Ghost Menagerie
A (brief) study on a fiction project I didn’t do ‘right.’
Content warning for death, death of a parent, suicidal ideation
Introduction
In January of 2019, I took a plunge and released a fiction podcast into the world. ‘The Oracle of Dusk,’ my flagship audio fiction podcast about a reluctant oracle trying to make sense of the visions thrusted upon her, is now approaching its fifth season, whether or not it should still be running notwithstanding. The distinct choices behind it--utilizing second person, requiring the listener to mentally sort episodes based on convoluted naming systems, and lacking the sort of descriptions thought critical to forming a mental image of characters or settings--have likely limited the audience or the appeal of the show but were fundamental to the vision I had in mind. However, while I might explain a detail or two in passing, my ability to explain why this show had to be the way it is was greatly limited until I found just the right book to anchor my experiences to.
For me, the necessary clarity came from Ghostland: An American History of Haunted Places (2016) by Colin Dickey whose paperback edition I found in the local bookstore at some point in late 2017. In hindsight, my intrigue came from an unplaceable and unmistakable feeling that we--I and this book--had met before. In all likelihood, that is not true, but instead, I probably heard about it from the Ask a Mortician YouTube channel as I can vaguely remember a mention of it in Caitlin Doughty’s distinct voice. It would explain why my eye was drawn to it so, but then again, my secret fascination with ghost stories and haunted histories certainly could have carried the book the rest of the way from store shelf to the desk that had long since transformed into a makeshift bookshelf.
At that point, I had not yet even begun to think up ‘The Oracle of Dusk.’ But the groundwork was being laid out, largely against my will. Much like the titular character, who goes by ‘Delphi’ simply as an interchangeable placeholder, I too was plagued with dreams of which I could not make sense. This was a ‘haunting,’ though I would have been reluctant to use that term, and I was a haunted person.
Correction: I was haunted in the sense that Dickey uses the term. And in understanding his argument, I gained a great deal of clarity about myself and later my own story. The Oracle of Dusk is--in some veiled way--a ghost story about me and my life. But for that to make sense, I need to clarify, with Dickey’s help, what a ghost story really is.
***
To Clarify Dickey’s Argument about The Land of Which Ghosts…
The catalyst to the story I want to tell you--a story about a story--is Dickey’s road trip through America’s offbeat history, which he does through a close reading of the various oral and written ghost stories that can be found throughout the country. In doing so, Dickey strikes at the heart of the nation, digging for roots deeper than any regional and historical difference can go. The heart of this nation is a relatively young one, but even still, the United States is seemingly overrun with ghost stories and haunted sites. Whether or not ghosts are real, their presence can still be felt in little but frequent pockets across the country. The pessimist might say that the abundance of these sites is more of a reflection of the American ‘hustle culture,’ part and parcel with the classic ‘American Dream.’ However, Dickey presents a strong alternative argument. As he argues, the United States has more than its fair share of spirits running about not because it's commercially viable; rather, it’s commercially viable because the United States is ripe with the visual, atmospheric, and narrative conditions that form the perfect storm of a haunting.
The United States had a rather unique history. In that, those who currently lay claim to it draw not from an unbroken history with the land or any sort of natural, perdurable narrative. It is land that was taken by those who were not born to it and initially in the name of another crown. It is a land marked by the misdeeds of those who sought it, seized it, and mishandled it and those who lived on that land. It is a land that was scarred by a desperate need for control in various realms and in various ways. Whether it be control over land and its resources or control over the household, destruction and despair was sewed into the social and political fabric of this nation. While that is a hard thing to cope with, we have little choice in the matter. Dickey might initially say in his book that stories are what tie past and present (p. 3), but I would clarify that the past and present perpetually co-exist. We live with the consequence of past choices, no matter how long ago they were made. Stories, particularly ghost stories, are the way we sort out the details and renegotiate the hold that the worst parts of it have over us.
After all, narratives can be therapeutic. Dickey includes a rather profound quote in the opening of his book to set the scene. Joan Didion, an American writer, once wrote, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” And this is true of all stories. But the sustenance they provide us will likely differ across mediums and genres. Ghost stories serve a particular purpose, a task that cannot be undertaken by other types. Because ghost stories are rooted in the more literal darkness and despair of our decaying buildings and graveyards during late night hours forsaken by our world’s design, they can tap into the more figurative darkness of the human endeavor, the darkness that looms in the corner of our vision but cannot easily be named. These stories are ways we connect to our otherwise unreachable past whose actions left the scars we must cope with. They can trap or liberate us from our guilt and grief, they can give voice to prior injustices, or they can give us a clear enemy to project our anxieties onto.
Americans live beneath strong patriotic fervor and a history told in the light of virtues and principles whether or not doing so is anachronistic or inaccurate in other ways. Americans live beneath this vision while still co-existing with the remnants of all who have been hurt or killed along the way. Though we may want to forget these things for the sake of our peace of mind, we live with these suppressed thoughts just beneath the surface, and these ghost stories can be thought of as--what Freud called--“the return of the repressed,” when something we so earnestly want to forget comes back to us but in another form (Dickey, 2017, p. 9). For the United States, our ghost stories concern the many transgressions and moral failings (Dickey, 2017, p.9).
Though circumstances might be ripe for the United States to find itself in this predicament and turn to this particular salve, it could really happen to any place or anyone. In fact, dare I say, we all have our ghost stories, but I cannot tell anyone’s story but mine. For me, my ghost story--that which I transformed into The Oracle of Dusk--concerned what I felt where my failings, whether or not they were notwithstanding.
***
The Ghosts I Live With
The blog feature on ‘The Oracle of Dusk’ website exists but is hardly used. It’s nice of Squarespace to give me the option, and when I first launched the site, I resolved to use it as much it made sense to do so. However, given that podcasting websites are more for reference than engagement, there’s hardly much to be done with it. But I did, however, use a blog post to clarify something I worried would earnestly need clarification.
