My best friend didnt tell me her house was haunted, but somehow I knew.
Every abandoned street I passed felt like a portal to another dimension.
I sometimes wondered if we were the last people on Earth who would ever speak them.
Photo byAnton DariusonUnsplash
I was less afraid of the graveyard than I was my grandparents house.
It was in that house that they found my grandfather dead near the fireplace.
It was in that house that I swore I saw each of my grandparents for the last time.
Both times, the moment passed and everything quickly returned to normal, though I somehow felt changed.
Perhaps grief plays tricks on our minds.
Perhaps it convinces us to see what we want to see.
Perhaps I wanted to believe my grandparents were still there somewhere, hovering in the corners of the room.
Id like to think it was just their way of saying goodbye.
My best friend didnt tell me her house was haunted, but somehow I knew.
Or maybe its because when you get to know a place so intimately, its impossiblenotto know.
That didnt change the fact that something about the place seemed totally, undeniably off.
Oh yeah, its definitely haunted, my friend said when I finally confronted her about it.
We just dont like talking about it too much.
Still, over time, it became less of a novelty and more just how things were.
The houseand whatever lived in itseemed to speak to all of us in the same ways.
I always said I could never be the kind of person who lived in a haunted house.
Every time I watch a horror movie with a similar premise, I cringe at the inhabitants stupidity.
So why dont I feel the same way about this particular house?
Ive spent holidays around the kitchen table and turned 26 on the living room couch.
Despite everything, Ive always felt strangely safe there.
In life and in death, when we had nowhere else to go, it became our secondary home.
It was just days after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville filled American newsreels with Nazi iconography.
Even years later, its hard to write about.
I cannot describe the sorrow that washes over you as soon as you walk in through the gate.
There are some places so heavy its difficult even to breathe.
In one particular room inside the camp, my friend stopped short, shook her head.
We cant go in here, she said gravely.
We later found out thats where prisoners had been sent to be tortured.
Perhaps we distance ourselves from it so as not to feel the burden of it.
The photograph shook me to my core.
I couldnt stop thinking about it.
I swore to myself that Id never go to Georgia, not for any reason at all.
I told myself Id avoid all graveyards for the rest of my life.
But still, every few days, Id ask my sister if I could see the picture again.
I still think of the picture often.
Every time I travel, it flits through my mind.
What is with our strange fascination with the dead?
Why do we find ourselves drawn to them, even when they terrify us?
Is it something existential, our need to understand what comes next?
Do we find a strange, chilling comfort in the fact that some people never seem to leave?
Is there relief in the fact that we may be more than skin and bone?
I wish I could answer this.
All I know is that I never was able to keep my promise.
Growing up, I had a friend who swore she could see ghosts.
Shed always turn back and smile at me eventually, as if to ensure me that everything was okay.
She told me their names and stories, of which I now only remember a few.
I think she just wants to talk to someone, my friend admitted to me once.
She seems so excited when I notice her.
Every time I pass that street corner now, I turn my head and nod.
Sometimes when Im sad, I get in my car and drive.
Ive written countless eulogies to each of these places, waxing poetic about what they once meant to me.
Or maybe Im writing eulogies to the person I used to be when I frequented them.
I am no longer a part of them, but sometimes I grieve for them still.
With time, even those versions of me begin to fade away.
Maybe thats why Im so fascinated by haunted places.
Every corner of the Earth was once frequented by something thats no longer there.
How could we possibly mean so little to places that once meant so much to us?
I cannot fathom it.
Id like to believe these haunted places still remember us.
