Strangely Naked

Most of the ghosts, it seems, are Antebellum in nature or derived from some collective societal wellspring of guilt surrounding an atrocity. You don’t see a lot of ghosts who are just ambivalent about the afterlife. There’s not a lot of stoner surfer ghosts, “Hey man, be mellow, bro, and let me just chill here in your casa, flick lights on-and-off and maybe rearrange plates buddy.” No, it’s always murder victims, celebrities or soldiers who died in war.

Why are there no caveman ghosts? Or kindly old Grandma ghosts who make bowls of butterscotch candies appear? No, it’s always angry mental patients or mischievous spectral children.

There are entire populations of ghosts being overlooked. Why don’t we see more ghost fetuses? Who has more unfinished business than a baby miscarried in-utero, taken by God, the world’s most prolific abortionist (that won’t offend anyone). Maybe there are, but they just don’t know how to crawl or do anything.

When people use Ouija boards, they’re always talking to angry spirits or historical celebrities. They never make contact with a dead civil engineer who just wants to chat about updates in traffic theory. Where are all of the kids who were just booger eaters rather than malevolent murderous spirits?

You never hear about some British road haunted by the ghost of Mods and their scooters adorned with a baker’s dozen superfluous rear view mirrors. There’s no ghosts at Woodstock of the hippies who took the bad acid. What I’m saying is that we’re missing ghosts. If there are ghosts, they wouldn’t just be of noteworthy types, there would be some mundane ghosts.

If there were ghosts, there would be some introspective ghosts just in awe of the realization of the afterlife. I’d like to imagine a Carl Sagan ghost out there analyzing how consciousness transfers beyond our useless meat sacks rather than the useless spirits who just pace the Queen Mary. Most ghosts aren’t contributing anything. Where are the ghosts working on ghost progress?

What I’m asking for is ghost diversity. No more cliched ghosts. I get it, we built a home on your ancient burial ground, but so what, you weren’t doing anything with the land except rotting beneath it. Give me some Cro-Magnon ghosts. Give me the ghost of the dude who’s the reason we know which mushrooms are okay to eat. Give me the lesser pirate ghost, “Hey, sorry to scare you. I was Shanghaied after a bender and to make the most out of my situation I thought it would be funny when Blackbeard fell asleep next to his peg-boy if I dropped a signature Bartholomew scurvy-fart right in his face. Well, all I can do is hope he got pink eye and that the smell lingered in his beard. By the way, Boo.”

I want some nuanced ghosts. I’ll take some mundane ghosts. Just no more same ol’ asylum ghosts. Or maybe ghosts don’t exist and are only made up so that unimaginative people can make money off people who want there to be an afterlife and don’t realize that the afterlife ghosts represent is intensely boring and repetitive.