In the beginning, I wanted The Oracle of Dusk to be an immersive listening experience. Much like the podcasts Tanis and Rabbits, I wanted it to be so engrossing that listeners would have to wonder if ‘Delphi’ were a pseudonym for a real person struggling to reach out to near-strangers or maybe to them (i.e., the listener) specifically. It was a gimmick selected not for creative integrity but because I believed it might draw more listeners in as I recognized that aspects of the show made for a hard sell, and I was trying to compensate for that. And yet, it wasn’t a creative choice I could live with after some thought, specifically thought about those who weren’t inclined to see the lines between fiction and non-fiction when said line is blurred. Consequently, I wanted to be clear but to have my answer sectioned off where someone who needed such a clarification would think to look for it but where the overall experience of the podcast could remain unchallenged. In short, I wanted to have my cake and eat it too, all without guilt.
And so, on May 24th, 2019, I posted a blog post entitled '“Is this a true story? - A Fourth Wall Break for a (potential) question.” It’s one of four entities on a ‘news’ feed that really can’t be called as much in good faith. And in it, I put forth the answer as clearly and matter-of-factly as I could. I wrote, “The stories you hear might be grounded in real events, but I’ve fictionalized them. So we’ve crossed the line into fiction but not by far.” Rather than saying the cliched, ‘names have been changed to protect the innocent’ (as there are no names in this show, which causes some confusion), I will say this much: details are picked for cohesion not accuracy, and client numbers are generated from a random letter/number generator. Consequently, there is no actual link to any person or place or even thing. More accurately, there is no direct link to anyone.
After that clarification, I go into a brief explanation of what the ‘real events’ are, but I don’t speak too much about them. Again, there are no details to be found. At that point, The Oracle of Dusk was still in its first season, and I hadn’t sketched out what the second season was going to look like. In truth, I didn’t know what this show as a whole was going to be because I hadn’t thought too far ahead. The first season held the story I was desperate to tell, but the story that came to fill the second season was one I was desperate to hide and hide from. I believed that the ‘clients’ mentioned in the second season were completely off limits. And yet, they made it into the show.
Season 1 was a carefully veiled ghost story. Season 2 was an anthology of ghost stories. In either instance, I was being haunted by aspects of my life I was determined not to think about. Regrets were abound. There were fears about being alone, being inadequate, and being silent when screaming was the answer. Just like Dickey examines the various local ghost stories found around the United States in pursuit of their hidden messages about those “things we thought were long settled and in the past” (p. 9), I want to examine my own unconventional ghost story. To what end, I don’t fully understand. It’s a bit conceited, sure. But it’s also therapeutic. These are my “unfinished endings, broken relationships, things left unexplained,” and I don’t want to be under the weight of any sort of ghost anymore (Dickey, 2017, p. 7).
***
Season 1 - The Main Projection: of Which All Ghosts Draw From
I didn’t start The Oracle of Dusk because of some grand and optimistic creative impulse. That’s what I think I’m supposed to say. That is the socially correct answer and part of the artist’s narrative. When you make something, it should be a gift to the world, and this gift should be offered with the hopes and intentions that this small product will make the world a better place. But no pressure, right? I’m not going to play that game. I will admit that The Oracle of Dusk came out of a state of absolute desperation. To return to the ongoing metaphor, it was a ghost I couldn’t handle. As it drained me of my energy and even life, I needed to explain the physical signs everyone else was seeing. Figurative dishes were flying about, and the walls were oozing blood. Or tears, I should say, because I did a lot of crying just before this. These more emotional origins of this podcast can be traced back to one of the first clients. While all four were vaguely inspired by people I knew and things I wanted to say to them, one in particular stands out above all others.
In prior essays, I alluded to the fact that I considered my time at my alma mater something vaguely akin to a salvation. For once, I had access to mental health resources and help in navigating them. For once, I had people in my life who weren’t trying to cram me into a box that not only was too small but also promised to bring about my own destruction. For once, I could become the person I was meant to be (and wanted to be). Everything was falling into place. Which would surprise you--perhaps--if I was more clear about which university I attended, but it’s not relevant. In addition, that relationship is not all sunshine and roses. I am well aware that there is much about my alma mater to lament, but given how high the personal stakes were, I might be too forgiving. Fair enough. Then again, this devotion is fueled by the fact that the administration is the part of the university that creates all these damnable problems, but it was those on the ground that made my university experience what it was, making the most of the--at times--less than ideal circumstances they were given. Specifically, it was the faculty that gave me permission to explore my interests (as was their job), and it was certain members of the faculty that went far beyond that, likely without realizing it. It was a professor that literally saved my life by helping me confront my mental health/distress before I could fully self-destruct, it was a professor that encouraged me to preserve the quality of the life I now had by pursuing the future I wanted for myself, and it was a professor who treated me like a human being when another member of the department was risking all the progress I had made by running over me during an ego-trip. It was a professor who encouraged me to move to Chicago against my mother’s wishes but because it was my wish, it was a professor who taught me to not despise the way I view the world, and it was a professor who taught me to stop living for approval (abstract or tangible) and for myself. It was several professors who seemingly took turns scrapping me off the floor when I found out the hard way that self-development is not a linear process.
