Ghost Story

Do you believe in ghosts? We don't have to be talking about the remnants of souls long since passed from the mortal coil. They might be n-th dimensional shadows of beings on abstract higher planes of existence intruding into our reality, or echoes of past and future beings reflecting through temporal refractions, or projections from living people onto the collective subconscious, or any of a number of other possibilities. Death is not the sole causal possibility.

Why talk about ghosts at all? Well, it was just mentioned in my current book, Dick Cavett's 'Talk Show', and there is a ghostly anecdote in my story bag, rather incredibly! Is it meaningful or simply a coincidence? It is not my decision to make. Are ghosts impossible? Well, never say 'impossible' unless you've tied up the problem in paradox ribbons, but they certainly seem improbable or at the very least ineffectual. Note, as Cavett says, that if ghosts imply some possibility of a soul's existence after death then why be so upset about it?

So, a story. A long time ago, in a land far far away (twenty minutes bus ride north, sandwiches were necessary) your loveable author found himself present for an interview in a retrospectively doomed new shop in Carmarthen. Did I get the job? No, of course not, my interview failure record remains proudly unsmirched to date. In fact, while making a very creditable performance, my gaze was repeatedly drawn to a dark corner at the back. The proprietor must have noticed as he then proceeded to explain how that location had had trouble keeping a shop for a long time, and was in fact partly built over a prisoners graveyard, the part in question being that dark corner at the back. It was a strange interlude, that interview in the doomed shop, with the odd presence in the dark demanding attention. Was there a presence though, or was the window too bright or the interviewer offputting. It's hard to say after all this time, but creepy was the word.

Have I just told a ghost story? There's no way to tell at the moment. One of the truest traits of a good ghost story is the doubt over whether it is a ghost story to begin with. Also, I'm not MR James. For true ghost stories he's the one to read, that trusty medieval scholar and archivist of supernatural scares. There will have to be more on MR James another day, when I've read through more of the 'Complete Ghost Stories'. Yes, ghost stories will be back for Earth Hour 2015. Oh, Earth Hour, there's something else to talk about!

Plans are afoot.

O.