For years I lived with the ghost of an old woman in my room.
She was very quiet and never really bothered anyone much; just sat in the corner and knitted. Never moved from that corner. It wasn’t like she could ever be very scary, what with her missing dentures and little blue nightgown. What was she going to do, knit me a sweater too small out of pure malicious intent? If that was the worst evil she could stir up, I was going to leave her well enough alone.
And so there she sat, the ghost in my room.
Around the age of eight I began to question her origin.
“How did you die?” I would ask.
She would stare back, as if she didn’t understand the question.
This frustrated me for a long while before I realized that her hearing aids didn’t exactly work now that she was dead. I ended up shouting the question before she heard, and even then it seemed she couldn’t speak. The old woman made hand motions where she pointed to herself, then the sky in a wide arc.
“Naturally?” I figured.
The old woman gave me a gummy smile and pulled some spectral knitting out from somewhere to occupy her time. From then on, the ghost in the corner of my room went by the non-threatening title of Gummy.
She knitted me so many sweaters and blankets and quilts...I’m not sure if she really enjoyed it or whether it was just something to cling onto from her living days. Didn’t matter; wasn’t like I could drape the ghostly threads around me anyway. They just disappeared soon as they touched my hands. Everytime Gummy watched her hard work melt through my fingers, she looked a little sadder. Gummy and I lived in that peaceful stasis for another five years.
In the December of my thirteenth year, Gummy left her corner to glance out the window. When she did, she saw a man walking by with his dog. He was very young, only around 20 or so. She seemed to recognize him.
Her thin hands clasped together and her face crinkled into a smile and I watched her fade slowly into the wallpaper of my room and that was the last I ever saw of her.
Other people must think ghosts are everywhere, but they’re really not. It’s very rare to see one just lounging about. Most are lost; just gazing away drifting in memories of life. Others wander, experiencing things they never got in life.
And then there are those who don’t seem to comprehend that they’re dead.
When I was fifteen a girl I knew passed away in an accident. We hadn’t been close friends, but we knew each other and I was sad when she died. We used to sit at the same lunch table. A few weeks after her death, she came back.
“I’m not sure, I think I had the flu. I can’t even imagine how much homework I’ve missed!” She would exclaim to passing students who were oblivious to her jabbering. She would talk with her friends (to herself) and laugh at jokes (not directed at her) and even try to get involved in the school drama (“I can’t believe Hillary said that!”) and it was so sad to watch this girl pretend to be alive, when both she knew and I knew deep down in our souls she was six feet under the soil of Arnheart Cemetery three streets and a railroad away from the school.

There was one ghost in particular I became very close to at the age of 17. He was a boy ghost, which was odd because there aren’t many of them. His name was James and he died sometime during the Industrial Revolution, though he can’t seem to recall when. He sits in my history classes and corrects the teachers.
“Ya know, they make it sound so bad but it wasn’t really ya know?” He would bellow, “I could provide for my family and that was real nice.”
“You sure don’t sound like you’re from the industrial revolution.” I commented.
“One does tend to pick up some things when you’re bored. Grammar and vocabulary are...” He began but then he drifted off and floated away, eyes glazed and shape fading.
James was odd.
He was different from most ghosts I knew. He actually learned new things and advanced...but in return he was dragged into these flashbacks of his life. Sometimes he would come to me after flashing back to his death.
“I thought I was safe! They told me I was safe but the machines...the machines!!” He would cry and then fall into my lap where I would cradle his intangible form best I could. From what I understood, he was caught and ripped apart by the moving parts of some type of machine, though what I have no clue.
James faded away one day, just like Gummy.
One moment he was normal, floating around my head in class, the next he took one look at the picture in my textbook and slowly melted away with a smile. I later found his face among the grimy expression of the boys lined up in the photo. He was the only one smiling.
Made me miss Gummy.
I met Miss Poppy at a market one day, collecting some apples that were on sale. She looked a bit worried so I inquired as to what the issue was. She was recently dead and very life-like looking
“Oh I’m afraid someone’s stolen my bike!! I can’t go home now.” She fretted, wringing out her slender hands. She was a very pretty woman. She had long slash marks up and down her chest; she was too newly dead to have covered them up yet. They looked painful.
“That’s a shame. But you can’t really go home anyhow. You’re dead.”
“And so are you.”
“I’m not.”
“Oh.”
Miss Poppy looked very dismayed at this.
“You can come home with me, if you’d like.” I asked.
“Won’t your parents be angry?”
I scoffed at that.
“I’m twenty three. I live on my own.”
“You look a little young to be twenty three.”
I left Miss Poppy at the market and never saw her again.

The last ghost I ever saw was Bruce. He was a good man. He died in an automobile accident trying to speed home to his family, fresh back from the war.

“I shouldn't have been so reckless. I had a family.” He would whine as we sat on the roof. He was always on the roof. I was too.

“We all make mistakes.”

“You’re too young to know real pain.”

“I’m older than I look.”

“You are aren’t you?”

“Thirty six this year.”

“And what’s that?” he asked mildly.

“What’s what?”

“The year.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Neither do I.”

We sat there in silence for a bit. He was puffing a cigar I suppose he pulled out of somewhere. Not sure where.

Pay attention, these were my last moments.
“It’s pitiful isn’t it?” Bruce finally spoke after sometime of silence, “We like to pretend we belong here, but we gravitate to the roofs. To the skies. We need to be free, because this Earth just isn’t for us. We’ve outstayed our time.” Bruce waved his hand up at the stars. “We belong out there.”
I sat for a while, quietly.
“I’ve outstayed my time.”
“You have.”
“But I don’t want to go.”
A long breath on the cigar, and an extra large puff of smoke.
“No one ever does.”
“How do you know when it’s time.”
“You’ll feel right. Complete.”
“Will it feel nice?”
Bruce never answered that.
“I have a confession.” I admitted to the darkness. I could see the stars winking out of existence as I spoke.
“What’s that?”
“I’m not thirty six. I’m much older than that.”
“knoww. What’s your name?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You will.”
The stars were collapsing. The world was collapsing. There was wind rushing over me and casting me aside and the very last shreds of reality were being consumed as well. Vaguely in the background I could hear the softs sighs of Bruce as he finished his cigar. Would he be lonely? No. I had always been but Bruce never was. This feeling, this feeling...Of everything shattering. Everything was falling inward on top of me and wrapping me up in a big blanked of the universe and I was swaying and humming to the music. Oh the music! Glorious! Violins and cellos and trumpets and drums! It was everything! The music was absolutely everything. It was like all of existence was setting like the sun on a winter’s day, and I don’t think I very much minding dying anymore. Ah was that it? Yes, that was it.
That was my name.