Telling ghost stories in deep, dark woods
On a recent summer night, we started telling ghost stories. I was with a group of writers in a cabin in the Vermont woods, the kind of deep dark that stirs your imagination and heightens your sensitivity to the universe.
Some stories happened to us. Some to a friend, or a friend of a friend, or a friend of a friend of a friend, stories that put us on edge — even though a couple weren’t ghost stories at all.
The banging at odd hours, that went on for days, in a place that was supposed to be quiet and still? Turned out it was the sound of someone moving out.
The eerie laughter echoing throughout the night? Although the mother revealed to her sons that she’d bought her house on the cheap after a murder-suicide by the previous owners, the sound originated not from the spirit world, but their neighbor’s lawn gnome. Every time the neighbor’s dog tripped its motion detector, the gnome laughed maniacally.
“That’s not a ghost story!” we shouted, laughing, with the relief, with the fun that comes from getting momentarily spooked.
Our efforts fell far short of that famed ghost story challenge, held in the summer of 1816, when writers gathered in Switzerland in a lakeside villa. Night after night, as rain fell and lightning flashed outside, they told stories that would give rise to Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and John Polidori’s “The Vampyre.”
Although I’ve never been much of a fan of horror movies — I get too nervous, have to cover my eyes or leave the room even though I know the monster’s face is a rubber mask and the pools of blood are corn syrup dyed red — I’m drawn to the collective experience of telling, of listening to ghost stories. Our fears, our doubts, our suspicions feed off each other in a storytelling ritual that has surely gone on for as long as humans have possessed language and gathered around campfires.
We joked about getting a Ouija board, or making one of our own with a plastic cup serving as a planchette to communicate with the spirit world. Back in elementary and middle school, at slumber parties we gave fake eulogies before sliding two fingers of each hand beneath a supine friend, while chanting, “Light as a feather, stiff as a board.” Up she’d go, as high as our chests, all the way up to our shoulders.
Then I grew up and didn’t think much about ghosts. But in the woods where we were staying, I felt more susceptible. Internet access was sporadic, I didn’t have much time to check the news, and what little I heard seemed chaotic. As much as I wanted to take a stand against white supremacists and to help those in the path of Harvey’s torrential rains, I felt very far away.
At the end of the night, a writer told us about the apartment she’d moved into, where she kept hearing animals tussling in the yard. No, her landlords told her matter-of-factly. The commotion came from two men who’d died fighting each other.
On the day of the solar eclipse, we hiked to a mountain lake brimming with inky, chilly waters. The bottom fell steeply away from the shore. How deep did it go, and what lurked beneath?
We donned our eclipse glasses and gazed at the wonder transpiring overhead. After swimming, we sunned ourselves on the granite slabs and a poet told us about the Tie snake, about a warrior punished and transformed into a serpent. He slithers and knots himself around your legs, yanking you into his underwater lair.
“They say it’s a legend, but ...” she said. Was she teasing us? Her expression remained serious. Isn’t that “but” at the heart of every ghost story, the possibility of the supernatural that the most practical and pragmatic among us allow ourselves to consider?
I took another dip in the lake, but when long weeds trailed against my legs, I imagined getting tangled up and pulled in.
Maybe these stories don’t scare you. I’m paraphrasing, retelling from memory, and maybe I’m forgetting the details that would make you jump in your seat. Maybe you had to be there.
Or maybe you have a ghost story of your own.
Our fears, our doubts, our suspicions feed off each other in a storytelling ritual that has surely gone on for as long as humans have possessed language and gathered around campfires.