In an attempt to acquaint myself with the themes of the season, I spent October watching horror movies, reading spooky books, and thinking about ghosts. I read Shirley Jackson and attempted Stephen King; watched The Haunting of Bly Manor and the original Suspiria; and spent most of my downtime listening to Otherworld, my new favorite podcast about paranormal phenomena.
What I’ve discovered during this time of paranormal immersion is that everyone in my life thinks it’s ridiculous to believe in ghosts. When I push them, they admit ghosts could exist, but they would never truly believe unless they saw it with their own eyes. After pushing further, I often discover that many of them have seen something with their own eyes, yet still don’t believe. They insist they were just children with overactive imaginations, or they might have been dreaming, or they don’t really know with certainty what they saw.
These discussions have forced me to confront that my chosen methods of navigating the world and constructing belief systems are significantly less “rational” than that of my loved ones, a discovery I find somewhat disturbing. I’ve always enjoyed inhabiting my little mythopoetic world, where everything means something and is connected to something else, and anything could be true. It feels right to me. Why shouldn’t anything be possible?