Ghosts aren’t scary. Or, at least, they don’t mean to be on purpose.

It’s strange to think there was a time when people didn’t understand what ghosts were and why they did what they did; kind of like how it was once universally accepted that the world was flat. We just did what humans do best and came to the conclusion that our fundamental observation on a subject was all we needed to understand everything about it and left it at that. It wasn’t until Dr. Shirley Reese-McDrummond published her series of essays that were the accumulation of her thirty-year study on ghosts all around the world that people began to realize that the so-called “restless dead” weren’t so restless after all.

Basically, her theories can be summed up in three main points:

1. The concept of “unfinished business” is entirely devised by the living. In short, someone who lived an uneventful, content life has just as much of a chance of returning as a ghost as a person who lived a life of misery and hardships. All humans have the potential of becoming ghosts after death, regardless of their environment, race, religion, or economic class. A coal miner in South Dakota, USA has the same chance of becoming a ghost as a Chinese Empress from a thousand years ago. What causes some people to become ghosts and others not is still one of the world’s greatest unsolved mysteries.

2. When someone does return as a ghost, they retain no memories or sense of their identity from their former life. What was once interpreted as ghosts ‘making contact’ through banging on walls or moaning incoherent phrases or attempting to scare away living occupants through moving objects or knocking things off walls and shelves, is actually the ghost learning how to interact with their environment all over again. So in essence, ghosts are nothing more than clumsy, curious toddlers we can’t see.

3. Despite the second rule, ghosts are capable of memory, given the proper stimulation, but one must exercise said stimulation with care. If a ghost had a troubled life while they were alive, recalling the memories of that time may trigger latent rage, sorrow, and anguish, increasing the strength and frequency of “hauntings” that the living occupants may find disturbing or even dangerous to the mental and physical well-being of themselves and loved ones.

It’s all easy enough to understand in theory. However, unless you grew up in a certified haunted house, no amount of reading about ghosts or listening to other peoples’ experiences can prepare you for actually living with one.

I live in a condo in one of the older parts of town, somewhat closer to ‘historic society’ than ‘dilapidated mess’ which was a pleasant surprise given what my salary allowed me to work with. As is the law, the real estate listing had to declare that the property was haunted, but as it was only rated as a level three, I figured it was nothing I couldn’t handle. The house I grew up in was super old, too, full of groaning pipes and creaking walls, so the occasional disembodied voice or missing set of keys wouldn’t be that much of a difference, or so I told myself.

Spoiler alert: an old house settling and a ghost made curious by its new roommate is about as different as Mercury is from Pluto.

The first few months after moving in were not fun. There were a lot of doorknobs rattling, slamming kitchen cabinets, flickering lights, and sink taps turning on and off by themselves at all hours, day and night. Sleep was near impossible some nights as my personal poltergeist liked to tug on my hair and whisper inaudible murmuring in my ear. My friends pushed me to confront my landlord about it, saying that I could get a drop in my rent or at least get my lease canceled if I could prove they lied about the haunting activity level, but unless the ghost in my condo started causing significant monetary damage, which it never did, I was stuck.

After a while, though, things between us began to mellow out. Like I stated before, there’s not a lot of differences between ghosts and very small children, even beyond the obvious serious lack of coordination and communication skills and the pension to get into everything in sight. There’s a popular theory that ghosts, like babies, prefer to have a schedule, something constant and predictable, and experts in the field of parapsychology often recommend to people who live in haunted houses to stick to a routine to help keep ghostly interference to a minimum. Since my life revolves around school and my job that wasn’t a hard thing to work out. I even started leaving my textbooks out or the TV on at night to keep my ghost entertained so I could sleep undisturbed. It was a pretty good system, and for the most part, I was content with my living arrangements.

Then coronavirus and COVID-19 happened. With it came the state-mandated stay-at-home orders, upending the delicate status quo between me and my ghost that took weeks to figure out.

“Hey, come on, knock it off,” I sighed, exasperated, leaning down to pick up my pens from under the dining table. “I only have a couple of hours to finish this assignment, I can’t concentrate with you constantly knocking all my crap over.”

