phantom feelings.

a deep dive into all that outlasts us.

Hello hello, dear friend of mine,

Long time, too little chat. <3

I thank you so much for allowing me to take September off for writing and my own version of NANOWRIMO (flawed as it was).

Have the leaves begun to change where you are? Are there any left on the branches at all? Is it summer in your hemisphere? 

I realize, as we voyage into this month of haunted houses, carved pumpkins, and ballooned witches in the yard, that I’ve written poems about ghosts and have a collection of poetry on my antique photos, but have never talked in length about my fascination with them. What better time than our autumnal present? 

The veil is thin, the candles are lit, and I’m hoping, as I always do, for a visitor to say hello.

I’ve grown a foot or four, but few interests in my life have changed since childhood: writing, nature, ghosts. I’m very much still a wide-eyed child, clutching a local ghost story anthology to my chest, asking anyone if they have a story or experience to share whenever I get the chance.

My love of ghosts derives from three main factors:

• Humans

• History

• The afterlife

The first two are difficult to untangle. 

I love the idea of ghosts because I love people. 

I love people because I believe the hearts of most are good, and because I love their stories. Yes, our stories overlap in plot lines, in motives and devices (money, love, fear), but it’s the details that really hook me. All your own, all unique. What did you think about your childhood? Why did you move across the world? How do you spend your time alone? No stories, like personalities, can be precisely the same. That’s the meat of what I want to know, and what I could never tire of hearing about. I want to know, to observe, to learn as many people as I can. 

This is quickly where my love of history and love of humans merge. Give me all the dusty postcards, stained hand-written letters, and stuffed scrapbooks; fleeting moments of a stranger’s forever. 

A ghost is a story, an entire life that doesn’t fit neatly in the ground. History that has not washed away.

I thumb through my antique photo collection and try to squeeze into someone else’s shoes — a time where this wasn’t a marvel as a historical document, a tintype, or a black and white portrait. These were simply beloved, and at times, expensive keepsakes. Their subjects weren’t creepy, stoic strangers (maybe if their expression remained after the portrait was over) or beautiful, but cursed young mysteries — they were photos of a parent gone too soon, a nervous daughter before her wedding day, an annoying younger brother that lived by the coast. These weren’t singular people as they were photographed, but connected. In love, maybe. Worried. Under the weather. Photographed with a song stuck in their head, a hangnail, or broccoli wedged between a back tooth.

It’s interesting how much more our photos say of us now that they can happen anywhere, as opposed to being confined to a portrait studio or traveling photographer. I can show you the desk where I work. Here’s the concert of my favorite band. Even when not focused on setting or craned above for a bird’s eye view, there’s a lot that can be gained from context clues. A shirt bought on a trip to Yosemite National Park. A tattoo of a dog’s pawprint. A lock of hair dyed purple. A look of surprise or a smile that doesn’t touch the eyes. 

I am equal parts demystified by this sense of otherness, but enthralled to know them all the better, any way possible. 

That’s why, and you can laugh if you like (I sure do), my dream is to lie out on the carpet in the hushed witching hours of early morning, leave a record running low, and ask if anyone’s up to chat. (Safe to say this routine was thoroughly put to the test during the pandemic.) I’d be happy just to listen. Who were you? What did you love? What was the special dish you requested for any birthday? 

A ghost is a memory. A whisper trapped in amber.

A ghost is a longing that cannot be buried.

I wrote The Ghosts’ Share of Rent while exploring what might stay the same over the centuries that divide us, but I also want to ask these ghosts, if they’re here, if they’ve been poking a head in now and then to check — how have things changed?

Whenever the season turns to colder evenings, I fall back into ending mine with a classic movie. Gaslight. It Happened One Night. Of Human Bondage. Arsenic & Old Lace. I study the settings, their surroundings, the objects that made up their everyday: the candlestick phones, the gas chandeliers in Gaslight, trolleys, Oldsmobiles, or any train’s dining car.

I study their faces, their movements, their voices, and cadence, much like how I return to my tin case of old photos with questions. Did you feel like I do now? How did you spend a Tuesday night when you were my age? What were you afraid of? Do we all — have we always — poked at what we can’t know? 

At last, of course, there’s an aspect of what a ghost might say about the afterlife. What we can discern about what awaits us at the end — a way to visit those we leave behind, to keep a watchful eye, to say goodbyes, to exist, in any way at all, after a last breath. 

I understand the idea of a ghost would not be a hopeful thought for everyone. An apparition might instead be translated as devilry, suspicion, or a sign a loved one is stuck outside the gates of paradise, depending on faith and religion. But, if they do exist, I can’t imagine that it’s bad practice to counter that with: something unfamiliar does not equate to ill-intent.

