Things That Go Bump In The Night

Not many people know that on the day after Halloween, all the ghosts gather at the historic Overlook Hotel, where Jack Torrance went from psychotic, failed author to ghostly, tuxedoed dinner guest in The Shining.  It’s their favorite go-to.

“

I want to welcome you all!” Jack said as the spirits filled the hotel’s magnificent ballroom.  “And as we say here, ‘Redrum!  Redrum!’”

There was amused laughter all around.  “Boo!” someone called merrily.

“The bar is open!” Jack said.  “Remember, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy!”

“I’ll have a soda pop,” said Casper, the Friendly Ghost.

Most everyone rolled their eyes at the little spirit.  “Well, I need a drink,” said Beetlejuice.  “Bourbon!  Bourbon!  Bourbon!”  A drink suddenly appeared in his hand.

“Just happy to be here,” replied Hamlet’s Dad.  “You know, it’s so refreshing to do some broad haunting.  The fear-induced bed-wetting, the candy-fueled stomach cramps, they’re much more fun than appearing on ramparts, trying to get two losers on night watch to avenge your death.”

“It was a great holiday,” said Dr. Malcolm Crowe, the psychologist from The Sixth Sense.  “I’m really into it, now that I’ve figured out I’m dead.”

“Sure, we had a good night,” said Captain Gregg from The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.  “But we’ve got to face the challenges.  There are things that scare people more than we do.”

The Ghost of Christmas yet to come said nothing, but pointed a bony, wraith-like finger at him in agreement.

“The Captain makes a good point,” said Elvira.  “I was once the lead character in a Noel Coward play, Blithe Spirit it was, and now I’m a cardboard pop-up display for undrinkable light beer.  It’s a long way to fall.”

“We don’t drink that lousy beer,” said George and Marion Kerby, holding martini glasses as they floated near a corner of the ceiling.  “We only drink gin.  Topper’s gin, in fact.  Thank heavens he stocks Sapphire.  Although his Virunga Mountain Spirits vodka isn’t that bad.”

“And I picked up this guy at a dance, and then I ghosted him—” there were groans at the pun “—and all he did was go to graveyard to get his sweater back,” said Laurie, from the ‘60s radio classic Strange Things Happen in This World.

“It’s the zombies,” muttered Virgil bitterly.  “When I was escorting Dante through the levels of hell, did I stop to eat someone’s brains?  Hell no, so to speak.  I mean, you’re dead, why don’t you act that way?  They don’t even have enough class to be ethereal.”

“Absolutely,” said Quint and Miss Jessel from The Turn of the Screw.  “But there’s one place we can go that zombies can’t—a haunted house.  You can board up the doors and windows and grab a shotgun to stop the zombies, but it won’t stop us.  Mysterious pounding in the walls, inexplicable cold spots in the hallways.  They don’t know whether to call an exorcist or the HVAC guy!  But now the most frightening thing about a house is mortgage rates.” 

“That and radon,” the Amityville Horror said.  “It gives me gas.”

“Houses are fine, but for true thrills—haunting a TV set.  That’s the best!” exclaimed the Poltergeist.

There was disagreement.  “That worked back in your day,” said Dr. Crowe.  “But with HD and 4K flat screens, those nebulous images that could be any one of us are harder to hide.  I had a 14-year-old patient who used AI to bring a screenshot of a vaporous being making chilling noises into focus, and it turned out to be a 1-800 Kars for Kids commercial.”

There were tiny shrieks.

“Maybe we should think about other appliances,” said the Amityville Horror.  “Perhaps haunting a refrigerator so it turns vegetables into limp, moldy muck.  Or haunting a clothes dryer so it only produces one sock.”

“Boo!” someone said in agreement. 

Their conversation was interrupted by a fearful scratching on the window.  “What the—” said Jacob Marley, before breaking into a smile and rattling his chains in delight when he saw who it was.  “Catherine Earnshaw!” he said with a laugh.  “How are things on the moor, hon?”

Catherine Earnshaw floated through the wall.  “Anybody seen Heathcliff?” she asked.

“He went that-a-way,” said one of the Ghost Riders in the Sky.

Meanwhile, Banquo sat in a dark corner.  He had held his tongue but could bear it no longer.  “All this focus on scaring little children is what’s wrong with our profession today,” he said. 

“Everything scares kids—zombies, vampires, monsters under the bed, long division.  I wasn’t interested in scaring children.  That’s punching down.  I wanted to scare Macbeth, and I did a pretty good job of it, too.  I just sat there and nobody noticed me except him.  When a ghost gets a politician to shout unintelligible things into the air, he’s had a good day.” 

“Well, that or a political rally,” Elvira said.

“Hey!  No politics, we agreed,” Jack Torrance said.

“I agree with Banquo,” said Hamlet’s Dad.  “Where is the moral mission?  Where are the lessons learned from a life of sin?  Where’s the torment?  I remember when a ghost used to have the moral high ground.”

“All you did was try to avenge your murder,” scoffed the ghosts who haunted Lincoln in the Bardo.  “That’s not the moral high ground—that’s just holding a grudge.”

The Ghost of Christmas yet to come said nothing, but instead pointed a bony, wraith-like finger at an empty coffee urn.  A waiter brought in a new one.

“But when did scaring people become our only goal in the afterlife?”  Virgil said.  “I wasn’t there to scare Dante, I was there to show him around the underworld, right down to the ninth level.  Although that was before Satan created a tenth for  misinformation promoters and

crypto executives.”

“We agree,” said George and Marion Kerby.  “We weren’t there to scare Topper.  He was more frightened of a downturn in the market than of us.  It was cute.”

“What blather!” Marley exclaimed.  “An adorable capitalist in need of relaxation and a cocktail?  Take it from me—I straightened Scrooge’s ass out!  Do you think Musk and Ellison and Bezos need a cocktail party, or a swift kick?  If it were up to me, I’d do them the way I was done--cover them all in heavy chains, wrap bandages around their heads, and condemn them to wander the Earth in search of salvation.  And that would be before they died!”

The Ghost of Christmas yet to come said nothing, but instead pointed a bony, wraith-like finger to the expiration date on a yogurt container at the buffet. 

And so, the argument raged on.  Were ghosts supposed to scare children, like the Amityville Horror, or Quint and Miss Jessel from The Turn of the Screw?  Or were they supposed to deliver a moral lesson, as did Jacob Marley or the Ghost of Christmas yet to come?  Or were they supposed to afflict the comfortable, as did Banquo?  Or were they supposed to enjoy themselves, as Casper, or the Kerbys did?

It was then that a tall, black-clad figure rose in the back of the room.  They all turned to him.  He was the big man, the head honcho, the O.G., the venerable leader to whom they all deferred.  He swung his black cape off his shoulder to reveal a glowing pumpkin head under his arm.

“Look, I frightened Ichabod Crane so badly he’s still failing physicals,” said The Headless Horseman’s illuminated pumpkin head.  “But frightening little children can be a good thing.  Because when a child is frightened, that little boy or girl learns to overcome that fear.  It’s part of growing up.  It’s fine to point out the moral shortcomings of the haunted, or to help the haunted find love or a cocktail.  But our job is to help children grow, and to lose their fear of things that go bump in the night.  Can we all agree on that?”

The Ghost of Christmas yet to come raised a bony, wraith-like thumbs up.

“Boo!” they all said merrily. 

And so, it was unanimous.

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