You've probably noticed a change in the name of my newsletter.
Well, Bitchy Auntie has been my muse for years, running her mouth and offering unsolicited opinions about everything under the sun. I figured it was high time I gave her top billing. Hence the new name: Bitchy Auntie's Criminal Musings. As usual, she has something to say about Halloween.
Now, it's a peculiar holiday. We decorate our homes with skeletons, hang ghosts from the trees and pay good money to have complete strangers scare the living daylights out of us. The rest of the year, we'd call the police.
But I've always had a fondness for ghost stories. Especially the ones where the dead have unfinished business.
Have you ever noticed how many ghost stories are actually murder mysteries? Somebody died under suspicious circumstances. The authorities got it wrong, the family buried its secrets and the victim has been trying to set the record straight ever since.
In other words, a ghost story is often just a cold case where the victim refuses to be forgotten.
I remember one such story from my childhood. I must've read it decades ago. I can't recall the title or the author's name, but I remember the story. And, strangely enough, I can still picture one of the illustrations.
It showed a brook.
The ghost was a little boy who'd lived during the American War of Independence. He'd been entrusted with an important message, but he never delivered it. The boy disappeared and was branded a coward.
The truth was that he'd been betrayed. Someone had struck him over the head with a rock and put his body in the water.
For centuries, his ghost waited for someone to discover what had happened. Someone who would listen to his story and clear his name.
Eventually, someone did.
I can't say why that particular story has stayed with me all these years. I've read thousands of stories since then. Yet I can still remember that brook and the terrible injustice done to a little boy who couldn't defend himself.
Now, that was fiction. But what about the ghosts in real life? They're there. Yes, they are. We meet them every day. We just don't see them.
We think of ghosts as belonging to people in their graves. But plenty of ghosts are still walking around in their bodies, desperately hoping to be seen.
Anyone and everyone can be among the forgotten, the invisible. Battered children that no one bothers to check up on. Prisoners withering away in their cells. Artists whose work is never seen or read. Co-workers whose contributions are never acknowledged. Immigrants whose frustrations and disappointments are swept under the rug.
The list could go on.
Remember how, at one point, the issue of the "loneliness epidemic" was all over the news? We heard about it everywhere. But who are the lonely? Who are these people we've been talking about?
Many are ghosts wishing to be recognized.
We can't soothe the pain or ease the indignities suffered by everyone enduring neglect and isolation. But we can recognize the ones in our lives.
That little boy in the story had been waiting for centuries for someone to hear him and clear his name. I read his story more than fifty years ago, and I still remember him.
So perhaps this Halloween, while we're having fun with our make-believe ghosts, we ought to give a thought to the real ones.
Are there ghosts in your life, people waiting for you to see them, hear them, feel their pain? Or are you the ghost in theirs?
This Halloween, see your ghosts. Recognize them.
— Walker
