Member-only story
We all want to believe in ghosts
Nothing makes us more alive than feeling scared to death
For a while, I lived in a haunted apartment building downtown. Across from a cemetery. The ghost stories didn’t bother me all that much. Unexplained suicides and disappearances. Shadowy visitations in the middle of the night. Whatever. The rent was cheap.
At the time, I enjoyed going to cemeteries to write. It was a change of scenery. Quiet. Being surrounded by all that aged stone helped me think.
Some people take vacations on the beach. Me? I enjoyed driving to old cities and walking around their graveyards.
But then one night, I had the worst nightmare. Awoke upright, screaming, halfway off my mattress with my arm held high overhead. Like something had been dragging me out of bed.
Was that a ghost, or just a night terror? I’d never experienced anything like that before. Hopefully, never again.
Still, it was kind of cool.
And that’s the nature of ghosts. Just the notion terrifies us. But we also like the premise. Something draws us to the mystery. We’re strange creatures. We’ll spend hours watching horror movies and then complain we can’t sleep. A few months later, we’ll do it again.
