This Is My Life

When I was a child, I taught myself chess. I was about ten years old, and good enough to bring my father to a stalemate. Not great, not a genius, and definitely not an amazing feat for me to learn the game. Unremarkable, even, except for one major factor:

I learned from a man long dead.

I didn't read books, I didn't ask other people how to play. I taught myself, in my room, by playing with someone who wasn't there. We sat on the floor, because I didn't have a table. I sat with my legs folded underneath me as small children often do, and he sat cross-legged on the other side of the board. He taught me how all the pieces moved. When he tried to explain "castling," I looked it up.

I don't remember much about him. He was a middle-aged man, and while I want to say he wore overalls, I can tell that that's just my now-brain putting details that I don't actually remember into the scene. I don't remember hearing him speak, but I remember him saying things to me, like his words were just there, and I plucked them from the aether. He was real, even though I could see through him. He had a name; I don't remember it.

I write this while grimacing. I've never actually told anybody this story before, for a lot of reasons. I wear a frown because while I write it I know that if someone were to tell the story to me, if I were to read it somewhere else, I'd nod politely and secretly place them in the category of "crazy people." I can't help it. I watch shows like Ghost Hunters, and point out how everything's faked. I listen to stories, and think the person must be lying, or crazy.

I know, for a fact, that ghosts exist. I remember, clearly, interacting with them. I was scared of many, intrigued by others. One saved my life.

At the same time, I know that ghosts can't exist. Everyone in my childhood told me I was either seeing things or making things up. They couldn't see what was right there with them, they didn't believe me, stopped listening. They told me I had an active imagination, and that someday I'd stop having imaginary friends.

They were right. It stopped.

My rational mind, the one that was trained to be what it is today through experience, refuses to see ghosts, to believe ghost stories, and doubts its own memories of seeing them. It tells me that spiritual creatures, ghosts, spooks, haunts, demons, don't exist. Can't.

And then I remember playing chess; being passed condiments at the lunch table when nobody else was in the house; a toy in the playroom rolling across the 10 foot gap between me and it, coming to a rest next to me; a boy standing over me, telling me to hold on, that it wasn't my time; seeing people that couldn't be there because, well, they were dead.

So tell me your ghost stories. I'll be intrigued. I'll want to know more. I'll even ask to hear more. I'll just think you're crazy.

Then I'll tell you my stories.

It's okay. You can think I'm crazy. I understand. I think I am.