I’m not going to say how many people are responsible for the actions on that list. It’s somewhat irrelevant. What you need to understand is that, shortly after making that move to Chicago, I started getting nightmares about one of those faculty members. These weren’t normal nightmares, either. For one, they were so much darker in a human sense than what we typically associate with nightmares. On the other hand, they had a distinct feel to it, and when that atmosphere set in, there was a marked transition from ‘fun and wacky dream’ to a vision, for lack of a better term. Admittedly, it’s hard to explain to someone else. I just know something odd is happening, and I have all the awareness that one might expect from their waking state. I figuratively or perhaps literally am pushed over a threshold without any effort or way to stop it. During this transition, it’s like walking up to a large veil draped before a doorway. And I knew I was doing it; I knew I was crossing or approaching some sort of threshold and looking out into a world that wasn’t explicitly mine. I would walk up to this veil and see a scene of some kind, something less than an act in a play, but it was something that I could immediately interpret a message from. Sometimes but rarely, I could reach out and touch a participant but the opportunity for interactions was rare. Once I had an interpretation in mind, though, I could never shake it. This seemingly was the truth, there could only be one truth, and it could not be displaced by a more bearable delusion. However, it was not a clear message. It was not ‘x is happening’ or ‘person feels like y.’ It was just a vague idea or sensation that was attached to a person, shaping and coloring their reality. That was where the interpretation would come in.
It all seems relatively simple because at this point in my life, it was. Practice makes perfect, as they say. I’d been having these dreams for almost a decade, and even if the practice was not intentional, the effect is still the same. I’d had these dreams before. I knew what the experience was like and where the pitfalls were. What I did not know was what was required of me.
Normally, the message was fairly mundane. For example, I saw that no one was going to inform my mother and I when my father’s brother died. True to form, I found out from a random Google search. It was hardly ever--with a couple glaring exceptions--something that I would then lose sleep over, no pun intended. These were facts of my existence that were in equal parts bearable and uncomfortable. Shortly after coming to Chicago for a master’s program, the nature of the dreams shifted. In those dreams, what I saw was a familiar face--a professor’s face--in various situations. At first, it was a physical removal from a larger scene. Isolation, I concluded, which was not really a stretch considering some things I heard when colleagues of his felt both petty and callous in their gossip about him, enough so to not care if a student was nearby. (Then again, they didn’t know I was a student of their departments, never mind his student.) Students in my class specifically were not especially fond of him, and though it sounds judgmental to say, his mode of thinking does not always mesh well with the institution’s, meaning this agreement had to be the norm for him. Consequences abound in that. Then the dreams evolved, and there was like a weight on the chest: a difficulty to breathe but not from any sort of physical constraints. Those can be more easily shaken, as cold as that might be to say considering the state of modern medicine, but as I see it, these are often things that can be removed or treated, though not always. However, there is a clear ‘opponent,’ which creates a clear conflict that can then be resolved. This was not so distinct. And while that was disconcerting, the dreams only got worse. Shortly after the pressed chest or figurative suffocation dreams came the dreams about death. A death initially unspecified but slowly evolved into death by suicide.
The leap to ‘death through suicide’ wasn’t drastic or obvious. It was a small clue, the sentiment typically found behind a ‘goodbye’ that I felt. And I ran with it. To understand why, you would need to understand Season 2 and its clients who I had started to call--in my notes--The Four Pillars of the titular character’s story. Without them, Delphi wouldn’t have made the choices that she did. But without their real world counterparts, I would have made very different choices, as well, if I were even hear to make choices. Once again, this is not a strictly fictional series of events.
***
The Mentor: When A Place is No Longer Homely
Now, for a moment, pretend I don’t have a personal and cultural framework that seemingly demands I take these dreams seriously as opposed to writing them off as bad nightmares. There was plenty of fodder for the ‘nightmare’ theory, least of all Occam's Razor. But more compelling than that was the ruins I left behind when I graduated from said alma mater mere months before these dreams began. That would have left certain thoughts and fears at the forefront of my mind, ripe for my subconscious to pull from. Looking at it from another angle, even if you have a nightmare about someone that makes no sense, reaching out and speaking to them about it and catching up on their life is an option. Dream interpretation can bring uncomfortable conversations, but conversations can still bring resolutions, comfortable or not. In some sense, I should have reached out to him, even just to tell him that I was settled into my next degree program. But I couldn’t do that. Because of ‘The Mentor’ I don’t think I should be reaching back to my alma mater much at all, even after all this time.
As I alluded to in my ‘Childism’ essay--as petty as it was to do so--I had a falling out with someone at that university in a way that I still struggle to make sense of years after the fact. Whether this is my perception or this other professor’s intention is still painfully unclear to me, but I felt as if they were demanding and undue level of influence in my life. It was as if—when I agreed to work on a project under their supervision—I was signing a far more encompassing invisible contract. It was not clear at first. However, from our earliest meeting, I felt an overwhelming pressure to answer all of ‘The Mentor’s’ questions ‘correctly.’ Fair enough in many contexts, but this was not a classroom setting or any other investigation into my ability or comprehension. Rather, this extended to more personal conversations, like when we were discussing the rest of my life and the direction of it. Those questions should not have ‘right’ answers. Or rather, any answer would be ‘right’ if it were mine. But whenever we met, no matter what the conversation or meeting was supposed to be about, ‘The Mentor’ spoke, and I listened. This was our dynamic. For the longest time, I didn’t think it was much of a problem, and maybe, had we each behaved differently, it wouldn’t have been. But no one ever wins the what-if game.
And perhaps, to be generous, this was a cultural issue, a failure to see passed certain divides and into other experiences. ‘The Mentor’ was white, and it could have very well been that none of their diversity-championing—which they had done a fair bit of—had taught them that some cultures teach young women, like myself, to be overly subservient to authority figures like instructors. I don’t know. I really don’t, and I find myself going back and forth on which one it was. It would be comforting if it wasn’t malicious, but when I think back to the very last time I saw them, I can’t trust in their naivety. After all, there was never any self-awareness or awareness, even, of how I might be feeling, and that—in and of itself—is a problem.
