What Haunts You
October- the month of ghosts, graveyards, haunted houses, and scary movies. Why do we love to be scared so much that we would make a holiday out of it? Holidays are a way for us to break up the everyday drudgery of life, and being scared does shift our focus elsewhere. "No new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace." - H.P. Lovecraft, Ex Oblivione.
Maybe that is why the mind sometimes decides that it's bored, and so it entertains itself by thinking about the same things over and over, like a hamster on a wheel. If those thoughts are wanted, they are called reflective, but if they show up unwanted, they are called intrusive. These thoughts are often memories and can be the source of our feeling haunted year-round. "Real hauntings have nothing to do with ghosts finally; they have to do with the menace of memory."- Ann Rice, from The Queen Of The Damned.
I asked Google what 'to haunt' meant, and it told me that to haunt is to visit a place frequently or to persistently trouble someone's thoughts, such as a ghost appearing in the same location or a memory, fear, or worry that constantly returns to a person's mind. "Some memories are like revenants: you keep on burying them in the deepest recesses of your soul, but they always find a way to claw back to the surface. They keep haunting you in the quiet moments, whispering echoes of a past you wish you could forget." - unknown.
Of course, the problem with the mind is that it does not remember things accurately. It is biased and puts its own spin on the events, people, and places that we experience. "We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in their place." - Daniel J. Boorstin. We replay interactions with people whom we have met. These people can be those we love, those we despise, or those we have wronged, either intentionally or inadvertently. We talk ourselves into a position, saying why things happened the way that they did. We find excuses for our words and actions. "It's not the horrors of the night that terrifies me, but the human mind and its endless quest for vanity." - Omoebi Ebixojie.
Sometimes, unwanted memories can bombard us, and we suffer. "I keep remembering- I keep remembering. My heart has no pity on me." - Henri Barbusse, from The Inferno, 1918. We hold onto some memories tightly, fearing that they will dim and we will forget. People we were in love with tend to be the hardest to let go of. "The people you love become ghosts inside of you, and like this you keep them alive." - Rob Montgomery. We welcome the small glimpses that we can get of them in our minds and welcome the haunting. "There's a thin line between memory and haunting, and I walk it every night."- unknown.
It is not just memories that haunt; it can be generational or cultural pain that is hidden in our DNA. "I am half inclined to think we are all ghosts... it is not only what we have inherited from our fathers and mothers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. They are not actually alive in us; but there they are dormant all the same, and we can never be rid of them." - Nathaniel Hawthorne. As we can "never be rid of them," there is a chance that they may come out to play. "Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes they win." - Stephen King.
I am guessing that ghost stories were some of the first stories ever told. "Ghost stories are a literature of loneliness and longing."- Audrey Niffenegger, from the introduction of 'ghostly: A Collection of Ghost Stories.' Loneliness and longing are two of the mind's favorite ruminations. They beckon to us, asking us to come and join them, forgoing thoughts of the future and of actions that we can take now in favor of paths covered in sad mists. Whether in our mind or in our vision, ghosts are the things that won't die. "Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that's what." - unknown. So, what's haunting you?
Love and Hope,
Big Sky Baby