A cold tingle ran up the back of my neck like a malcontent sigh before the ghost moved on to another part of the room, leaving me alone at last. I released a sigh of my own and leaned back in my chair, scrubbing my hands over my face. It had not been an easy couple of weeks. I missed my friends, I missed going to class, I missed the little things like doing schoolwork at the coffee shop down the street from my condo and non-hassle grocery shopping. I was in a position where I was lucky I could work from home, but being constantly alone leached any novelty from it real quick.

My ghost was having a difficult time adjusting to the changes, too. She (I don’t remember exactly when I started thinking of her as a “she:” it could just be because she had a slighter, more feminine-presenting form those few times I saw her in the corner of my eye) had gone from existing alone in an empty house for who knows how long to having a living roommate who never leaves. By the end of the first month of quarantine I was pretty sure I could contest Dr. Reese-McDrummond’s “no restless dead” theory.

“I envy that you don’t have to deal with any of this bullshit,” I said into a seemingly empty room, but little pinpricks of goosebumps running up and down my arms let me know that the ghost was still somewhere nearby. Did she actively listen when I talked and understood what I was saying, or was it in the way young children processed speech, through tone and negative and positive reinforcement rather than through the words themselves?

I picked up my phone, scrolled through my Twitter feed for a minute, then immediately set it down again. Everything was so incredibly messed up right now; the uncertainty, the conflicting information, the continued denial as the number of infected cases continued to rise higher and higher. It made my anxiety spike in ways I never thought possible. I tried to get back to my assignment, but the damage was already done. I closed my laptop and crossed over to my cozy living room and flopped onto my couch. The leaves of the spider plant hanging from the ceiling began to flutter, followed by one of the picture frames rattling against the wall. I’m really glad I had time to get acclimated to living with a ghost by the time I was stuck in the house with one 24/7. When I first moved in, sometimes the ghost would be inactive for two or three days at a time before resuming her spectral shenanigans. Now, it was practically constant in one form or another. At least she finally got out of the habit of slamming the doors shut.

“I wonder what kind of historic events you lived through,” I mused aloud. I knew I was tempting fate by asking these kinds of questions in the presence of a ghost; bring up the wrong subject, and my time sheltering in place could get a lot more miserable. But now that the thought was in my head, it wouldn’t leave me alone. In a way, it was a welcomed distraction from thinking about the pandemic for a change. “Did you live through the Spanish flu? Was it anything like this? Was that what you died from?”

There was no response or reaction.

“Were you alive during the Civil War? Did you read about the Titanic sinking in the newspaper? Or listen to the news about the Pearl Harbor attack on the radio? Did you watch Neil Armstrong walk on the moon?”

Again, I was only answered by silence and stillness. Not even the leaves of the spider plant moved.

“What was the first movie you ever saw? Your favorite song? How old were you when you had your first kiss?”

By now I was sure I was only talking to myself, if for no other reason than my ghost had fallen silent for the first time in days. Did I say something that brought up a troubled memory, or did she retreat to some incorporeal plane that was off-limits to humans? Instead, I found myself answering my own questions: Finding Nemo; “Crystal” by Stevie Nicks; Matt Bradson during the 7th grade Winter Holiday dance at my middle school. According to Dr. Reese-McDrummond’s theories, and assuming they were correct, if I became a ghost after I died, I would lose all those memories and start over as a blank slate. Did we really know for certain that we forgot everything after we’re proclaimed braindead?

Realizing that this line of thinking was doing nothing to improve my mood, I peeled myself off the couch and returned to my makeshift work desk. I half-assed my way through the rest of the assignment and was getting ready to start the ridiculously long process of figuring out what I wanted to make myself for dinner when I was once more pricked by a burr of curiosity. My fingers twitched over the keyboard, wondering if appeasing it was worth the risk of turning my overall sweet, docile ghost into a wailing, destructive terror. Then again, unless ghosts can read over shoulders, what real harm was there?

My first search was of course the Find a Ghoul website, a massive database where people could register their resident ghost, get an assessment of their haunting level, get advice on how to get adjusted to living with one and, in extreme cases, the best local companies to contact who could permanently exorcise a ghost from the building they haunted. I first searched for my address to see if any previous tenants had already added my ghost to the site, but nothing came up. In fact, the closest listing to my condo was five or six blocks away, which obviously didn’t help me since ghosts don’t roam.