At the time, I was considering pursuing a PhD, but in reality, I thought an accelerated master’s program was a better fit. The PhD answer was the more socially acceptable one given the nature of the school and department I attended, and so, when I thought prying eyes and/or craned ears might not be too far away, that is what I would say, but in the privacy--and presumed safety--of this mentor-figure’s office, I could offer them the truth: that I found a master’s program that I wanted to attend, which would--in theory--position me well for an academic career but freed me to leave academia after a little less than two years if I realized it were not for me. When I tried to explain myself, ‘The Mentor’ did not immediately understand, and fair enough (again) on that. My reasoning was not incredibly obvious, particularly when one considers that my alma mater and the department therein already put me in a good position for PhD applications, and if my peers were ready and eager to commit to marriage, I should be ready to commit to a graduate program from which I could withdraw easier than I could from a marriage. The former reason was far more relevant than the latter. I included the latter as a bit of a joke, though it doesn’t fully land. Jokes aside, I had to answer for this notion that I needed to be better positioned despite my innate advantages. And I could answer for it. I didn't want to, but it was within my abilities. It just wasn't a story I was ready to lose control of through the act of sharing. And it was tied to facts about my life that I thought were shameful or at least incomprehensible to my peers. All of my secrets were entangled into one ball of dysfunction. Pull a single thread, and the ball would come undone. And so, initially, I put up my usual defenses. Boundaries and the like are supposed to be respected in a context like that, but they weren’t. ‘The Mentor’ kept pushing. Inclined to trust this person after one unprompted hug from them nine months prior, I chalked it up to the bizarre nature of my plan. I knew it was bizarre. That was part of the problem. I knew it, but this person--this mentor figure--did not. This was an impasse that seemed so easy to move through, and it was safe to do so. Or that is what they told me.
So after a bit of prodding, I told them as they demanded that I do. Even at the time, I was reluctant and anxious. There was something in my head screaming at me not to, but at the same time, sometimes we need to look outside of ourselves for any sort of solution. This sounded like one of those times, or it did when my mentor explained it.
At first, there was comfort, which I needed. I wanted to fall forward into their arms and cry in relief that all my anxiety had been misplaced. But as they saw it, there was no time for that. Rightfully so, in some ways. I was ready to agree with their version of my plan: that I go straight for the PhD and withdraw if it got unbearable. The latter part was implied not stated and not without a plethora of complications. With that decided, however, the task at hand had suddenly shifted from convincing me to apply for PhD programs to what schools I needed to apply to and what it was I needed to say in my research statement. For those unfamiliar, research statements are effectively your way of presenting yourself in absentia and through a summary of both your past research achievements and what you intend to do with your future work. It is, I would say, a very personal document. So why was this professor trying to effectively dictate mine to me? Considering I am not the type to brag, ensuring that I do utilize my achievements to my advantage would be a part of their due diligence. And yet, this influence was being extended into my future plans, which I had attempted to discuss before, in earlier meetings, only for the conversation to be redirected, which likely was a social flaw or misstep on my part (or that is what I assumed), considering these were often group meetings. Above all, however, I had entered into this mentor-mentee arrangement with a specific project in mind, and while I hadn’t meant that to be a lifelong commitment to the field, I was starting to believe that this is what I had done.
Once the conversation shifted from what I should do to how I should do it (i.e., my research statement and application list), that would have been the time to correct the record. They could have asked, and I could have told them that I wasn’t sure or that I had--perhaps--far too many interests and a distaste for specialization. During my master’s program, I would realize what a detriment this was to a life in academia and would forgo an academic career in favor of embracing this part of myself that I had come to love above all others. Had we talked about it then, I would have thought of them as a savior of sorts, preventing a huge mistake and freeing me to follow my own destiny. But that is not the conversation that happened. Instead, I found myself listening as they dictated my research interests to me, interests that were a mirror of their own. On the other hand, I must also question the list of schools I was to apply to. They were all top-tier, which brings career advantages, but the academic culture and innate competitive nature at those institutions would have been toxic to me. I was not a good fit for them, and I can’t help but think that would have been incredibly obvious after a moment of reflection.
Everything about this was wrong, and I should have said something. But having been excluded from the table for so much of our time together, I found myself falling into old patterns. I.e, waiting for an invitation to speak that never came.
Time was of the essence. Suddenly. The master’s program I had wanted to attend had a rolling deadline. PhD programs, on the other hand, had a strict one that was about three weeks out from this conversation. The main problem, in a situation like this, would be asking for reference letters. It is a quick turnaround, after all. But because I would have needed them for the master’s program I was eyeing, I had broached the subject of needing them with several faculty members some time before this, and that part had come together rather easily. ‘The Mentor’ would write one, as was expected considering this person’s role in my undergraduate education, with two other faculty members. So with no other impediments, we took to work. By ‘we,’ I mean this mentor figure and myself as they figuratively stood over my shoulder while I worked on draft after draft. I don’t mean that they were diligent if not overzealous in offering comments and corrections once I finished a draft. That would be entirely understandable, reasonable, if not outright expected. However, rather than judging and attempting to improve upon my work when it was out of my mind and onto the page, the string of words coming out was being heavily influenced by them as they were being laid. At every step of the way, I was being instructed on what to do in the absence of any input on my part. It was the third or fourth draft that I realized something was wrong. I recognized that the words in that statement didn’t feel like mine and the interests certainly weren’t. It wasn’t just a love of variety that was awoken in me but a rare disinterest in this specific research topic. I had dipped a toe into that branch of study as a random interest, a means to an end that was a specific project. In truth, I hated it but in the way where you see what drew others in and recognize it as a light that does not speak to you.
Cue the dread. Cue the realization that I did not want to commit myself to this. Cue the self-preservation urge. Cue the soft rewriting of this statement just when we started to finish it.
