible and had alienated her children because she couldn’t let go of the man she loved and who had loved her in life. It was sad how her children had felt strongly enough about how deep their mother was into something akin to depression or denial to stay away from her. But I also was familiar with the distance which could grow between members of a family when wills clashed.
What was even more sad was that I’d read lots of similar stories to that one in the hours I spent pouring over the books. But not all of the volumes I discovered were that way. Three of them were very interesting.
The first was a book titled Ghosts Are Here by a man named Parker Levenson who claimed to have once lived in a house haunted by a soldier who died in the Revolutionary War somewhere in Virginia. While the book contained a few personal accounts and eye-witness testimonies its particular bent was more concerned with how ghosts and the subject of the supernatural worked in practical terms. It made some key suggestions about why ghosts might appear and how supernatural activity is sometimes sensed within the natural world.
Some of the stuff within the book I found difficult to decipher and perhaps just as kooky as some of the things I’d read in the other kinds of strange stories, but there was also a fair amount of what seemed like logical reasoning and scientific data and observations about the workings of energy.
The book was also helpful in that it introduced me to some different ideas and clarified some terms. Some of the concepts I was already familiar with were things like the “unfinished business” theory which suggests the reason some spirits or souls of the dead hang around is due to a task left unaccomplished in life. This idea was made popular, for example, by movies like The Sixth Sense and What Lies Beneath. But I didn’t know what kind of unfinished business the ghost of a dead little girl might have had. Still, it was an idea I wasn’t ready to dismiss just yet.
Another interesting book was Our Haunted Hearts. This one, like some of the less helpful ones, was composed mostly of accounts of personal encounters with apparitions and haunting. This one, however, appeared much more selective in the stories which found their way into its pages. Somehow the accounts had more of a ring of truth about them. While I was sure the people who had given the testimonials in the other books believed on some level they had experienced something outside of the natural order of things, I had a hard time believing they actually had. The evidence was thin and the claims of some of the people were simply outlandish and self contradictory at points.
In the Hearts book, however, the people seemed more educated and less likely to simply believe in something because of an odd experience here or there. In the few chapters I’d been able to read I was astounded to find one person who claimed to still be uncertain whether what he had reported was truly an experience of a visitation. This made me respect the man for not jumping to conclusions. There had been no apparition in the story or strange disembodied voices. But a number of unexplained phenomena had made the man wonder.
The third and most intriguing book I found was called Ridding Ourselves of the Ghost Myth. The instant I saw the spine and title on the shelf I snatched it up. It was by a former skeptic named Trent Blacker, a philosophy professor in a Midwestern University.
In the introduction the author was very clear that it wasn’t that he didn’t believe in ghosts or haunted houses. He claimed to be very open to the possibility from a scientific standpoint. He was adamant, however, that most of the reported experiences of those things were either self-fulfilling desires, things people wanted to believe and so manufactured reasons to make themselves believe, or flat out lies from people who just wanted attention.
The stated purpose of the book was to introduce a foundation to intelligently approach claims of encounters with, visitations of and witnesses to ghosts. He claimed the greatest problem in the field of studying these phenomena was that it was dominated by cape wearing birthday party magicians and people who knew absolutely jack squat about energy, physics or psychology. There was nothing wrong with a lay interest in the subject, Blacker claimed, but when an adult who never made it past the sixth grade was touted as an “expert ghost hunter” and was able to dupe thousands into attending expositions, séances and purchasing countless books a reality check needed to happen. There was a footnote attached to this statement and I followed it to the reference.
Blacker apparently referred to a specific person who had made a popular splash around the turn of the century. The man, an imposing figure named Jonas Pine, was apparently discovered to be a fraud by a close member of his followers and subsequently disappeared into obscurity. In the footnote Blacker listed a few names and events in more recent history which were of a similar flavor.
Blacker also made the curious suggestion that the traditional way of separating the categories of ‘Natural’ and ‘Supernatural’ was unhelpful. There followed a brief but complex argument which explained how recurring patterns in what could be considered real accounts of haunting and ghostly experiences indicated that, if there really was an unseen realm very close to the world observed on a daily basis by everyone, it would probably be a huge mistake to assume that it was not just another part or dimension of the world the average living person participated in everyday. If that was the case then, Blacker argued, what has regularly been called ‘supernatural’ is in reality simply a further extension of one larger holistic reality, thus making it not ‘supernatural’ but part of the ‘natural’ world.
I checked the copyright page and saw the book had been published only the previous year. I made a note to see if Blacker had a current website. Then I scribbled a similar note about the other books and authors. As interesting as they seemed, I thought I might be able to skip reading an entire book or two for now if I could glean enough helpful information from online articles and blog posts by the authors. It wasn’t something I normally would have chosen to do, electing not to read a book over using smaller digital publications like blogs, but the circumstance also wasn’t one I would have chosen for myself. I knew, however, in all likelihood I would be revisiting the Blacker book in more detail later.