Next, I did a generic search for my address, but unsurprisingly the only thing that turned up were real estate sites that listed the property’s features of estimated value. I zoomed out on the neighborhood, and immediately learned it was one of the few areas that miraculously survived a massive fire that burned down most of the city in the late 1800s. So, that ruled out any potential causes of death there. I did, however, also learn that this particular area did see multiple outbreaks of different diseases over the last century and a half, including typhoid fever, the Spanish flu, and yellow fever. It also had a history of notoriously bad plumbing, which meant a lot of cholera outbreaks and lead poisoning. My ghost could have died from any one of those things. It was also entirely possible my ghost died of natural causes at an old age, surrounded by her children and grandchildren while she peacefully faded away in her sleep. All that information would have satisfied most people and allowed them to move on for the rest of their day.

Turns out, I’m not ‘most people.’

I revised my search, this time looking for any notable murders that happened in my area. Again, there was nothing truly exceptional. The only case that could have any connection with my ghost was a woman who was shot by her husband in a fit of jealous rage when he discovered she was having an affair, but the murder itself took place on the other side of town; the only link it had to my neighborhood was that it was where the lover lived.

(Just so no one thinks me of being heartless, when I say ‘nothing exceptional’ about the murder I didn’t mean it wasn’t less tragic because it wasn’t connected to my ghost. I know it probably goes without saying, but I have enough to worry about without someone coming at me for taking something out of context.)

One more, I told myself, only just realizing how late it was getting. Just one more search, then I’ll stop. She could have died in any number of ways. It’s best not to poke a hornet’s nest if there’s no reason to.

I still took a moment to wrack my brain. If this was going to be my last attempt, I wanted to make it count. “Unsolved mysteries” was too broad; the city and surrounding area had so many urban legends and tall tales we were practically tripping over them. Instead, I settled on something a little more specific, unsure if I was narrowing it down too much or not enough: “tragic accidents.”

To my surprise, it immediately yielded a very promising result. It was an article written by a local journalist, a sort of “then and now” piece that highlighted how much had changed in the area in the last hundred years—or how much it hadn’t.

It wasn’t the article itself that first caught my attention, but the picture attached to it. I didn’t recognize the house in it, though it was evident to be in bad shape, possibly even abandoned, but I would know that old oak standing in the front yard with its gnarly, twisted limbs anywhere; it was the same tree that blocked my view of the street from my bedroom window. My heart gave a funny lurch, the kind you get when you reach the crest of that first big drop on a roller coaster.

I took a deep breath and forced myself to calm down, not wanting to attract my ghost with my excitement, and began to read. My mood quickly grew somber as the article’s subject unfurled: the history of domestic abuse in the city, especially in the poorer districts, and the justifications society used for the treatment of women. The article’s author gave statistics and accounts of the few court cases where women attempted to prosecute their violent husbands (almost all of whom lost), but one, in particular, stood out to me above the rest.

Her name was Emily Garret, and she died of a traumatic brain injury when she was only twenty years old, the result of a fall she took down a flight of stairs in her home. Her death was ruled as an accident, but her older sister had been adamant that Emily had been killed by her abusive husband. My heart grew heavy in my chest as I continued to read that no matter how much evidence her sister put forward, Emily was considered to be nothing more than another case of female frailty, and her sister one of hysteria inflicted by her passing.

Despite my promise to myself and the hunger beginning to gnaw at my guts, I did another search, thus time on Emily Garret. It yielded a few relevant hits, including the public records of her sister’s attempt to bring her brother-in-law to trial for murder, but I didn’t want to know about them. I wanted to know about Emily.

I didn’t have to look very hard: the first result was her obituary.

The first thing to strike me was how young she looked; a girl only recently beginning to blossom into true womanhood. The photograph that accompanied the article wasn’t the best quality. She was very pretty, with large, dark eyes, thick black hair draped over her shoulder in an immaculate plait, and what my grandma would call ‘apple cheeks.’ Her image was blurred around the edges, like a pencil drawing smeared by careless handling, but I couldn’t tell if it was a result of age, poor photography techniques, or because Emily was unable to sit still long enough of what was required of her for the picture to be properly taken. Judging by the spark of light in her eyes—undoubtedly the clearest part of the portrait—I could bet it was the latter.

