Speaking Of Ghosts

MORE OF SAM'S OLD ART

I may have received 3 visits -- that I recall -- from a ghostly visitor or visitors.  Either that, or I have experienced three extraordinarily vivid and realistic hypnagogic hallucinations about ghostly visits.

[Henceforth I will use the term 'ghost' to refer to disembodied spirits in general]

According to my dream log, the first incident occurred in April, 1998.  The third incident was in June, 2008.  Oddly, I could not find any record of the second, but as I remember, all three 'visits' were fairly similar in nature.  The details I'm going to leave to the reader's imagination, as they were graphically sexual, except to say that even though each incident commenced while I was in bed and in a near-sleep state, while it was happening I was completely alert (so it seemed to me) and aware of what was going on.  When the 'ghost' touched me it was absolutely real;  I felt the mattress sag under its weight (ironically, I suppose this detail could actually argue against it being a real ghost -- would a ghost have weight?  Well.., but then, why not?  You could always argue that encounters with ghosts happen in some sort of non-rational, alternate setting where inner mind and external reality blur into each other).

The first visit was briefly alluded to in this previous entry as an example of consciousness maintained into the hypnagogic stage (more happened than that little detail in the description, however).  And after the second visit I actually considered the possibility that I had really been visited by the ghost of someone with whom I had had a relationship some years before, and whom I knew to have died recently of illness.  But after reflecting on the details of the incident I eventually decided if it really was a ghost, it probably was not her.

One thing that I will mention is the fact that throughout the duration of all of the incidents I kept my eyes closed, even thought I was dying of curiosity.  Why did I not open my eyes and look, and prove to myself whether there really was a ghost there or not?  Because of the sheer reality of the situation -- it all felt so real that I was actually afraid to look! Specifically, I was thinking of one of the episodes in the old Japanese movie Kwaidan -- based on a literary anthology of ghost stories of the same title, originally collected and published by Lafcadio Hearn, an American writer of Greek-Irish origin who settled in Japan and became a naturalized citizen in the 19th century -- which concerns a selfish samurai who abandons his wife and goes away to marry a rich lady;  years later he returns, having finally found his conscience and driven by remorse -- and is welcomed back by his wife, who seems not to have changed a bit, and is strangely glad to see him despite his disgraceful treatment of her.  They spend a night of passion together, and in the morning he awakens to find... that he had made love to the moldering bones of his long-dead wife, in the rotting ruins of his old house.  And I was afraid that if I forced my eyes open and looked, I might see something along the same lines, like this upside-down detail from a painting I did in graduate school (the skull is actually copied from a photograph of a ceremonial object used in Tibetan Buddhism):

Anyway, even if these events were all subjective experiences with no supernatural input, I can well see how back in the days of the witch hunts people could become convinced of the most farfetched things.  If one of these visits had happened to, say, a peasant farmer in Germany in 1620, he would absolutely have believed that he had had a real encounter with a succuba.  He would have told someone, word would have spread, suspicion of commerce with dark forces would have been aroused, and before he knew it he would have been clapped in irons and carted off to the witch prison in Bamburg.  Or perhaps a country parson in Ireland in 1820, told of similar visitations by a girl in confession, might have taken a kinder view of things and told her it might have been one of the 'Good Folk' who had taken a fancy to her or something -- alarming, and still unholy, but at least not a capital offense like being a witch.  And of course, a 21st century UFO conspiracy theorist might well believe that he had been abducted by space aliens, who did unspeakable things to him before returning him to his bed, with his memory incompletely erased.

I am sorry, though, to have concluded that these 'visits' probably had nothing to do with my poor Julie.  

* * *

One day I received a call from her, out of the blue.  It was completely unexpected;  it was long after our relationship had ended on a sour note and she and her husband had moved away (yes, I was "the other man").  We had not communicated since then.  It turned out that she was suffering from late-stage cancer.  So.  She was making peace with me before the inevitable happened.  I was shocked, but I'm afraid that, in a misguided effort to encourage her to not lose hope and to keep fighting, I spoke as if it weren't really that bad, that spontaneous remissions happened all the time, etc.  Thinking back, I'm sorry to realize she might well have found my reaction rather casual and uncaring.  If that were the case, it must have hurt her terribly to think I was cold to her even to the end.  It remains a weight on my heart.  It would have gladdened me to believe that her ghost had come to visit me.

