Old Ghosts and New Ghosts

Living with the past.

Photo credit: iStock

By Tim Clark

When I was young, I lived in an apartment with a haunted closet. It was a room beside the living room and behind the kitchen. Despite having two exterior walls and being almost as big as the living room and bigger than the kitchen it had no windows. There was no electricity, no lights, no outlets. It had nothing, except an old chest of drawers and a circus poster.

It sat there dark, empty, and brooding. The closet entrance was a door in the center of the living room wall. It creaked and groaned and was sometimes difficult to open. Everybody who visited was sure they heard sounds coming from the room. When the lights were off and the flickering scenes on the television screen were the only illumination in the living room it was possible to see shadows drifting out under the bottom of the door.

Sharing an apartment with otherworldly manifestation or two, made me more sensitive to the presence of ghosts. I never saw him/them, and only occasionally heard him/them. Sometimes they would smoke my cigarettes, and my pot, they would drink my wine and beer and help themselves to my snacks.

Occasionally, as I slept the ghost(s) would tune the dial on my radio to KCAM, “America’s Country Station,” Waylon and Willie and I shared a lot of breakfast cereal. It was…