I sat in the café area of the bookstore with six books stacked off to one side on the table and one open in front of me. I quickly decided about half of them were useless and moved them to the bottom of the pile. The others I gave a closer inspection and found them to be more useful. The chair squeaked a bit as I leaned back and stretched, arching my back and spreading my arms up and out. A yawn escaped before I could lock it down. At the last moment I remembered to cover my mouth for politeness as I’d been
taught as a young child. I rubbed my eyes and looked around.
Two other patrons sat at different tables in the café, absorbed in their own reading. A few other people milled about, disappearing and reappearing among the vast and beautiful country of aisles. A forest of books grew out of this landscape and invited people of all ages to enter and become blissfully lost in the foliage and growth of narrative and poetry, fact and fiction. On days like this I wanted nothing more to become so lost.
A small bitter laugh came out at the thought. I reminded myself that I’d never actually had a day like this.
My eyes had drifted to the information booth at the center of the store. It was vacant and my thoughts turned to Katie, the girl who’d helped me find the section I was looking for earlier. I turned over the few mental images I had of her. I thought of the way her clothes formed to the petite shape of her, the dimples I noticed at the corners of her smile, the cascade of her wavy red hair. I also remembered checking her out as she walked away and how she’d seen me.
“Hey, mind if I sit,” came the soft question from behind me.
I half turned in the chair to find Katie standing with a steaming paper cup. My heart skipped a beat the way I imagined a person’s often did when startled out of deep concentration. Then I felt I understood how someone who was caught passing notes in class, too late to hide them, felt. I wanted to cover the stack of books with my hand, but remembered she was the one who had shown me to the section where I’d found them.
“Yeah,” I said uncertainly. “Sure.”
“I’ve got a half hour break, but I didn’t feel like spending it in the room in the back.” She pulled the other chair out a little and folded gently down into it. “Too lonely,” she explained. She smiled at me again, but I thought this one was different from the ones she’d given before when helping me. This one was more genuine, warm.
“Oh,” I replied, not having any clue about what to say. “Okay,” I added uselessly.
An awkward silence settled between us and I searched for something I could use to break it without scattering further shards of discomfort around. We looked at each other for a few seconds, nothing passing between us. I resolved to get it over with, but to try to do so lightly. I chuckled a little.
“This isn’t going very well is it” I asked.
“No,” she agreed, smiling again. “It isn’t.”
“Then let’s try again.” I extended my hand across the table. “Hi, I’m Steve.”
“Katie,” she said taking my offered hand and shaking it gingerly only once. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Likewise.” There was another brief pause where neither of us knew what to say next and so we both ended it with light, embarrassed laughter.
“I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do next,” She confessed.
“That’s alright,” I said. “I’m not really sure I do, either. But I think it might have something to do with me saying something neutral like, ‘Thanks for helping me find that section of books earlier,’ and you’d reply with the equally neutral, ‘Oh it was nothing, I do it all the time.’
“Then you’d ask me what I do and I’d tell you, ‘Well, funny you should ask, because I just got a new job as a night janitor, but for my day job I’m a secret government agent who specializes in anti-terrorism.’ Then you’d say, ‘Wow that sounds really sexy and dangerous,’ and I’d say, ‘Why yes it is, thanks for noticing.’ Then we’d just carry on from there talking about little things like globalization and the consequences of Superstring Theory for potential future interstellar travel.”
“Oh, is that right?” She was laughing but not too much for it to be fake, I noticed.
“Yes, that’s it exactly. And it’s all true, too. Well, except for the whole anti-terrorism thing. But I find it’s a good opener and so I decided to keep it.” I was starting to feel comfortable in my own skin again which is something I didn’t think I was going to accomplish for a long, long time if ever.
“Good thing too, or else I wouldn’t be interested at all. I think that secret government anti-terrorism agents are highly overrated. They seem cool at first, but they’re really all just a bundle of insecurities.”
“Really,” I said, beginning to enjoy the playful banter. “I wasn’t aware of that. I don’t have much experience with them.”
“I dated one in High School,” she said in mock sadness. “They’re all hands and no heart when it comes to love.”
“That’s too bad,” I interjected. I suddenly became aware that this was the part of the conversation in which either I or she would have to redirect away from the silly to the more serious if it was going to become anything meaningful. Having momentarily forgotten about ghosts, answering machines and even about myself a little bit I took my chance.
“So Katie, do you often talk with customers like this or am I just lucky?” I smiled, which was something I hadn’t genuinely done much of in the last half year. It felt good, really good, to be able to interact like this. I found her very attractive. Truth be told, I had since I first met her hours before. But I did more so now that I was able volley a conversation back and forth with her. I discovered she was not only physically attractive but she was smart, too, and that was almost too good to be true.
