The Architecture of Hauntings
Upper floors are always haunted. The attic of my family home
wheezes with spirits two hundred years past. Greasy apparitions smut the two
small second-floor bedrooms in Tara ’s house. The
Breakers’ grand stairway of marble and gilt can’t tempt me to ascend to the
creepy servants’ rooms high above the ground-floor library, dining room, and
ballroom. The crooked wooden chimney-winding staircase in the House of Seven
Gables forbids me from confronting the dead whispering to each other beneath a
complex joinery of roof. Even the loft of your expensive condo sports the ghost
of a long-departed lover, whose checked twill jacket flaps like a sail in the
gloom. I’m safer living on one floor. Yes, I’m happy with bedroom, bath, and
kitchen all at ground level so if the ghosts arrive I can escape through any
window. Maybe the basement bears a spook or two, but I only do my laundry
there. The grumble of the washer and whirr of dryer warn off the worst
manifestations: those you in your grimmer spiritual moments persuade yourself
to endorse.
No comments:
Post a Comment