The Ghosts That Don’t Live Here Anymore

I want this to be the year I permanently stop letting dead dreams and expired expectations take up space in my life

From the Ghostly Ball Sequence — Original Image by Author via Midjourney

When I was a teenager, I used to have this really unsettling, disturbingly realistic recurring dream about living in a huge house that was not only falling apart but full of malicious ghosts. However, the ghosts were very selective about the parts of the house they haunted.

The bottom floor was mercifully ghost-free. But it was also the least functional part of the house. Everything was broken and dirty, and it was just a really depressing place to be overall. The garden was spacious and accessible but just as unpleasant — full of dead plants, broken pottery, and the kind of bugs that bite you to death the minute they see you coming.

But the top floor was another story entirely.

Up there, it was wholly inviting and pristinely kept, filled from end to end with gorgeous Baroque-style furniture and beautiful, expensive things. The windows were tall and spotless, covered by impossibly soft velvet curtains that let in an abundance of perfect light when opened.

But that also happened to be the portion of the house that was heavily, impossibly haunted. Every time I’d try to access any of the…