There’s a difference, some parapsychologists say, between ghosts and spirits. Ghosts are the incorporeal essence of people who either don’t know they’re dead (which is why they often seem irritable) or who do know they’re dead, but cannot rest (perhaps due to some promise unfulfilled during life or because their bodies have not been properly interred.) (I write “some” parapsychologists, because “other” parapsychologists won’t even use the word “ghost.” Too imprecise, they say, preferring “apparition.”)
Spirits, on the other hand, know they’re dead and have no unfinished business, but choose to hang around Earth for reasons of their own. Perhaps you wake in the night to see your grandmother, who lives in distant state, standing by your bed, smiling at you. Next morning, you learn she died in the night. That’s a spirit.
All of this is prelude to saying I don’t know whether I’m a ghost or a spirit. Here’s the story: I lived in Washington, DC for eight years, from 1987 (late Reagan) to 1995 (mid-Clinton). Washington’s a four-year town. Many people come, stay for the length of one presidential term in office and move on. Others, like me, stayed eight years. Still others, 12 or 16. It seems like you get the chance to escape every four years and if you miss your opportunity, you’re stuck for another quadrennium. I know only one person who is an actual Washingtonian.
So I left in 1995. Between October 2000 and July 2005, I never visited at all. Now I find myself back again on a regular basis. I guess I’m a ghost. For one thing, like a ghost, I don’t think I’m dead. (I’m hoping that, unlike a ghost, I’m correct in my assumption.) Also, like a ghost, I keep looking for things that used to be there, but aren’t anymore.
They say ghosts get upset because they perceive new people living in their space; all their possessions have disappeared and the new people are arranging the furniture in ways disturbing to the ghosts. (The movie “The Others” gives you a good sense of this.) That’s how I feel in DC. All the streets and avenues are the same, but so many places I knew have disappeared or moved. Either it’s a drug store where a movie theater used to be or a bank branch where I used to buy burritos or the place I remember might even still be there, but full of a different generation of people.
When I visit DC, I have all the characteristics of a proper ghost. I’m invisible to most people. I walk the streets, an anonymous middle-aged guy. I don’t live there, but I’m not a tourist either. Tourists ask me where things are. They used to ask for the National Portrait Gallery (I can guide them to that), but in recent visits, they ask for the “ESPN Zone” and the International Spy Museum. (I know where that is, but I’m not allowed to share that information.) I’m not one of the young people putting in my four years in the capital city nor one of the civil servants, waiting out my 20 years at the agency to get my pension and go back to wherever home is. I don’t know anyone and I don’t expect to know anyone.
Like a ghost, I’m anachronistic. I gape at the new fashions I haven’t seen (and will likely never see) in Vermont. On my last visit, I saw people walk through the streets wearing vests with flat-screen televisions sewed into them. The screens play commercials for this or that establishment. A high-tech version of the sandwich board, but it looks pretty spooky to me.
I wander over to Lafayette Park, across from the White House. I remember when traffic used to actually pass on Pennsylvania Avenue, but that’s because I have a ghost’s memory. Now Washington drivers know enough to make a wide loop around the area, rather than even bothering to approach the White House and then make the sharp turns to get back to normally-flowing traffic.
I walk across the park and stare at the president’s mansion and consider that I’m not the only living ghost in the District of Columbia, that the Clintons and the Bushes and Cheneys will soon only be ghostly memories in the corridors of the west wing.
Ghost Town
There’s a difference, some parapsychologists say, between ghosts and spirits. Ghosts are the incorporeal essence of people who either don’t know they’re dead (which is why they often seem irritable) or who do know they’re dead, but cannot rest (perhaps due to some promise unfulfilled during life or because their bodies have not been properly interred.) (I write “some” parapsychologists, because “other” parapsychologists won’t even use the word “ghost.” Too imprecise, they say, preferring “apparition.”)
Spirits, on the other hand, know they’re dead and have no unfinished business, but choose to hang around Earth for reasons of their own. Perhaps you wake in the night to see your grandmother, who lives in distant state, standing by your bed, smiling at you. Next morning, you learn she died in the night. That’s a spirit.
All of this is prelude to saying I don’t know whether I’m a ghost or a spirit. Here’s the story: I lived in Washington, DC for eight years, from 1987 (late Reagan) to 1995 (mid-Clinton). Washington’s a four-year town. Many people come, stay for the length of one presidential term in office and move on. Others, like me, stayed eight years. Still others, 12 or 16. It seems like you get the chance to escape every four years and if you miss your opportunity, you’re stuck for another quadrennium. I know only one person who is an actual Washingtonian.
So I left in 1995. Between October 2000 and July 2005, I never visited at all. Now I find myself back again on a regular basis. I guess I’m a ghost. For one thing, like a ghost, I don’t think I’m dead. (I’m hoping that, unlike a ghost, I’m correct in my assumption.) Also, like a ghost, I keep looking for things that used to be there, but aren’t anymore.
They say ghosts get upset because they perceive new people living in their space; all their possessions have disappeared and the new people are arranging the furniture in ways disturbing to the ghosts. (The movie “The Others” gives you a good sense of this.) That’s how I feel in DC. All the streets and avenues are the same, but so many places I knew have disappeared or moved. Either it’s a drug store where a movie theater used to be or a bank branch where I used to buy burritos or the place I remember might even still be there, but full of a different generation of people.
When I visit DC, I have all the characteristics of a proper ghost. I’m invisible to most people. I walk the streets, an anonymous middle-aged guy. I don’t live there, but I’m not a tourist either. Tourists ask me where things are. They used to ask for the National Portrait Gallery (I can guide them to that), but in recent visits, they ask for the “ESPN Zone” and the International Spy Museum. (I know where that is, but I’m not allowed to share that information.) I’m not one of the young people putting in my four years in the capital city nor one of the civil servants, waiting out my 20 years at the agency to get my pension and go back to wherever home is. I don’t know anyone and I don’t expect to know anyone.
Like a ghost, I’m anachronistic. I gape at the new fashions I haven’t seen (and will likely never see) in Vermont. On my last visit, I saw people walk through the streets wearing vests with flat-screen televisions sewed into them. The screens play commercials for this or that establishment. A high-tech version of the sandwich board, but it looks pretty spooky to me.
I wander over to Lafayette Park, across from the White House. I remember when traffic used to actually pass on Pennsylvania Avenue, but that’s because I have a ghost’s memory. Now Washington drivers know enough to make a wide loop around the area, rather than even bothering to approach the White House and then make the sharp turns to get back to normally-flowing traffic.
I walk across the park and stare at the president’s mansion and consider that I’m not the only living ghost in the District of Columbia, that the Clintons and the Bushes and Cheneys will soon only be ghostly memories in the corridors of the west wing.
Maybe being a ghost isn’t such a bad thing.
© Mark Floegel, 2008