Ghost Story?

We had a Hallowe'en theme for our team meeting at work this past Thursday, and as someone willing to speak publicly, I was asked if I would like to share a ghost story - this is what I said (as best I can recall).

Asking me to tell a ghost story is kind of a tricky proposition. Do I believe in ghosts? Well, not really, but kind of?

I believe in the soul, in a way that no religious belief can fully lay claim to. I don't think most people would question the existence of a part of us that exists beyond or physical and mental selves. Is the emotional axis simply a subset of our minds? Perhaps, but then you could argue that consciousness itself is simply a fragment of our physical brains.

No, I believe the feeling part of us is potentially even deeper and less understandable than the thinking piece. And I appreciate that this assertion requires a bit of faith on its own - if a soul exists, it does so without any ability to be measured, categorized or catalogued in any meaningful way.

And something that ephemeral and immeasurable is, by definition, without limits. So if a soul is real, is it possible to determine what it might be capable of? And could this even extend to a soul somehow surviving the corporeal death of the body that formerly hosted it?

Who can say?

When I lived in Toronto and worked for Games Workshop, one of the Brits who came over to set up the Canadian operation was a good-natured and very smart fellow named Martin. One night over drinks the manager of the Queen Street shop (our oldest store at the time) was joking about the day that rats displaced the mice that you would sometimes hear running across the suspended ceiling.

Martin smiled and said, "When I was a lad, in Tipton, I heard a thumping and sliding noise from the attic above my bedroom.  I figured it was a rat, and I grabbed a stick or a hammer or summat and headed up to sort it out. But when I got up there and shone my torch around, I couldn't see anything, so I figured I must have heard something hit the roof and slide off..

"A few days later, I heard the noise again, kind of a thump! sssslide kind of sound, and it repeated. I pulled the ladder down from the attic and raced up, but same as before, couldn't see anything. It didn't even look like the dust up there had been disturbed, and it definitely sounded like something being dragged right over my head.

"The following week, I heard the sond again: thump! sssslide, thump! sssslide, thump! sssslide. I went down stairs and told my mum I was getting freaked out by a noise in the attic."

Someone interjected, "How old were you, Martin?"

Martin stroked his chin, saying "Ten or eleven, I think? Old enough that my mum laughed that I was getting wound up by mice running overhead.

"I told her, 'No, mum! It's bigger than mice, I thought maybe rats, but there's no tracks or scat upstairs, and it sounds like something being dragged around.'

"'Like what?' Mum said, and I banged my foot on the floor and dragged it a couple of times, to imitate the thump! sssslide, thump! ssssslide sound I had heard.

"I dunno what I was expecting, but it was not to have all the colour drain out of my Mum's face. She looked at me with serious eyes and said, 'that's the sound of your grandfather's walk. And he died in this house.'

"I thought she was taking the mickey out of me, and I said 'Wot? No way Mum!' but she went on. 'You were too little to remember, but your grandfather hurt his leg in a bad bike accident and dragged his right foot behind him all the time after that.'

"I laughed and said, 'Are you trying to freak me out or something?' but she shook her head. 'Go ask you Gram,' pointing to the living room. 'She'll tell you.'

"I didn't really want to know at this point, but at the same time I felt I kind of had to, y'know? So I went into the living room where my blind Gram was knitting and had the tv on so she could hear her stories, and I asked, 'Gram, did Granddad walk with a limp?'

"'Ooh, yes,' she said, 'he dragged his foot behind him til the end of his days - I could always hear him around; thump, slide, thump, slide...'

"She said that, y'know, and all the hairs on my body stood straight up. And then she said, 'I still hear him.'"

We all sat there, looking at Martin and exchanging uncertain glances with each other, and he continued, "I'm an atheist, and I don't want to believe in ghosts, but if you asked me now if I believe in them, well, I couldn't rightly say 'no', now, could I?"