Ghosts still have choices. This is a little known fact. I get to see this on a regular basis: ghosts still learn things, still discover things and ultimately they decide whether they wish to move on or hang out all spirit-like. It’s sometimes like the guy in your high school clique that kept mooning over the girl that he made out with once in the 8th grade: yeah, he can’t help how he feels. Sooner or later he diverts his attention to something else and while diverted his feelings usually change. For a ghost, diverting that attention generally leads to moving on. Death, like life, has some stuff that happens that’s just harder to get over, especially if you died from a violent crime or suffered abuse during your life. Some people who suffered as victims are all “hello oblivion!” and zap right on out of here once what I call the Year of Walking is up; others linger. It’s not about their force of will – doing things by “force of will” is arrogant clip-clap that translates to “Look at me! Respect my authoritah _!” and ultimately doing things magically and/or in the spirit world by force of will means that either before your death or after, someone like me will be called to clean up the mess you made handling everything and everyone so roughly. I’m willing to guess the damage it does to your own spirit body increases your chances of ending up all ghostly yourself. It’s not the way the world fucks you up that makes a difference in the here or the hereafter; it’s what you do about it when you get fucked up.

This is not to say that all ghosts are petulant whiners. They have the same percentage and spectrum of human behavior as do the living, and the whiners annoy just as equally alive or dead. Of course the whining on the other side is usually summed up as “What do you mean I still have to make choices?”

Part of the ghostly process involves eventually making the choice: do I go see what hides behind that next curtain, or do I hang out here? Most go for the curtain.

There are a relative few, however, who figure out that the curtain’s there whenever they want it, and decide to take advantage of the extra time on earth sans airfare. In the process they figure out how to manipulate matter in some way, that they do not need to retain the form they did while living, and that every theater in the world is open to them.

These are the ones that also figure out that I can see them.

Of course, because they’ve got the ghost-system hacked, some of them use my ability to see them to fuck with me. I’ve had things go bouncing off my car when driving down dark country roads at night, found myself suddenly turned around in an alley I’ve cut through for years, even had one pretend to be a tree.

The one that annoyed me the most was the table lamp. Continue reading →

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For the nowadays few who do not know what the word hijab means, it covers any covering of a woman’s modesty. Usually this modesty includes hair. It’s sort of like how Christian churches once required all women to wear hats, and why Jewish men wear a yarmulkah.

As you can see, there are variations on how much modesty demands covering.

I bring this up so you know what I describe, and because what the ghost did appears to relate to this whole modesty thing.

When Mike and I lived in Franklin coop, we shared the space with a lot of Muslims. It just came as part of daily life in that neighborhood. One woman who spoke no English went totally blind in one eye, and would sway down the hallways at odd times of day, acknowledging no one. There’s more than once I asked friends if they saw her too – I honestly don’t remember if Mike did. I placed my bets on her for village shaman, and went with the assumption she was among the living. While the problems we had while we lived there all happened in the last year and were quite many, for the most part we didn’t interact, which in Minnesota is the definition of a good neighbor.

It stands to reason that a few Muslimmahs have died while living in the coop. The building has existed since 1980, Seward neighborhood is the second most densely populated part of Minneapolis after Uptown, and, well, people die. Them’s the odds.

What I don’t understand is that, more often than not, when I took a shower, the ghost of a Muslimmah would poke her head in. She would stare, the water bouncing through her yellow hijab, as I stood with loofah in hand feeling quite irritated. Sometimes I gave her an energetic shove out. Once she stepped in with me, but I had salt on hand and threw it at her. My bathing activities are invite only, thank you.

Many people assume that ghosts watch us shower, see us naked, etc. I haven’t found that to be the case. First, nudity is only sexual because our culture makes it so. I’m Wiccan, so I’m exposed to non-sexual nudity once in awhile. Second, I’ve never asked about this, but it seems that ghosts do not date or pair up (though they can and do interact), which suggests that there’s a total absence of sex drive. The forces of life are not directly what powers the spirit. As it is, I’ve never seen a ghost in a porn theater, although I have in porn shops. Yes, I’ve been in porn theaters, and I realize this is making for one strange post topic.

I asked her repeatedly to stop poking her head in – first, I paraded naked in that home on a regular basis, so if she wanted to see a naked body, it wasn’t a problem. Second, it got annoying and creepy. She kept right on with the peeping Tomasina act. I don’t know if it was about the naked person or the water, I just know it drove me nuts.

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