How to see a ghost

The sky outside is black and I can hear sirens from a police car or ambulance outside, it hurtled past in an instant. Now it's just the music coming from the speakers behind me. It's beginning to warm me up a bit. It's good to write with music on. I find that music sometimes changes the rhythm of my typing. Then it becomes a little easier to think and type because the music carries you along.

Of course it has to be the right sort of music. Nothing too alarming. Some arhythmic banshee screaming would never do. I like the scream of a banshee, don't get me wrong. I think a good spook should always have a place in some haunt or other, but when i'm trying to type a thousand words without stopping it's best not to come down with the heebie jeebies and have my wits stolen by some long faced spinster wailing in my face with a semi-transparent robe all flowing about her. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to find a ghost lurking around every corner, well maybe not every corner. I'm often carrying hot drinks or a lovingly made dinner, but just the occasional corner would be ok.

Maybe about once a month, just to keep me on my toes. I would see it and after regathering my heebie jeebies and wits I would be somehow reassured as to my place in the grand old cosmos, and feel a little as though when life stops it's not necessarily all over. Of course that depends on whatever my idea of what ghosts are at the time. My ideas change.

Sometimes I think they're visitors from a different dimension, and other times I think they're just residues of life energy forces or whatever that have gotten into the fabric of the curtains, or the fabric of spacetime and stained it a bit, and some people, I'm not talking tv magicians or mulletted shiny shirt wearing mediums, but some real people, due to some quirk of hard-wiring in the psyche they were probably born with, can see these stains like they're echoes just replaying over and over and the ghost isn't a conscious entity itself, it's just a trace, an echo. So what ever my current view that I'd be holding of what ghosts are, at the time of walking round a corner with out a hot drink or a lovingly cooked dinner in my hand, I'd feel an initial sense of startlement and then a deep sort of reassurance.

I might even attempt to communicate with the ghost. I might offer to deliver the message or help them in some way, I would of course expect something in return. I'd want to ask it a couple of quick questions about the after life, like what happened after it died, who it gets to hang around with and what's the point of it all. It might be nice, I might learn something. Of course this would only work if didn't get too freaked out. 

I've been scared out of my wits before. There was a time I was alone at home on a Saturday night a few years ago, I was doing a painting and having a pleasant time, it was when I used to smoke spliffs so I felt really into it. I needed something to wipe the brush or something, so I went - painting and brush in hand, into my bedroom. Now this was a ground floor flat, and my bedroom was at the back with gardens outside. I'd left my window open to get fresh air or whatever, and when I went into the bedroom, with painting and brush in hand, there was a man standing behind my door.

I looked at him, I was standing right next to him. He was looking at me, sort of surprised. He was a black man with some sort of skin pigment problem like he had lots of white or bleached patches on his cheeks. I wondered who he was. I tried to think if I knew him. Perhaps he was a friend of my brother's, who I lived with, and he was playing a joke or something. Then it dawned on me that the man standing next to me was a burglar. I shat myself.

I try to imagine what I should have done, or what the version of me that I thought I was would have done, but I suppose you only really know yourself when you're put into an extreme situation and you look at your instinctive reaction. I didn't really shit my self - figure of speech, but I did find it hard to get my words out when I asked - who the fuck are you?

Anyway I scarpered back into the living room and called the police. He'd scarpered fortunately before I returned to the bedroom with an adrenaline fuelled claw hammer in my hand. It's funny because by the time the police arrived I didn't feel stoned at all. It's also funny because he'd missed the little bag of weed lying on my bedside table and instead took a 35mm camera, a 1970s seconda watch and a brass ring I'd made out of a bit of pipe when I was 14 after I'd read the hobbit. I thought I'd have that ring forever. I still hope it'll turn up one day in the roots of a recently felled tree.

So I don't know how I'll react when I see the ghost around the corner. I hope I manage to maintain some sort of savior faire so that I can engage it in a meaningful conversation, but you never know, maybe I'll just panic and run away.