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Surely everyone knows about the ghosts that haunt ancient castles in Europe? Sometimes, in former lives, they were victims of terrible abuses: now their fate is forever to wander stone corridors and lonely stairwells in search of justice.
Fewer, however, know about how even ordinary houses hold entities that represent things that happened in them.
For example, a friend of mine lived in a house that was once the home of a doctor, in a pleasant if unexceptional East Dulwich street, and every morning when he raised his head from his pillow his eyes encountered a pelican, grand and white and waddling from the bedroom to the kitchen.
But when my friend got up and followed through to where the bird had gone, he saw nothing. He concluded, naturally, that he was merely becoming confused by a strong recurring dream.
One morning, after such an episode, he was seated at the kitchen table rubbing his eyes. The doorbell rang- the postman, a parcel. “Can you sign for this?” It was just a new bank card.
“Just moved in?” asked the postman. My friend glanced at him quizzically.
There was a pause.
“Pity what happened to the old fellow. The burglary. Terrible. And such a good man.”
“Well, indeed,“ replied my friend, though in truth he knew nothing until he returned inside and read online about how the house had been visited by a thief and, in a struggle, the doctor was killed, all this not long before my friend bought the property. And he read how the doctor had garnered a reputation for his dedication in Pediatrics, with an unusual commitment to the community, motivated by Christian sentiments.
Things like this happen often, and usually we dismiss them as temporary hallucinations, waking dreams. I had an aunt and she lived in a huge house that a hundred years ago was home to a wealthy fish merchant.
He was a very kind man, and the parts of fish that he could not sell, or the fish that were too small for customers, he placed in bowls for the neighborhood cats, and the cats would accumulate, waiting for their dinners every night. This became quite an event: by the time a year had passed over a thousand of them, from all over the region, would sit in the yards where the fish crates were unloaded, waiting for their repast. Their purring filling the air like the sound of a huge tractor engine.
He died, and the famous dinners ended with him: the cats no longer visited. But sometimes, at night, when my aunt is in the living room she looks from the window and sees cats, innumerable, sitting silhouetted in the moonlight.
A final example is more extreme, and perhaps more difficult to believe. In this case, the deceased was a carpenter. An aggressive character, he scared everyone with his foul moods, his shouting and swearing, often abusing his apprentices who worked in a constant cowering.
He lived alone in an apartment in a lower middle class neighborhood of Paris. He died, and the apartment was sold to a young couple. Yes, it needed work, and they eagerly renovated, stripping wooden floors of ancient lino, exposing original fireplaces and removing layers of thick paint that masked details on doors. And the results were enchanting. And at first they were happy in their new abode.
But later they began to notice how often things were broken- each blaming the other. “You cracked the vase that my mother gave us,” said one. “You left coffee stains on the Chinese Carpet,” replied the second, or, “What did you do with my stereo, the wires are torn out?”
And so on until one, hearing a sharp cracking sound, woke up in the night and saw in the living room a baboon taking a porcelain cup from the dresser, inserting it between its teeth and biting it with full force. About it, the cracked ruins of a Limoges dinner service.
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I am writing this in my living room. Muslin curtains flutter in a kind breeze, soft shadows sweep across my ivory wall. Two small finches, one blue, one yellow, keep me company.
They talk, but about what I cannot say. Happy they seem.
Illustration- Pelican
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