This rewrite wasn’t as drastic as it should have been. Rather than being a complete scrap and rewrite, I gradually inserted aspects of my desires back into the statement. Those were the passages the professor had issue with, and instead of spring boarding to a discussion of what I actually wanted, I was given demands to change it back. These demands came with reasons, of course, but the point was still wholeheartedly missed. And because the point had been so thoroughly missed, I held to my convictions and kept these brief touches of myself in from the fifth draft onwards.
In the course of three weeks our mentor-mentee relationship gradually disintegrated along that line until the night before the first application was due when ‘The Mentor’ told me they didn’t think I should apply in this cycle anymore. Given the source of our dispute, the thought made sense; it was the implementation that was wrong. We were fighting over my independence, after all, and they had made a move against my agency that should have been impossible for me to come back from, given that it was literally the eleventh hour and their withdrawal included the reference letter that they hadn’t submitted (and maybe never wrote or had intention of writing considering how much time was spent over my shoulder). Fortunately for me, I had ‘The Hero’ whom I also wrote to in this season, but I will discuss my message to them later. For now, you should know that I did get those applications in, slipping in one for the master’s program I had actually wanted to attend, which I was accepted into. I took the place that was offered to me, and earnestly tried to move forward.
However, that acceptance would not come for a couple months. In the interim, I did have to have one more meeting with this professor. Though it had a different stated purpose, ‘The Mentor’ used it to try and justify what it was that had happened, citing--systematically but indirectly--every insecurity I had talked to them about and why this move would rectify that. This concern makes sense, but the timing does not. As I saw it, these matters were relevant in that first conversation, and they were relevant with every draft we worked through. For example, I was concerned about my grades and about my ability to make choices for myself. I was concerned about what an academic life would look like given any number of other obligations in my life. They were facts that did not change from the graduate school specific first meeting to that eleventh hour, and yet, we could only take them into consideration now. We could only take them into consideration when ‘The Mentor’—seemingly randomly—had changed their mind.
That, in and of itself, would be enough to shake a student’s confidence that a mentor had their best interests at heart. At bare minimum, this mentor would struggle with the implementation of these intentions, which still cannot be ignored as the consequences would remain the same. But it only got worse. ‘The Mentor’ mentioned my mother, though still in an indirect way, by saying that another student’s parents had pushed him to defer a year or two because you know, “parents always want what’s best.” That was a contentious point as it had not been my experience. My mother wanted me to go to law school, believing it to be a safe option considering a friend’s father had practically guaranteed me a job after graduation. However, I did not want to go to law school. I dreaded the idea of studying law. My fear of disappointing her in this had brought me to tears on several occasions. This professor knew that. ‘The Mentor’ had insisted I tell them that, tell them why I wasn’t sure a PhD program would line up with my familial obligations. With all that being said, I don’t know why they thought bringing up parents in my presence would be to my benefit, which was their stated intention. I didn’t know how the relevance of my concerns could ever be conditional and dictated by someone else’s standards. It felt like my entire life story, that I had poured out to them under their insistence, was just a tool or a play thing, and they had no qualms about hurting me with it if it meant saving face. Because I completely agree I was and am not fit for a PhD program. But there was a time when I said that and had been challenged.
Maybe I am wrong to be so hurt. After all, they are human. But as I see it, this all went too far, and no amount of backtracking was going to take us back to where we needed to be. An apology would have gone a long way. I probably would have forgiven them and would have placed my trust in them again if they could have acknowledged that my voice had not been heard. Blame me or my upbringing. Do what must be done, but admit that things went too far. Advisable or not, I would have accepted that. Instead, we went a specific way. This was our Rubicon. Passing over it, I started to see them as a negative force in my life that now had all of my secrets at their disposal. And from rumors and other conversations, I couldn’t trust that they wouldn’t use this weapon in some vindictive or misplaced way. It might have seemed far-fetched or irrational, but all the same, I was scared.
There were other problems with them that I had, though clarity only comes in hindsight. For one, I think I was used as a figurative stick to beat down another student’s research-related self-esteem. The three of us met together more often than not, which might have simply been a matter of convenience. But then came the comments comparing our projects, so I can no longer trust that explanation. One sticks out in my mind. To paraphrase, when this other student apologized for having a project that seemed derivative (it was not), our mentor pointed out that my project was so much more interesting than his, so we could always count on having interesting conversations during our meetings. I also remember him being proud of his idea and the sight of him deflating at ‘The Mentor’s’ comment. I remember that we would have to pick up graded papers at the same time, his immense interest in my results, and his pressuring his girlfriend to not say a word to me if she could help it. What I remember is hurt being directed at me, but I can’t recall doing anything to earn his rebuke. It may just be a failing of my memory, or this suspicion that we were played against each other in small ways is not just the product of my resulting paranoia. Regardless, if I am the villain in his story, he is welcome to tell it. How could I deny him that? ‘Cancel’ me, if you are reading this. I will accept my punishment for the role I played in how our mentor treated you. This other student had once voiced his own desire to enter graduate study, but from what I can tell he became a science teacher at a private school. I don’t know why he chose that path. I have no right to ask. There were also rumors of ‘The Mentor’ mistreating graduate students in a similar manner that I had been: pressuring them to become what they were not in this yearning for ideological copies and risking the academics that these students could have been. And personally, I found it suspicious how many articles they allegedly co-wrote with said students, but an overbearing nature at inappropriate stages in the writing process explains that away, ominously.
You can hear my bitterness in ‘The Mentor’ tapes, and that bitterness was the point. I needed that catharsis, that purge of all my fear, hatred, and hurt. It was a way to feel what I had denied myself for so long. After all, the worst of our interactions were in person, and so I could never prove they happened the way I remember them. Not to the administration (though I was not inclined to make a formal report) and not to myself. When I wrote those tapes, I gave these feelings something to latch onto,, that they could drift away from me. And while I still hope they and I never speak again, I’m no longer as haunted as I had been.
