It’s a true pleasure to be haunted by ghosts
A newspaper writer’s job has unexpected benefits. Ghosts, for example. I am thankful on this day for the many ghosts who haunt me, including one who most likely will leave a message on my office voice mail, as she has just about every day for nearly 20 years. A ghost has stamina. A ghost persists. This one does, anyway. Over the years, I have been introduced to all manner of ghosts and have learned it is unwise to generalize about them.
I most often make their acquaintance by way of someone who knew them before they achieved celestial status, if in fact they have.
I might speak to a ghost’s mother or father, sister or brother, husband or wife, friend. On occasion a family member or friend will share a photograph or other memento. On a wall near my desk are pictures of a young man killed during a senseless robbery, a teenager lost to illness, a young woman who
disappeared and was never found, and several Arizona soldiers lost in ongoing wars. A gallery of ghosts.
I enjoy their company. They are a varied group. I sometimes feel them stretched out behind me like the contrail of a jet plane.
And there is a category of phantoms I did not expect to encounter but have found to be among the most pervasive: living ghosts.
Among them is the lost spirit who leaves daily messages on my voice mail.
She is the living ghost I have known the longest, but there have been many others.
There was a man I saw boxing on the side of the road with an invisible opponent (another ghost?). He was wary of me when I approached him and asked if I could watch the bout.
There was the “Hat Man.” That’s what my daughter called him. We’d see him walking very fast along the sidewalks near Seventh Street and Missouri, always wearing a big straw hat. Until one day the hat was gone. I turned my car around and pulled over to see if he’d like the baseball cap I had on the back seat, but before I could reach for it, he’d run away. I don’t blame him. The world is not a kind place for many of our living ghosts. If anything, they are as invisible to us as spirits in the netherworld.
The ghost who leaves messages on my voice mail most often calls early in the morning or late at night.
She has said that my voice on the recording protects her from the police and other government agents she believes would do her harm.
If she happens to call during the day and I answer the phone, she hangs up.
It’s not me who protects her, after all, but my voice on the answering machine. I have told people at
that if my employment here were to end, all I would ask is that my telephone number remain active with my voice recording on it. I may not deserve such an indulgence, but this ghost does. They all do. Over the years, I’ve written thousands of news columns. My arrangement with the paper is contractual. I write and I get paid. Friends and associates who know about my most persistent ghost wonder why I haven’t done anything to stop her from calling. They consider it a hassle, a burden. But it is the opposite. It’s a gift. This particular ghost seeks my protection, but she doesn’t seek my professional help, my personal help, my time, my money. She only wishes to hear my voice on an answering machine. I look at it this way: If I can do this one thing for this one ghost in this one lifetime, then maybe all the other ghosts will look after me in the next.