Why is Erica obsessing about ghosts? You know, besides the usual reasons? Find out at Going Dark, a dark comedy anthology from the Coil Project.
Ghosts are a weird concept. I write a lot of plays about ghosts, and I’m not entirely sure why I keep coming back to that particular well; there’s something so immeasurably sad about the very concept of them, about these beings trapped in a world that’s no longer theirs and unable to change, or often even accept, their lot. In the Harry Potter universe, ghosts are what’s left of those people who are most afraid of death. In Casper (there are… probably better examples), they’re those who have “unfinished business” here on Earth and, once they finish said business, “move on” to whatever’s next. Countless movies, television shows, and books have characters come back as ghosts in order to protect their still-living loved ones, letting them leave this plane of existence (I guess) once they’ve fulfilled that task. Still more ghosts exist to get revenge on the people who killed them/disturbed their graves.
I’m a ghost agnostic; I would really and truly love to believe that they exist, because that would be awesome, but I find myself kind of torn on the logic of the subject. In his review of the movie Over Her Dead Body, Roger Ebert gave possibly my favorite summation of the portrayal of ghosts in movies and television: “I always wonder why walls are meaningless to such beings but they never fall through floors. Do elevators go up without them? Never mind.”
Never mind indeed. There is a scene in the TV series Angel wherein a ghostly character, who just moments before was unable to touch people or a desk, collapses into a chair and makes a visible indent in it. I remember being bizarrely furious at the improbability of this, but it’s a show about a crime-fighting vampire (with a soul, no less) who works at a demonic law firm, so perhaps my ire was misplaced.
Ghosts are supernatural beings, so who knows what governs their movements? Maybe they’re like holograms on Star Trek, able to change tangibility from moment to moment. Maybe they’re not walking on the floor, but a half-millimeter above it, trying like hell to maintain some vestige of who they were Before. Maybe a wizard did it. Who could say? And does it matter?
I’m not sure it does. Unless a Dunharrow-sized contingent of ghosts shows up someday and recount their experiences, we can’t know anything with respect to the ‘reality’ of them. And if you’re writing a play about them, maybe that’s okay. If the story is good enough, we can believe that sitcom characters who are constantly complaining about money can nevertheless afford sprawling Manhattan apartments. We can accept that the tiny, spider-like hairs that allow Peter Parker to scale buildings can somehow go through his gloves and sneakers. Maybe we shouldn’t worry so much about how ghosts can sit down.