“Nothing brings out ghosts like property disputes,” Dickey writes (p. 268). And this was a property dispute but one that never should have been. It was a dispute over my mind and my life that wiped away my ability to be tethered to my alma mater. Beyond a few carefully curated relationships, I think of that place as a ghost town, wiped away by the decision to trust the wrong person with every weapon that could ever be used against me.
This is why I did not email the soul whose death I seemed to be predicting. I couldn’t be sure whose side he was on in this (potentially imaginary) war between myself and a colleague, but it wouldn’t be hard to guess. Obviously, he would choose the colleague, right? In a post-Covid world, in the wake of so many faculty petitions and open letters as administrators made outrageous demands on faculty, I find myself thinking I was right in this judgment call, even if it was only to make his life easier in a trying time. In fact, I’d never demand anyone take a side in this dispute. Rather, I would want him to look upon my work--and maybe even this blog--and judge it kindly. For that, however, he would have to be alive and not take ‘The Mentor’s’ likely vindictive words against me as gospel.
As for the secrets themselves, they included a bout of suicidal ideation when I was nineteen and in the wake of my paternal grandmother's death. While I made no actual attempt, I spent a sizable portion of my remaining time at university working through it as well as the predisposition to react so intensely in a time of grief and stress, building up defenses that such a low time in my life would never happen again. This was time that was not spent studying, and I did not know what the effect on my grades was. Having another academic experience under my belt would clarify some things. This part was not off-limits in that final conversation. ‘The Mentor’ brought it up, repeatedly, and it became fodder for so many waking nightmares that, reasonably, might have seeped into my dreams, latching on to someone I cared about as a cruel trick of the mind. I was afraid, and fear is a hard thing to contain. In hindsight, however, I think the professor whose potential death haunted me and whose judgment I feared would have understood; while the culture of my alma mater had—at times—a warped understanding of the implications of a suicide, he wasn’t inclined to agree with them on many things. Maybe I had nothing to fear, but then again, fear is seldom rational.
***
The Martyr: Perhaps a Literal Ghost
One thing I feared was a repeat of a past mistake. I had already failed one person in a life or death matter. The story of the priest who fell behind the altar and went unfound for several hours is largely true. But it was the parish rectory not the altar where he fell, it happened when I was in college, and I’ve never had a stepfather. I didn’t confide in anyone about the dreams about this tragedy until the priest fell and went undiscovered for close to sixteen hours. I didn’t even tell him about it. There was no moment when I went to the hospital to drop to my knees and beg for forgiveness. I have none and no way of getting it. This priest lingered in a very weakened for almost a year--presumably a year in agony--but in a hospice I could not visit. And having not seen him, there was no promise meant to serve the purpose of absolution. For this nightmare, all I have is guilt and the sense of impending doom that comes with an unarrived reckoning.
Whether I should be seeking out absolution is something you, dear reader, might have an opinion on. Being that—as most Filipinos—I was raised Catholic, you might be pointing out the Catholic notion of guilt as a way of trying to explain to me how I was effectively brainwashed and shouldn’t be sorry for anything. To that, I would say you are missing the point. Regardless of what anyone thinks, I am haunted by this all the same. You see, this priest was kind to me. He told me stories of his other assignments across the decades and the country. He would laugh with me and sing my university fight song to me whenever I came home to visit while sprinkling little tidbits of advice and wisdom while he walked, hunched over his walker. At the time, he was in his nineties, and he’d come to our parish because our rector would let him still say mass in his old age, which was both a sign of his devotion and stubbornness in equal measure and something many other rectors would not allow. To them, it was because he could only move slowly, and parishioners would complain that his mass took too long (which they did, but our rector just ignored it). And yet, this priest still believed he could do everything a man half his age could do despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. When I was in high school, he would let me see his weakness. He would accept my help with small tasks and no one else’s, like opening his water bottle or unjamming the wheels of his walker because he—once again—decided to take shortcuts through areas with many lawn clippings and fallen leaves. Looking back, I knew what he was trying to comfort me by making me feel useful and special. I was a child who had just lost her father, and everyone was botching the aftermath. There was no comfort, just a general dismal of my feelings. I had emotions I wouldn’t admit to. I was scared and lonely. He wanted me to feel a little less of it whenever it could be done, but he was old and frail. Never mind propriety in an age post-sex-abuse-scandals, or a first round or two of them.
I wrote that passage, and my mind immediately followed it up with ‘And you let him die.’ Which is not what I did. I had a history of being able to predict things in my dreams: questions on tests, the section leader assignments in marching band, and the car arrangements in the student parking lot as well as the resulting accidents when the worst drivers of the lot parked too close to each other. But those could be explained away. Teachers often hint at important--and test-worthy--details, the band director is notorious for playing favorites, and human beings are creatures of habit. But then again, how did I predict the exact dollar amount of my university’s financial aid package, the product of a process I did not understand?
In his book, Dickey describes the Salem Witch Trials as a moment in history when “a powerless minority was scapegoated, persecuted, and killed by an ignorant mass” (35). That is the best explanation I’ve seen for it, but in this recognition comes a brief insight into human nature in the form of a pattern we practice far too frequently. Scapegoating is far too human. Its practice is imbedded in our shared history but in my personal one as well. I just tend to turn myself into the scapegoat, which is nothing special. In this case, I am both the weaker party, blaming myself for a tragedy in my life that I can’t otherwise make sense of through my ignorance and inability to accept the inevitability of misery and suffering makes me ignorant. That’s the rational side of it, but I struggle to forget that dream, the vividness of it all and the episode of Dr. Phil that played on the television in the background while the priest who showed me such kindness lay on the floor dying slowly, which gave me a clear date for when the fall would happen. I know what I saw. Or have I convinced myself of the details?
