GHOSTS

 

It’s almost Halloween. The time of year for ghosts. Someone sent me a joke that this year, ‘trick or treat’ would be replaced by ‘track or trace’.  On Twitter, I’ve even seen two cute dogs in ghost costumes... I think the season is already reaching peak silliness.

Appropriate, then, that I’ve just finished reading a book called Ghosts, by Dolly Alderton. It’s not a Halloween ghost story through: it’s a look at the dating phenomenon of ghosting, in terms of its main plot. You ghost someone like this: you involve yourself in their life, seem interested and emotionally invested, then vanish. They actually wonder if you’re dead, so completely do you disappear. Alderton’s book is more complicated than that: there’s ghosting, yes, but there are other ghosts in the book too. The elderly parent slipping away into dementia. The memories of childhood, haunting you in adulthood. The friendship that risks slipping away as your lives move on and diverge. It’s a clever book, and it’s got me thinking about the ghosts in my own life.

When I was young, I’m pretty sure I was ghosted long before ghosting was even a thing. The teenage crush who just stopped speaking to me one day.   The friends who weren’t my friends any more, because somehow I said something that gave away how uncool I was (still am).  It’s happened more recently too, and I saw it as part of ‘cancel culture’: the old friend who disagreed vehemently with something I said on social media, and ended our friendship publicly. Another ghost: though chilled by the brutal cancellation, I retain the misty memory of jokes in class and chats in the sixth form common room.

But just like there are people, there are all kinds of ghosts. And sometimes they’re so well camouflaged that you don’t recognise them for what they are.  The person who contacts you only when they want something- advice; a favour; someone to talk to, even, when everyone else is busy.  The nostalgia-tinged person from the old days who really wants to let you know how much more successful they are than you. They’ve got the fancy car, the massive house and the holiday retreat, the sparkly social life and the happy home, the glittering career and the perfect marriage, and best of all, despite the fact that they seem to go out to dinner all the time, they still fit into that dress they had when they were 21.  Then there’s the ghost who reminds you of what might have been: the career path you didn’t take, the musical instrument you didn’t have time to keep practising, the perfect family life that just didn’t work out for you. The ghost of old decisions: if you hadn’t taken the path you did, just look where you might be now.  The ghost who’s just more talented than you could ever be: you love writing, but they can actually write and someone wants to publish what they say.  The friendly ghost: you think they’ve singled you out to be their friend, but really they’re just that nice to everyone and deep down, you’re not remotely as important in their life as they might feel to you. The fickle ghost, who haunts you for a while because they think it’s to their advantage. Maybe you’ll help them out through your work; maybe you’ll introduce them to someone they want to know; maybe you’ll just listen to them. Once used, you’re useless, and they vanish with the dawn... 

We can even ghost ourselves. Think about it. In our weird, Covid age of changing lockdown rules, it’s hard to know whether you can see your friends and family or not, meet them for an outdoor takeaway coffee, wave at them from behind a mask. You might even have to resort to seeing colleagues, at work in the same building as you, in an on-screen meeting.  Friendship has gone virtual, and it can be virtually impossible to keep track. You try to read between the lines of messages to gauge how your friend is really doing. You can’t fathom on your message app what would probably be totally clear in person. The second’s hesitation of the spontaneous face-to-face is replaced by the anxiety-inducing speech bubble with an ellipsis inside. You wonder: what do they really mean, here; do they really want to talk or are they simply keeping the turn taking going? Your confidence turns wraith-like as the dark descends. You’ve ghosted yourself and the person who made you do it is almost certainly oblivious...

There are so many ways of being haunted. It’s not just about dating. It’s everyone you meet. It’s your friendly local postman, who tells you off for being on holiday from work. The supermarket cashier who eyes that bottle of Shiraz quite balefully. The tailgater who’s angry because you’re only doing precisely 31 in a 30mph zone, and he’s important and in a hurry. The critics are waiting everywhere to haunt you to oblivion... and the thing about these ghosts is that they’re oddly persuasive. No matter how sceptical you are, they make you believe in them. And when you believe in them, something slightly supernatural happens: you stop believing in yourself.

And when you lose any sense of your own worth, then that’s the scariest, most haunting Halloween of all.