The obituary itself was brief, more of an announcement of the young woman’s tragic passing as the result of a fall down the stairs in her home, the details of her funeral, and the location of her internment (which, I noticed, wasn’t far from where I lived, and I made a mental note to make sure I paid my respects once the quarantine was lifted). It also listed her surviving family members, including her husband, Wallace Garret, and her aforementioned sister, Alyssa, who would go on to accuse Wallace of murdering Emily.

I took a quick break at this time to order myself a sandwich from the deli down the street for dinner; there was no way I was crawling out of this rabbit hole now. As I waited for my food I backtracked, searching “Emily Garret murder trial.” The trial got woefully little attention, and most of what I found seemed more adamant about defending Wallace’s character than getting Emily justice. In one particularly maddening interview, Wallace himself said how Emily had always been a clumsy girl, and had she just heeded his warnings she would have never taken that unfortunate fall.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” I mumbled aloud. The sound of my voice after such a long silence got my ghost’s (Emily’s?) attention again, her appearance back in the living room punctuated by a few pens and papers being pushed around my dining table.

My sandwich arrived, and then I plopped back down in front of my computer. Emily continued to make her usual rounds, batting at plants, rustling curtains, occasionally knocking something off a shelf, as if everything was once again brand new to her and warranted exploration. In my mind’s eye, I could see her round, innocent face, eyes wide and bright as she examined whatever it was that caught her attention. It made me want to protect her as I’m sure Alyssa once had.

It looked like I finally reached a dead end when I found one last interview given by Alyssa herself, buried in the archives of a local newspaper.

“‘Emily was prone to accidents due to being clumsy, that is true, but the jury never saw the bruises on her arms and neck, nor the way she was unable to look you in the eye when she made excuses for them. Her entire demeanor changed the day she married that beast. He refused to let her read the novels and poetry she found so much pleasure in and made her accompany him on hunts even though he knew it upset her because of how much she loved animals. I will not rest until Emily is rewarded the justice she deserves. Until then, I will ensure no other woman will suffer as she did.” The article concluded by saying how Alyssa opened one of the first women’s shelters in the city, to be a sanctuary for those who needed to escape their wicked and abusive husbands.

Night had fallen by the time I was done. My head hurt from my eyes being glued to my computer screen in an otherwise dark room, but it was nothing compared to the ache in my chest. Between the photograph and her sister’s brief description, I felt I had a good impression of the kind of person Emily was: vibrant, innocent, a lover of literature and animals, all quashed and robbed from her well before her time. Could anyone really blame ghosts for becoming restless or even violent after being reminded of their tragic ends? I know I’d be pissed. Maybe it was a blessing we lose our memories after death.

Disciples of Dr. Reese-McDrummond were always hyper-fixated on the dangers of reminding ghosts about the tragedies of their deaths. But had anyone ever thought about reminding them of what they loved while they were alive?

Taking a deep breath, I tentatively called out into the silence of my apartment, “Emily?”

The shift of the atmosphere in the living room was immediate and palatable, like someone sucking in their breath and holding it in anticipation. I could feel the prickling of electricity on my exposed skin, telling me that the whole of Emily’s attention was on me. My heart began to thud as I realized I hadn’t planned on what to do next and began to worry that she would get impatient and start throwing things around. I blurted out the first thing that came to mind: “Do you want to watch a movie?”

Without waiting for a response, I turned on my TV and opened one of the movie streaming apps. A moment later I had Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightly and Matthew McFadyen playing on the screen. I had obviously no idea what kind of reaction she would have or if she would even be interested at all—based on the scant information given by Alyssa’s interview and the time Emily lived she had hopefully at least heard of the Jane Austen novel—but as soon as the opening credit music started I felt a presence settle beside me on the sofa. The air of apprehensive tension had vanished, replaced not so much by an emotion but by what felt closer to the first rays of sunlight that shine through the window at dawn. The sensation folded around me like a cozy blanket, making me feel warm and content, that despite the pandemic, the quarantine, the political tension, and all the uncertainty that went with it, everything would eventually work itself out. That not everything was all doom and gloom as long as we had things that make us happy to look forward to. Everyone, living or dead, deserved at least that much. Maybe once everything was back to normal, or whatever “normal” would be after this, it would be worth exploring in greater depth. But for now, I was happy to watch a movie about a classic love story with a new friend.

After a little time passed, I felt Emily play with my hair in an unmistakable gesture of affection that she’d never done before. I couldn’t help but think she felt the same.