I wish I knew which it was. In the absence of certainty, I turned to my personal version of Pascal’s Wager and focused on the potential losses that could be suffered if I was wrong. And I didn’t want this professor to die an equally preventable death, whether or not I would be morally responsible for letting it happen.
But this is the most literal ghost of all the ones that haunt me: this is the blood that may or may not be on my hands. At least I’ve finally had some sort of confession.
***
The Hero: An Apparated Apology
This is the other straightforward ‘pillar,’ as I call them. This was the man who wrote the recommendation letter for me despite the lack of any advanced notice, who helped me confront the reality of the depression that lasted so long in the wake of my father’s death, and whose intervention is likely at the source of every breath I draw. That’s just the short list of things he’s done for me, really. I actually told him about the nightmares of his colleague dying, and he kept some sort of reluctant vigil for me, though he had directly seen no cause for alarm and told me as such. All the same, I felt better with him knowing, and yet, once again I was making a demand of him that I had no right to. It’s not in his job description to come and rescue me from my own dysfunction, particularly once I have graduated. It’s why I waited almost two years to tell him what I was seeing every night, and though he hid it well, I think he was disappointed in me for waiting so long to seek his help. He’d never say it, of course. He has always been so good and kind to me, but that just plays into a certain kind of dysfunction I have (perhaps inherited).
The Philippines has the distinct honor of having one of the most collectivist cultures. Filipinos care for their families first and foremost, then their friends, their neighbors, and their larger community. From what I understood and had experienced, nowhere on that priority list is the self, but it’s supposed to work itself out. Here, this idea of ‘things working themselves out’ is not an empty platitude. To put it simply, individualistic cultures like the one in the United States focus on individual rights and entitlements: things that I should be able to count on having and the deprivation of such things is an actionable offense against me. Anticipation of that battle always looms overhead, and sometimes one jumps on the defensive a bit too quick. On the other hand, collectivist cultures build themselves on obligations, which does not initially seem promising. If I am taking care of others, who is taking care of me, one might be inclined to ask without realizing that their neighbor could be asking the same question. While I take care of them, they must also take care of me, and in a large system, one cannot be easily drained by the poor attitude of a neighbor. It is not just that the burden is shared by many hands but also that so many figures can exert a social pressure capable of ensuring compliance.
I could never condemn the collectivist mindset. Given the precarious nature of human existence, having that sort of safety net only makes sense. It certainly would have made losing a parent easier. But it’s one thing to offer your neighbor a cup of sugar or to use extra funds for a sibling’s education. On the other hand, there are tragedies and challenges not meant to be shared with children or rested on the shoulders of those who are already dealing with so much. There are expectations that should be dropped regardless of what the yield might be one day. As I said, I didn’t want to be a lawyer, especially not a lawyer living in Arizona and working for the father of a friend, no matter what the pay was and no matter what our family could do with the money. There are things that should not be asked of me, and yet they were.
On the other side of these things, there are actions that cannot be returned in kind: gifts that go far and beyond the occasions they were offered in. I can never repay any of my good professors for what they did for me, ‘The Hero’ most of all. He “who could have demanded so much more of me, asked for nothing. Nothing but my own happiness,” as I say in the show. That’s a nice sentiment. It’s one I’ve struggled with in the face of the overwhelming urge to fill this space of gratitude with something more tangible. In this space, a new sort of ghost has come to be: one that does not have a clear counterpart in the framework I’m borrowing from Dickey. It is a spirit that has come to fill an otherwise unoccupied space simply because it is inconceivable that a space so wide could ever be unoccupied.
There are things I want to say to ‘The Hero’ and perhaps could be said, but they would never rise to the occasion in which they were offered. I would know. I write to this person frequently--both in email and the occasional physical letter--and have yet to banish this ghost. I’m not surprised that it finds ways to reinvent itself, latching onto the memory of those I cannot even attempt to express gratitude to, like the professor in the first season. The debt to him is great, and yet, I had reason to think I was risking his life out of my own convenience.
There was so much to say, real weight behind it, and reason to stay silent. But still, there was one final piece missing in my helplessness.
***
The Father: The Ultimate Ghost
For a long time, I thought my father was a ghost in a literal sense, messing with my cell phone, causing it to beep whenever I thought of him. This was right after he died and with a cell phone that was dropped thrice daily, usually on concrete. (I was a teenager after all.)
My father died when I was thirteen. This was after being told--at nine years old--that if I was a good girl God would spare my father for my sake. He’d had a massive heart attack, which is why I missed a Catechism class and had to inform my teacher about this absence through a note my mother wrote out but didn’t censor. This teacher’s reaction messed me up spiritually and mentally for quite a while. But I don’t blame this teacher. My father had almost died, and in the face of that incomprehensibility, this Catechism teacher--a volunteer, from what I can recall, who likely had no in depth training on something like this--strove to draw meaning from it, specifically a lesson in rewarded goodness and the paternal love of God. It’s the sort of thing that doesn’t sit well with us at a distance. But in some ways, coping with failed hopes and the cold, arbitrary nature of death in this way is a long human tradition, not unlike the weight given to battlefield cemeteries meant to drown out the lamentations that young men who had given up their lives would not make it to the family burial plot (Dickey, 2017, p. 205).
We want to draw meaning from suffering, specifically from the deaths of those we love. We want to understand and find comfort in that understanding. However, trying to understand the worst parts of the human experience is not easy, but considering our answer is not graded in any meaningful way, we can make whatever we come up with work. We can come up with something, anything, to fill that void. Even a ghost story will do. As Dickey writes, “Part of the reason that ghosts stay with us is that they remain a compelling mechanism to explain so much that is unknown in our lives. They enter and reenter our lexicon to explain the unexplainable, to represent the unrepresentable, to give a word to that which we don’t understand” (p. 283). And there was a lot of my father’s death that I didn’t understand.
