Chance of a Ghost

Hallowe'en approaches, with its mixture of fun and dread, and thoughts turn to witches and vampires,  goblins and ghosts.

Although for some, these spectres or illusions or other worldly beings are ever present--no need to wait for October 31.

Ghosts, like the mortals they once were, come in various personalities--some menacing, some playful. We know a gentleman who refuses to move from his very large house because he fears the friendly ghost he shares it with might not move with him.

There are several more or less familiar ghosts in this city, including the woman in the blue evening dress who flits through walls on the fourteenth floor of Hotel Vancouver, presumably trying to find her way back to the party she left some decades ago.

Some ghosts may be hoping to complete some unresolved earthly task. But most, probably simply are lonely, and who wouldn't be, drifting around for eternity in ectoplasm?

Among the memorable ghosts in literature are those who came to visit Ebenezer Scrooge, the unhappy women of "The Uninvited," the leafy monster of Kingsley Amis's "The Green Man," the classic shades in the stories of M.R. James and the Christmas yarns of Robertson Davies, and, perhaps most mysterious, the threatening presences in "The Turn of the Screw."

Of course, those presences, haunting Henry James's young governess, may be entirely in her mind. Indeed, all ghosts may reside in our minds. But does that make them less real?

Happy Hallowe'en.