Why ghosts scare me
“If I die before you, then I will come back to haunt you,” proclaimed an ex-lover. When we were together, we had dreams, individually we were left with unfulfilled desires. The end felt like being cheated out of what was supposed to be ours forever. If the ghost of the living can be real, what happens when they are otherworldly? Amid this chaos & fear, one has valid questions, namely, the ones below:
What remained incomplete?
Why would they return to the place of tragedy?
When did they decide that this is how they wish to spend eternity?
Where did it all go wrong?
How would their soul be free?
Which person holds such immense power over them?
Would Hanuman Chalisa work, or do we need an exorcism?
Here is a tweetstorm that I am going to use as an anchor, spoilers ahead. If you don’t enjoy the ‘horror’ genre, this sentence is where I propose closing the tab.
Now then, let’s tackle this. Here is the tweetstorm again.
Story 1: parents informing call center colleagues that their daughter has been dead for four years.
Story 2: an experience so stressful that a person commits suicide.
Story 3: a place where jilted lovers gather to commit suicide.
When I approached the issue emotionally, it was the ghost that scared me.
When I approached the issue logically, it was the living I found frightening.
The lady in story 1, you died, and yet you return to your job. Heck, you were great at outbound sales, but when shifted to inbound, you lost your shit. A terrible manager triggered even a dead person. The HR person was so concerned about employees that they acted when an employee does not show up. This example tells us more about the screwed up system that is crony capitalism than ghosts. Where was the money earned by this ghost going?
There is a house where a woman is crying every night. The entire world is aware of it, but our solution as a society is to look the other way. We do not need ghost stories to throw light on societal apathy; the ongoing migrant crisis in India is enough proof of it. A person who approached the problem was so disturbed by it that he decided to end their existence.
The third story is simple enough. An abrupt end to any relationship leads to trauma.
The point is simple: care for the living, and the dead won’t be scary anymore.
There you go, the problems of the living are more daunting than the dead. A great example is Japan’s Aokigahara Jukai, better known as the suicide forest. Alongside, Bermuda triangle, it is one of the mysterious places on planet earth as per paranormal enthusiasts.
I am reproducing an excerpt from an article on the forest from Japan Times published on 26 June 2020.
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Experts are quick to point out the impact of the global financial crisis, especially since the world’s third-largest economy suffered its most severe contraction in over 30 years in 2009.
It is also believed that next year, there will be a further rise in suicides due to the magnitude-9 megaquake and tsunami that hit the Tohoku region of northeastern Japan on 11 March. “It is likely to have a huge influence,” said Yoshinori Cho, director of the psychiatry department at Teikyo University in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, and author of a book titled “Hito wa naze Jisatsu Suru no ka” (“Why Do People Commit Suicide?”)
Already there have been several suicides by relatives of disaster victims. At the same time, the long-term effects of life in evacuation shelters may also lead to depression and, thus, directly or indirectly, to further suicides, Cho added.
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