As a child growing up Mormon (or LDS), so many teachings at the time promised that Earth was just a trial period for what might lie ahead, (…depending on what level of heaven you get to, but I won’t go there 🫠). There was never a description of what heaven might be, or what that existence might consist of (other than general happiness, being with God, and if you’re a woman, continuing to bear more children).

I wasn’t interested in a life in the clouds. It was horrifying to think that all I had come to cherish about this earth — its heaven-piercing mountain peaks, dancing mists, soul-nourishing sunlit autumn days, the comforting smell of soil, my deep admiration of animals and trees — was little more than a practice area I “wouldn’t have to worry about returning to.” Heaven didn’t seem like a place I wanted to be if it meant parting from this. 

How human — to cling to every experience tightly enough, not even death could thieve memory from our hands.

The older I got, the more my idea of heaven or an afterlife branched off from what I was told, evolving to its current hope: maybe heaven would look a little different for everyone. Maybe heaven was comprised of whatever would bring that person the most joy. An orange grove cultivated over generations. A boat drifting gently out at sea. Taxes and a laundromat. 

For me, I do hope I get a chance to hang out here a little longer. Walk the world in quiet. Watch and learn and love (and if my ghostly form permits, help) people I never had the chance to meet. Listen to the sounds of an empty house. Drift in the wind, terrain to terrain, country to country. Spend a few years sitting by a tree and watching the time pass.

Since I am mostly made up of yearning and sighs anyway, I think I could make a good ghost.

Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.

— Oscar Wilde

A ghost is a poem. A love letter. A wish to never stray too far. 

If they are still here, I imagine those who are gone would want to see us beyond our grief. 

We would want to see them because we miss them, because there’s so much to share since we’ve seen them last, or because it is a hard pill — moving on, no matter how long it’s been. A loss so wide and scalding, it rattles the dark and wakes what’s gone. A love so patient and knowing, you feel from beyond, wherever they are, that they’ve saved a spot for you.

I’d imagine the dead’s reasons to see us would be much the same, with the exception of hoping we have moved on and healed; that we continue to live.

Of course, this is the struggle, when grief is both a gift and such a heavy shadow. We don’t want to move on without them. We don’t want the change. To be happy again feels almost like a betrayal. But we have the time, the life in our lungs yet to experience it. After all, who wants the ones they love to never know joy again? 

A wishful thought perhaps, but somewhere, all our prayers pointed toward the sky, our pleas to connect are met with I’m here, I see you, I feel what you feel.

It would make sense that the ambiance of life, like a low song or television rerun, would be a comfort to these specters. Waking in the dark to hear the bus go by or a distant plane overhead. This is why, whenever I visit cemeteries, I’m often armed with picnics, notebooks, art projects, and music. A lulling promise: This all keeps going. You haven’t missed much. The leaves are burning bright reds and purples in the trees. I miss you. I wish you were here. I’ll see you sometime. 

The ghosts swarm.
They speak as one
person. Each
loves you. Each
has left something
undone.

— Rae Armantrout, Unbidden

In one form or another, a bulk of my favorite movies, books, poems, and a solid collection of art in my apartment, contains ghosts. (Or rather, features them.) The more I step back to notice, the more blaring it is: what has me so endlessly curious about this? Is it all that ghosts could illuminate about the hereafter or what we’ve made them symbolize from where we stand, right here, hearts still beating? What is it exactly I’m looking for? Evidence? More time? A Friend?

I could talk until I’m blue in the face about ghosts, but I’ve never seen one. It’s hard not to wonder if it’s because I want to see one so badly that I won’t. 

I have little experiences, made up mostly of dreams, but as you can tell, nothing substantial enough to warrant deleting all mentions of skepticism here. As deeply fascinated as I am, I don’t know if my belief is more than a pair of crossed fingers. Evidence or not, I know my lifelong curiosity isn’t going anywhere. 

When we first started talking from across the country, my partner and I would watch the same movie at different times and send each other our notes. I remember, for 21st Century Women, one of his notes was just the simple exclamation: love and grief and love and grief and love and grief and love and grief !!!

Though I was already falling hard for him, it solidified a shared understanding, “Oh, he gets it. Yes. Yes, exactly. That’s what all of this is about.” 

Boil this entire “life” thing down to its bare essentials, and that’s what we’re left with. Love and grief. Family. Relationships. Friendships. Adventure. Art. Poetry. Money. Dreams. Sex. Nature. Love and grief and love and grief and love and grief.

What is more ghost story than the two things that outlast us all?

Thanks for listening.

with love,
schuyler (sky-ler)
ghost hunting equipment fund (venmo): schuylerpeck

hauntingly good media recommendations:

playlist: a ghost haunting the radio

book: From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty 

poem: Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you. by Gabielle Calvocoressi

poem: Shaking the Grass by Janice N. Harrington

poem: Death comes to me again, a girl by Dorianne Laux