Last night while Rachelle was asleep in bed, I watched a special hour-long episode of Paranormal State. It was about demonic possession, and Ryan, who leads the college-aged team of ghost hunters, got so angry that he swore at a spirit and then went on YouTube to ask the audience to pray for the afflicted family. It was very dramatic.
In this particular episode, Chip, an effeminate 55 year-old medium, also lost his cool with the spirit, and in the pitch-black of the house, threw a temper-tantrum, shouting at the imagined ghost that HE WOULD NOT BE BULLIED!! It was not lost on me that he was screaming at something that wasn’t actually there. At that moment, it wasn’t hard to imagine that Chip– sensitive and unsure of his sexuality– probably grew up an outsider in a hostile and unwelcome environment, and whatever ghost he was yelling at on the TV show, was likely a ghost from his unhappy past, and not somebody else’s.
The show is stagy and bereft of any actual evidence of the paranormal, but I find it compelling all the same. The vulnerability and need of the people, both claming the haunting and searching for the haunting, is palpable, and you can see how desperately they need some higher power to assume responsibility for the confusing, and often unhappy circumstance they find themselves in.
When I was in university, we used to fool around with the Ouija Board from time to time. I suppose it was something of a drinking game for us, or at least that’s the way that we portrayed it, but I think there might have been more to it. We were just starting out, and none of us had any idea what sort of person we might become, or if we would ever find and share love in this world. Away from our families for the first time, we craved some sort of sign that we were on the right path. Looking for reassurance we turned to the supernatural, hoping to summon the benevolent spirit of a much loved grandmother, who would return to us and calm our anxieties, telling us that yes, everything was going to be grand, and that we were all going to be so very happy.
They are going up.
See them rise
on black wings, drinking
the sky, without smiles
or hands
or shoes.
They call back to us
from the gauzy edge of paradise,
good news, good news.
–Anne Sexton