“Oh, you’re definitely lucky!” She laughed at her own joke. “But seriously, no I don’t talk to any other customers like this. In fact, I don’t how I got up the courage to come over here in the first place. I would never do anything like this. It’s kind of different for me. I just…” She looked off to one side and narrowed her eyes, concentrating on putting it together in just the right way. “I just sort of felt drawn to come.” She looked back into my eyes and added, “Do you know what I mean?”
“I think I do. It’s like there are just some things you have to do and you know that if you don’t you’ll never be able to forgive yourself. You’ll always wonder.” It felt almost arrogant to say that. But I did know what she meant. I knew it almost as if I had pulled it right out of her very thoughts and then had given them back to her.
“Yeah,” she replied with wonder, finding pure agreement in what I had said. “It’s just like that.” She came back to herself then and sheepishly retreated out of her wandering thoughts, looking away from my eyes.
“Hey, look,” I said, trying not to allow her to rethink coming over to talk with me, “I do. I mean, I do know what you mean. Don’t feel weird about it or anything.”
“I don’t. I mean I don’t think I do. I’m just not the kind of person who talks to strange men. I mean, I don’t mean strange like weird/strange, but like, new.” She paused and then shook her head trying to straighten out to herself what she was trying to say as much as trying to clear it up for me. I could tell she was beginning to feel awkward. I knew I was going to have to help put her at ease if she was going to stay.
“No, I understand,” I interjected gently, “Believe me, I don’t think I’d be brave enough to do what you’re doing right now. And I think you’re doing fine. I think you’re doing better at it than I could, even if I did feel drawn to talk to a complete stranger.”
“Really?” She asked hopefully.
“Absolutely.” This calmed her a great deal I noticed. Her embarrassed alarm faded and she gained back some of her attractive confidence that first caught my attention. A new dynamic was born between us at that moment, an established yet infant mutual attraction. It was like the first dawn of an enlightened awakening. Both of us could see something new and beautiful emerge between us even if we could not give name to it yet.
“So,” She broke the silence before it could develop uncomfortably between us, “Did you find anything useful?” This was not a dismissal of everything that had come before. It was her way of acknowledging it all and moving forward.
“Yeah, I found some stuff,” I said. I grew afraid that I was going to betray myself and end this before it had a chance to become anything. I resolved that I was just going to have to try to stay ca
sual and non-committal about what I was up to. It was the only thing I could do.
“What were you looking for?”
“Well,” I began hesitantly, “Just trying to get a handle on ghosts.”
“Ghosts?” she asked in a tone which suggested she wanted to know if she heard me correctly.
“Yep, you know, just ghosts. As in, ‘the spirits of dead people come back to haunt the living.’ Just ghosts.” I felt I had done a decent enough job of keeping it downplayed because I thought I knew it wasn’t something people talked about in polite company. I hoped she wouldn’t want to delve too deep into why I was researching the subject. But I was sure she would seek entrance into at least one further level of my interest. Sure enough she did.
“So, why do you want to know about ghosts?”
“It’s just an interesting idea, I guess. Everybody has their way of dealing with life and death. I just figure this is one of them. Have you ever had a piece of food stuck in your teeth and you can’t get it out unless you really dig? Well, I suppose it’s kind of like that. I just got to thinking about ghosts for some reason the other day and I wanted to satisfy a bit of curiosity.”
This appeared to satisfy her own curiosity for the time being and she shrugged it off. I took the opportunity to divert the conversation in a different direction and asked her what she was reading. She talked about a few different books, some of them were new releases in fiction and some were pieces of classic literature I knew well, one I had even taught back in my teaching days, but I didn’t allow that part of my past to come out.
We talked for a little while after this on the virtues of the printed page and some different thoughts on the advent of eBooks and the small but growing army of new digital reading devices. Looking back on the conversation later, I reflected upon how I was living in a changing world in more ways than one.
“Well, my break’s about over, so I better get back to work,” Katie said and stood up with her now empty paper coffee cup. “This was fun. Short, but fun. I’d like to talk more some time.”
“Me too. I’d like that a lot.” My heart beat faster and faster, hoping the next few moments would develop into that all-important exercise of trust which takes place between interested parties of the opposite sex. I was not disappointed.
“Do you have a small piece of paper?” Katie pulled a pen out of her shirt pocket. I handed her one of the blank pieces of store stationary she’d given me earlier so I could take notes. She scrawled something on it and handed it back to me.
“What is it,” I asked, although I knew very well what it was. I knew it and I rejoiced.
“It’s my phone number. Give me a call some time and we can get together.”
“Great,” I said, beaming, but holding back a flood of joy. “I’ll call you Thursday when I have my schedule a bit more figured out. Does that sound okay?”
“That would be awesome,” She said.
I thought it would too. But for me ‘awesome’ was putting it lightly.