This second type of haunting, you can conceive of these manifestations as being akin to a different kind of shadow. Perhaps you have seen the pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the dropping of the bombs? One of these struck me as particularly poetic and beautiful. I may have imagined it. It's a picture of a tombstone, there's the outline of a Buddhist monk fixed permanently upon this monument. It's the shadow he cast as he was incinerated by the atom bomb. His spirit perpetually dwells there too. The process by which that spirit came into being, impressed upon the layers, will have been comparatively similar to that which actually created the shadow upon the tombstone itself. Though it's a psychic disturbance rather than a physical one, the psychic events which create these kinds of spectral manifestations are akin, in intensity, to the nuclear explosions of the corporeal world. I hope this helps you understand the basics of what these things are, I've simplified it for you, considerably. Ghosts are the impressions made by the living upon their surroundings, either etched slowly through repetition or blasted there by the sheer dramatic force of ideas in extremis.
You may ask me, what's the status of death in all this? Corporeal death is nothing much more than a punctuation mark in the existence of a spirit; although it can and often does mean total negation. A shadow, or ghost, ritual or traumatic, may exist prior to death, even prior to the traumatic event in some cases. Sometimes spiritual death may precede actual physical death. This is particularly prevalent among clerics and bureaucrats. Though it has to be said that many phantom scribes scribble away at non-existent desks. They're still frenetically compiling the Doomsday Book.
In some cases a ghost will wail out from the soul of a corporeal man, begging for his death. With Gavin Grey this was very much the case. I was ready to ferry his spirit across the boundary that punctuates the end of life and the start of perpetual glad. I was delighted to assist. You can think of me as a water boatman type insect - perpetually tinkering with the surface of your tumultuous existence with an avarice that's innocent - in that it stems from hunger, not hate. I am not a predator, however, rather a zealous servant and arbiter of fate.
Yes! Gavin Grey was inhabited by a member of that rare species of self-aware spirit. There was a schism in his ego and for years he had been haunted by the self-loathing relegated side of his own personality. The aspect of himself that perceived all the moral omissions and jaded failed schemes in the clear light of day: that saw his own repugnance for what it was. The more he suppressed these truths, with drink and debauchery, the stronger this facet of his being became. It was only a matter of time before he would overtake him completely. When he stumbled into The Twins' abode, armed to the teeth and befuddled by drink, I was eagerly awaiting him. I merely accelerated an inevitable process with my play. Do not judge me too harshly.
Top of page