Ghosts don’t do much talking as a rule; they’re too self-absorbed. That’s why they walk through walls. They’re too busy dwelling on their own problems to notice that the hotel has been remodeled since they died in it in 1850.
Being a medium can get pretty damn lonely when you get right down to it. It’s like being at a party by yourself. You can see everyone else mingling and drinking the punch, but nobody’ll talk to you. It’s like being invisible.
That’s why I killed myself.
Well, that’s one of the reasons. It wasn’t exactly a hard decision to come to. No family, no job, no place to live; and a whole load of used-to-be-people wandering around in my head who wouldn’t even ask me how I was doing. I figured, if I was dead too, maybe they wouldn’t be so shy. Now I realize it wasn’t shyness; it was goddamn condescension.
Every ghost thinks their story is the most tragic, the most pitiful, that their unfinished business makes them special. It takes a certain kind of personality to become a ghost; a certain neediness, for attention, for love, for justice, and a belief that whatever you want, you’re entitled to it. Pathetic really, hanging around the living, letting them catch glimpses of you just so you won’t be forgotten. The world moves on and we should too. We got the time we had and to expect more is just selfish. Leave life to the living. I’m not sure what’s behind that misty light that I sometimes see in the sky, but I can almost guarantee it’s more exciting than moaning about what should have been.
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Robin Jeffrey 