What Elizabeth Taylor And Alien Invaders (May) Have In Common

This is the path that leads to my favorite thrift shop. Also, it's the (imagined)scene of the oddest and most vivid piece of false memory I ever experienced (although I have had other vividly realistic virtual experiences, when these occurred I was continuously conscious and fully aware of what was going on; therefore I do not consider them false memories).

Rancho Los Amigos is a rehabilitative hospital run by the County of Los Angeles. I happen to work a stone's throw from it, so I often go across the road and down this covered walkway to visit the hospital thrift shop where I've picked up many a knick-knack as well as some secondhand items of clothing. And almost every time, I encounter outpatients in wheelchairs along the way.

Once, while on my way to the thrift shop as usual, I saw Elizabeth Taylor coming toward me from the opposite direction. Yes, Elizabeth Taylor, the movie star. She of the lavender eyes; the oft-married icon of old-time Hollywood glamour; true friend to Michael Jackson to the end of his days. THAT Elizabeth Taylor. In a wheelchair.

She was alone as she rolled toward me, no bodyguards, attorneys or fawning attendants to stand between her and her public, and acknowledging little ol' cotton-pickin' me with a pleasant smile as she came. To my everlasting regret, I, the jaded(or considerate) veteran of life on the (distant)fringes of Hollywood, pretended the encounter was nothing extraordinary and did not slow my pace. Far be it from me to act like a bumpkin and crowd a legendary star by acting all awed and asking for an autograph!

So I continued to walk toward the thrift shop without looking back, and presumably Elizabeth Taylor continued to roll her way to the gold-plated and diamond-encrusted platinum limousine waiting in the parking lot just behind me, to whisk her off to her Olympian home grounds in Bell Aire or whatever exclusive neighborhood old movie stars with physical challenges roll around in these days...

Now, I'm fully aware that this encounter did not really take place. It is, as I stated, clearly a piece of false memory. Aside from the weird incongruity of the situation, I have no memory at all of when it occurred or of anything I did before or after the described scene. It's a stand-alone 'meme', unconnected to any others -- I think that's pretty telling.

I also have no idea why my mind would manufacture a false memory of seeing Elizabeth Taylor in a wheelchair on my way to a thrift shop that sells donated goods (granted, it is rather amusingly strange -- wacky, even; maybe my subconscious was in a mischievous mood). I've never been a big fan of Elizabeth Taylor, so it's certainly not a wish-fulfilling fantasy. Perhaps it's a snippet from an ordinary dream that somehow became lodged in my waking memory -- the sheer surreality of it certainly is dreamlike.

On the other hand, it still feels so real that had it been some other, less spectacular celeb -- a more 'realistic' and approachable personage, in other words -- instead of an impossibly lofty star like Elizabeth Taylor, I might well be convinced I really did see him/her in real life. If it had been Jack Elam (the scruffy, wall-eyed veteran of many westerns) for example, instead of Elizabeth Taylor, the illusion would have been more convincing. That is, of course, if I didn't know Jack Elam was long deceased, may he rest in peace (or on the other hand, I might have come away convinced I had seen Jack's wheel chair-bound ghost in broad daylight!). Or Walter 'Mr. Chekhov' Koenig -- I absolutely would believe he went to Rancho Los Amigos to walk again after some accident. Keith Szarabajka, vampire hunter Holz from TV's 'Angel'? Sure, I can see him at the Rancho, why not. Mark Blankfield from the old 'Fridays' comedy show on ABC? Absolutely -- especially since I actually did see him once in a waiting room at the Kaiser Permanente hospital on Sunset Boulevard (did I really see him, though?).

[Just now, just for a moment I thought I'd actually seen Mark Blankfield not among the patients at Kaiser, but instead at the downtown court building, among the prospective jurors assembled there; but I believe I know why this little mental mix-up happened -- the last time I reported there for jury duty, someone at the office said Brad Pitt had recently come in for jury duty, too -- my brain momentarily mixed up the two 'Middle-Aged White Male Actor' memes -- see how easily it can happen? Wow!]

I wonder if this sort of thing is common...

1. When our friends tell us that they spotted so-and-so from such-and-such movie at the Book Soup or driving down La Cienega, did they really see them?

2. What are we to think when someone says in all sincerity that one night many years ago, while they were driving down a lonely, dark road, their car was buzzed by a UFO?

3. Or that they saw the scary old lady who lives down the lane conversing with a black dog with flaming eyes and human hands? 'Witches' have been burned for less.

4. Or that they got snatched by little gray aliens who probed their privates aboard a flying saucer?

5. And what about prophets and visionaries who start entire cults and religions on the basis of personal revelations, and persuade people to engage in actions that damage their lives and those of others?