Ghost Story 2

My dad ran away when he was younger than I am now

To get away from his parents (My Halmoni and Harabeoji)

He slept the night in some run down house on a stormy cliff

Or at least that's the setting my mind has filled in for him

That night, he woke up to see a young boy

Asian-squatting in the corner of the room

Beckoning him with a single finger

He tells me that the boy was silently asking

Come and play

My mum and dad were both hiking in Indonesia

They took a wrong turn and ended up on a goat track

My dad stumbled and nearly fell down a cliff so steep he would have died

Down in the misty underbrush with a broken neck

My mum caught his wrist just in time

Or at least that's the dramatisation my mind has filled in for them

That night, at seperate times, they left their tent to pee

Or to look at the stars

And saw a green shape in the middle distance

Dancing and jeering in the moonlight

They thought it was a dream

Until they each reported the goblin to the other come morning

Goblins are real, goblins are real

I don't have a ghost story of my own

And I have my smug theories, explanations, reasonings

I say many ghosts are simply the result of a misapplication of Occam's razor

A ghost might seem like the simplest answer, but it's only the simplest answer in a world in which ghosts exist.

Coincidental hypnagogic hallucination, stormy weather, ball lightning, and a prank gone wrong might seem very unlikely, but at least they are on the table of reality.

And unlikely things happen all the time. Show me Occam's razor and I raise you Littlewood's law.

But even without that belief in the paranormal

I know the feeling

Like when your friend creates a new Instagram account

Follows you on it

And messages you:

Can I ask you a question?

"Sure" You reply, before receiving a message from your friend's original account:

THAT'S NOT ME

You block the spammer, knowing it would have simply sent you a malicious link or something along those lines.

But for a second, you thought you knew the person behind those six words.

And for a second, you wonder

What were they going to ask me?