The sociable ghost : $b Being the adventures of a reporter who was invited by the sociable ghost to a grand banquet, ball, and convention under the ground of old Trinity churchyard. A true tale of the things he saw and did not see while he was not there.Harper, Olive
Science
The sociable ghost : $b Being the adventures of a reporter who was invited by the sociable ghost to a grand banquet, ball, and convention under the ground of old Trinity churchyard. A true tale of the things he saw and did not see while he was not there.
Harper, Olive
American fiction -- 20th century; Ghost stories
"That we can come out of our mouldering bodies and hover unseen about
our own homes is so. About six months after I was dead I was seized with
the most intense longing to go to my house. I have been dead but a
comparatively short time. I had been married but about two years and
naturally hated to leave my young wife. But—well—we are not always free
agents in these cases and must die when our time comes. I was run over
by a cable car," he added as he saw that all near by seemed to be
interested, and particularly the young man. "I was killed soon after the
Spanish war broke out. I did not want to go as a volunteer and risk
being shot and killed. I had a good business all my own and a nice little
home all paid for, and I had every reason to wish to live. My wife
thought I ought to leave all that and strike for glory. I tried to make
her see that glory does not go to the unit, but to the officers in
command, but it was no use, she kept it up. I could not go anywhere
without hearing bands of music and seeing soldiers, and at last it
annoyed me so that I would take any chance to avoid it. And, that is
just how I came to be killed. I started to cross a street when one car
was coming up and another going down, I never did know just how it
happened, but the wheels went over my neck. You may notice how loose it
is."
"What did you do? How did you feel? When did you know that you were dead?
Or did you know nothing until they got you out?" began the reporter
breathlessly, for somehow this accident appealed to him in an unusually
strong way.
"I knew as soon as I was out of my body. I watched them lift the car with
jacks to get me out. I felt so mad that anger swallowed up every other
sensation to think I had let myself be killed in this senseless way. But
it was no use. I followed along and was in the house ahead of my body,
and found Mary sitting there surrounded with half a dozen scarehead
newspapers around her reading about the war. They brought my body in, and
you never saw such heartrending grief. I felt sorry for her, but I could
do nothing. She sobbed and moaned and screamed with hysterics, and it
took four persons to hold her. Of course it was a shock, I admit that,
but it need not have made her such an idiot."
"I think her grief quite natural," said the reporter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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