Ghost Story (Preface)

I’ve heard it said that we don’t have history in Victoria. We have nostalgia. Whichever it is, we definitely have ghosts. I know because I lived with them at Rockland. For seventeen years, Ter and I shared our heritage suite with phantom freeloaders who probably considered us to be the interlopers until they got to know us. Okay, until they got to know Ter. She’s the more attuned of we two; I lived in blissful ignorance for almost a year before she confessed to encountering the red-haired kid the day after we moved into Number 16. Completely freaked out, I demanded to know why she’d said nothing at the time.

“Because I didn’t want to freak you out,” she replied.

I’m fairly sure my Freak-O-Meter would have hit the apex no matter when I was told, and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway because we’d signed a lease, but I was grateful that she had seen the little guy first. I didn’t see him until sometime later, when we got new neighbours and I spied him flitting into the kitchen from the corner of my eye. I’ll always remember the shock of that bright red hair.

There were other entities, too, though I never saw them. They felt more comfortable revealing themselves to Ter, who respectfully acknowledged their presence and went quietly on her way. As well as the red-haired kid, there was a young girl in the long dress and an older boy with dark hair. We called the three kids “Harry”, “Ron” and “Hermione” after the trio in the Harry Potter books. The house had served as a girls’ school, then a boys’ school, so we reckoned they must have been students. Some years in, we learned from a neighbour that the house had also been an old folks’ home. “That explains the old woman,” Ter remarked, at which my Freak-O-Meter spiked again.

“What old woman????”

“I don’t know who she is, but she’s pretty bitter,” was the nonchalant reply.

Yeah. Ghosts. Whether by history or nostalgia, Victoria has them.

A co-worker’s mother recently sold her house. It’s not a heritage house, but it’s the house my colleague has known for her entire life, so there was a legitimate fear that the new owners would tear it down for development since that’s what seems to be happening in this city of late. It bothers me for more reasons than the architechtural oddities popping up like mutant mushrooms throughout the neighbourhood; and while I sympathized with the potential loss of a colleague’s childhood home, I am most distressed by what happens to the ghosts.

Where do they go? What do they do? Are they tied to the structure or the land? I guess it depends on the ghost, but the conundrum sparked the writing exercise that is tomorrow’s post.

Enjoy.