A Ghost’s Story

Written by Fred the Ghost with Lesley A. Diehl’s help

As many of you know, I adopted the ghost who occupies our small cottage in a river valley in Upstate New York as my literary muse. My relationship with Fred is an evolving one. Let me explain how and why.

Once upon a time (because isn’t that the way stories always begin?), there was a ghost named Fred, who lived in a house on a trout stream. The little house stood across the water from the local cemetery where all of Fred’s relatives and friends were buried. Fred was once buried there too, but he left his grave, not because, as the myth goes, his soul was restless, but because he was bored. Ghosts don’t have a lot to do in a cemetery, and Fred wanted to have a bit of fun. Fred also had a curious mind. He found he liked hanging around the cottage to watch the families who bought the old place, raised kids there and left to be replaced by another set of inhabitants. He found it far more entertaining than roaming around the cemetery listening to the laments of all the people buried there. He wondered if everyone in the cemetery realized they also had a choice to stay where they were or to amble into the nearby town. He guessed not, so he often tried to tell the others how much fun it was wandering in and out of the houses and stores, listening to the village gossip and occasionally engaging in pranks played on unknowing residents. We’re talking about harmless pranks here because, contrary to myth, ghosts do not do mean things. Of course, around Halloween, most people in the village, like most of us uninformed humans, attributed any odd happening to the work of ghosts.

Ghosts got a bad rap, thought Fred. They were just folks much like those living, but people preferred to make up stories which portrayed them as blood suckering vampires, werewolves, zombies or other baddies. Fred’s ghost friends pointed this out to him and said that was why they preferred to stay on their own territory. Who knew what living humans might do if they caught a ghost? All the stories about ghosts save from that silly one about the chubby, boyish ghost, Casper, made ghosts out to be deserving of the horrible fates imposed on them when humans rose up to destroy them. People tried to kill them, which was absurd, Fred knew, since ghosts were already dead, weren’t they? So, Fred was a careful ghost, spending his days and nights enjoying the company of humans, but letting his presence be known only by leaving the subtlest of hints that only smart people could understand. His pals in the cemetery continued to moan and howl to one another, keeping humans at bay, but also giving the ghosts little to enjoy. Halloween was the only night humans expected ghosts to rove around, but given the frightening stories told by humans, the ghosts in the century remained on their own ground, too terrified by the tales to venture forth. Most people don’t know that ghosts are timid creatures and easily frightened.

About a decade ago, a woman (me!) and her husband, both mystery writers, bought the cottage. They had a sense Fred was around because he played some pranks, harmless of course—door knobs falling off, trucks starting up in the middle of the night, an electric fireplace lighting with no one turning it on. The woman found Fred’s sense of humor to her liking, so she took him as her muse. Fred was both pleased and humbled by his role in the woman’s writing and over the years his pranks grew fewer and fewer. The woman kind of missed the events. She enjoyed getting a laugh from Fred’s antics. She didn’t fully understand what Fred’s role in her life could be or what he could teach her. On several Halloweens she wrote stories about Fred’s past pranks and posted them online. Everyone seemed to enjoy them, but Fred was worried that the stories were too much like the usual tales about ghosts—creepy and not truthful about the, ahem, so-called lives of ghosts. When Fred shared his disappointment with his cemetery pals, they told him it was better that the stories kept living humans from feeling too comfortable with ghosts and invading their ghost lives. Afterall, they told Fred, humans were really the ones who were scary, killing people (which ghosts, of course, do not do and treating others unfairly. And they reminded Fred many humans did not like anyone who was not like them, and ghosts by virtue of their nonliving, nonthreatening, keep-to-yourself nature were very unlike humans.

“They can’t kill us,” said Fred’s friends and relatives, but they can interfere with where we live.” Sometimes they did, defacing grave stones and tipping them over thinking the ghosts could only get them back for the destruction on Halloween. Actually, there was no way the ghosts could retaliate. That wasn’t their nature, contrary to all those ghost stories. “Best to keep the humans worried and frightened of us,” said Fred’s ghost buddies.” How would you like it if they started to wander around these grounds all the time?”

Fred thought about that. He would like it a lot. It meant humans would come to him and he wouldn’t have to cross the stream and get his feet wet doing it. He pointed this out to his friends and also suggested that knowing more about others who are not like you was one way of learning to like and respect them.

So, this story, my friends, is the one Fred reluctantly agreed to let me share with you. Now that you know the nature of ghosts, Fred hopes you will not abuse this truth. He hopes you will come to know him and his kind and, by understanding them, help rewrite the prejudice living humans have against ghosts. Of course, there will still be those who treat ghost’s haunts poorly, but there are others who like to take a walk in the cemetery, breathing in the autumn air and enjoying the leaves changing color. Fred hopes reading his story will lead all of us to become more accepting of those we do not yet know or understand. Dress like a kind human on Halloween and always, always avoid tricks that harm others. Fred will be watching you.