ghost stories for october, pt. 4

The problem with other ghosts, she told me, is they're all terribly provincial. There is no reason, apparently, for a ghost to limit their hauntings to the place where they died, or even a place that has some emotional resonance for them. "Mostly they just do that because they like to, I think." She has been a ghost for five years and she says she is not done seeing the world.

I met her in Brooklyn, a few years ago, at a pizza place that I liked mostly because it seemed so very Brooklyn. She caught me staring and we got to talking. This was her first time in New York, and she wanted to see all of the boroughs before she went on somewhere else. She seemed in a hurry to move on, like she just had this travel checklist she was working her way through.

I convinced her to hang out with me for a while, mostly because her only company for the past five years have been other ghosts. I'd been to New York before so I took her to the places I remembered--all the places a good friend had shown me before he became a ghost as well. Little dive bars and hot dog stands and abandoned subway tunnels.

And all the while she told me about the trips she had planned. Her next stop was Paris, apparently. She was going to haunt a plane out of JFK and see the Eiffel tower, the Champs Elysees, then move on to some vinyards in France. There was so much out there to see, she said. She didn't want to be one of those ghosts who got hung up on a place, who never left it. I asked her if she didn't like exploring every secret a place has to offer, and she didn't seem to understand.

She offered to try to send me a postcard, but coming from a ghost, that's kind of an empty promise. I wished her well and let her haunt some tourists who were heading to the airport.