The obvious question would be ‘Why?’ in any of its many forms. I never got an answer to that, and there would never be one. But a mythos was still spun all the same, and there was plenty of thread for that tapestry, even if it was poorly appropriated thread. One was my father’s near death experience that happened when I was an infant, and the other was that his actual death happened mere days after my thirteenth birthday, which was--itself--his last good day. Grasping at straws, I concluded in my desperate, thirteen-year-old brain, that I had been given thirteen years with him and that those thirteen years were all I really needed. But my father was sick. His health had been slowly deteriorating for thirteen which came with an untold amount of suffering. It was time for him to be at peace, the Heavenly peace that could only come from God. I had been blessed, and it wasn’t fair of me to want more. Inaccurate, yes, but it gave me cause to ignore my later dysfunction. I shouldn’t feel this way, I would say to myself. It wasn’t right, and if I would just look at the bigger picture, those feelings would go away. I was selfish and ungrateful and the worst daughter my father could have had. It was cold, sure, but it’s what I had to do to get through those moments in the absence of better coping mechanisms or perspective. There had to be some larger meaning to his death, right? If not, I suffered for the simple sake of suffering.
Then there was the night he died. That night, I dreamt of him. I dreamt that he came to me to say goodbye, breaking through the boundary between life and death to do it and turning the wall between such into a door. This is where the complication lies. As my father had said once, “Once a wall turns into a door, it doesn’t matter how thick you make the lock. It can be picked.” The night I saw him--if I saw him--was the first time I experienced this sort of ‘dream,’ the one that felt like I was being let into a secret from somewhere else. I don’t know if it should be considered a ‘message from beyond’ or not. It might not be intentional, after all. Maybe Dad’s appearance was the only intentional one, and things are just seeping in through cracks in this newly created door, slipping through vulnerabilities that were now created and couldn’t be wished away. Or maybe this isn’t any system at all, poorly made or not. Maybe it is just my mind playing tricks on me. However, I just need, in many ways, to believe that these weren’t just ordinary dreams. If the dream of my father was a true visitation, then the rest were something supernatural. If it was not, then I didn't get to say goodbye to my father. He was already unconscious when I got to the hospital
However, this story does not come without a cost. The idea of having said goodbye properly, of having my father tell me he loves me one more time, or of having a father so devoted to me that he broke the barrier between life and death in the name of paternal duty raises the stakes. It means the other dreams are real and should be treated accordingly. A responsibility can easily be born out of his actions. My father’s death then became the focal point, not just of these questions but of so many of my fears, like the fear of being completely alone and fear of being inadequate. Being a medium, in some form, presents a solution, if I can do it right. If it were any other context but this.
***
The Result, if it can be called as much.
I never did email any ghost or ‘client’ to them about this podcast. Only ‘The Hero’ even knows I get these dreams, and it was to ask if his colleague was okay.
On that, the answer was mixed because to tell you the truth, there was a death from natural causes in his family around the time the dreams of his death started, which both explains what I thought I was seeing at first and is knowledge I likely should not have, but--desperate to know that he was safe--I sought it out. And I cannot apologize for it. Not enough nor at all. But I needed to know that he was alive, or--at the very least--that if some tragedy were to befall him, it was not avoidable.
That sounds cold because it likely is. But therein lies another benefit to ghost stories: they pull that guilt from us and let us walk unencumbered through our day to day lives. Sometimes, though, it is our guilt that makes us human. It’s all about balance.
***
The Rest of it: Present and Future
In each of these cases, there were things I couldn’t say to certain people. As for the three other clients in Season 1 not mentioned here, it’s a similar story but one--or several--without the same weight. Perhaps I should have said something to them, but the stakes weren’t so high. And yet, knowing that I should was enough to create a ‘mini-haunting,’ you might call it. But at the end of the day, regardless of what I did or did not do, I am still in contact with these people. These are still living relationships.
As Dickey says towards the end of the book, “Ghost stories are about how we face, or fail to face, the past--how we process information, how we narrate our past, and how we make sense of the gaps in our history” (Dickey, 2017, p. 284). For the three other clients of season 1 and the clients of seasons 3 and 4, I told stories about the present. And initially, when drafting out this essay, I thought these were just normal stories. I was just being a writer who does the thing at the root of the word with which they describe themselves: write. But it was more than that. The Oracle of Dusk is more than that.
Oracles might be thought of as someone who stands at the crossroads between future and present; they bring glimpses of the future to us in the present, which is inaccurate on a technicality. Traditionally, an oracle is a person who is able to channel a message not from the future but from a deity, from some outside being who is so far removed as to see your story for what it is. In some sense, they might know the ghost story that you may become or create and know it before your fatal error.
At some point, The Oracle of Dusk stopped being my story. Maybe it was after season 2 in which I was able to--in a veiled way--air out some of the grievances I had with certain people in my life represented by unrecognizable abstract entities. I don’t know exactly. But looking at what it has become, this podcast (and the larger universe that is growing from it) has become a way to tap into what haunts or what will haunt us: to our guilt, anxiety, and the like. It speaks to the unrealized future we likely want to avoid. This is not only about the ghost stories we currently carry but the potential next chapter, just over the horizon.
Note: If I have poorly covered my tracks, and you think you know who I may be writing about, don’t attempt to contact anyone. For one, you might be (or probably are) wrong, but on the other hand, this was years ago. I spent my time since then reclaiming my life from these ghosts, and even if they won’t admit it they made a mistake, people can learn from their indiscretions. I want to believe that happened. For my sake, leave the ‘dead’ where they lay.
Works Cited:
Dickey, C. (2017). Ghostland: an American history in haunted places. Penguin Books. Purchase Link
Information on my podcast can be found at oracleofdusk.online