The Unhappy Medium, page 13
‘Maybe they don’t want to be seen; have you thought about that?’ said Gabby.
‘Of course,’ Newton replied, sipping an expensive but poor bottled lager. ‘But then you’ve got to ask why. And you have to ask why they seem happy to show themselves to the owners of hotels, pubs and stately homes with poor balance sheets.’
‘Oh you are sooooooo cynical,’ announced Gabby, slurping noisily on her coke. ‘You think everyone is a liar.’
‘Not everyone, maybe, but most.’
‘Well, how do you explain that all cultures have ghosts, even way back when they didn’t even know about each other?’
‘Simple wish fulfilment. It’s common to all human beings – we don’t like death so we invent concepts to make it more palatable. The big chief dies, the tribe goes downhill and everyone longs for him to be back. So with a bit of self-delusion he does come back. It’s a scenario that’s as likely with an Aztec as it is with a Viking.’
‘Hold on, what about nasty scary ghosts then? No one wants them do they? Explain those away.’
‘It’s just fear,’ said Newton, ‘stuff you can’t explain, places you don’t want to go, bad luck. Blame it all on something other than yourselves. Blame it on that bad chief who hit you with bamboo all the time and stole your goats. He’s dead ... or has he come back? Deadly gas from a swamp? That will be the dead warriors!’ Gabby sat back, folded her arms and pursed her lips for a second, thinking.
‘OK then. How do you explain that most ghost sightings seem to follow a pattern?’
‘Such as?’
‘Walking through walls, moving objects, apparitions sitting on beds.’
‘Ah, I’m glad you brought up the walking through walls thing. That’s a particular favourite.’ He theatrically adjusted himself in his chair and cracked his fingers as if about to start on a plate of langoustines. ‘Firstly, traditions make traditions. If one person says they see an apparition walk through a wall and it gets a good response from the locals, well, then it’s a tempting metaphor that others want to pick up and run with. Give it five hundred years and it’s pretty much obligatory if you want to weave a ghostly yarn. But wait! Let me ask you this, why would a ghost walk through a wall anyway?’
‘Because there didn’t used to be a wall there,’ said Gabby, as if it was obvious.
‘OK but then why just the wall, and why not the floor? It doesn’t make any sense – if you could walk through walls without feeling any electromagnetic force, you’d be like astronomical dark matter – you’d just fall through the floor. You wouldn’t fall through the floor if you didn’t have any mass though. In that case, you’d zip around at the speed of light and never hang around long enough to haunt anyone. Simple laws of nature,’ Newton said. ‘Anyhow, what I find most amazing about ghosts, if they exist, is that there aren’t more of them.’
‘What do you mean?’ Gabby frowned. ‘I thought one would have been too many for you.’
‘Well think about it, if you go to a hospital, or a battlefield, why are they not just crawling with ghosts? You’d think that in a place as awful and full of suffering as a battlefield or a death camp, you’d be pretty much certain to see the damn things. But you don’t, do you? All you get are the romantic wraiths of jilted lovers who’ve drowned themselves by watermills or famous dead people, celebrity ghosts who turn up conveniently in National Trust properties when crazy people go there to make television programmes.’
‘OK, I see your point,’ said Gabby. ‘But then you’re assuming that the afterlife works the same way as here.’
‘True,’ said Newton. ‘And er ... why the hell not?’
‘What about electricity, though, or something like that? I mean we saw it and we experienced it since forever in history and stuff, but we couldn’t explain it. Maybe it’s like that? Just because you don’t understand something, doesn’t mean it’s not real.’
‘Maybe, but that’s what science is all about. You try to explain things you can see. Things you can measure. Electricity and gravity are odd things if you think about it, but we can measure them. Eventually, after a lot of hard graft, we get to explain them, well not entirely, but we get farther and farther down the road. Gravity is still a tad vague actually,’ he added, absent-mindedly.
‘Well, why not try and explain ghosts then?’ said Gabby.
‘I’d love to darling, but no experiment has actually demonstrated that there is even a genuine phenomenon in the first place. Not one. Well not a serious one. Plenty of fun stories, sure, but nothing you can measure or quantify in the cold light of day. Or should I say the dead of night?’ Newton affected a macabre Hammer House of Horror expression, which was returned instantly by Gabby’s narrowed eyes.
‘Whatever,’ said Gabby. ‘Oh I know ... what about that stuff they do on TV? Like on that show you used to go on, Ghost Show .’
‘Oh that bloody thing. Are you thinking of all that so-called scientific gear those guys flash about?’
‘Yeah. The stuff that shows temperature drops. What’s that thing?’
‘A thermometer,’ said Newton impassively.
‘Yeah that, and then there’s the other thing, the magnetism what’s-it.’
‘EMF meters?’ snorted Newton, and Gabby nodded enthusiastically. ‘That old chestnut! Electromagnetic fields are just a bit of gobbledygook that impress people who don’t know any better. Why would ghosts create electromagnetic fields that are any different from the radiation a living person emits? They look impressive and seem scientific to a gullible audience, but trust me, they are no more scientific than a tinfoil hat.’
‘Well you can’t just brush away something like those voice recordings.’
‘Oh EVPs, good-old electronic voice phenomena. They’re always good for a laugh.’ Newton theatrically brushed the comment away with a flick of his hand.
‘What’s so funny about them?’ asked Gabby.
‘Well, why are they always so vague? Whenever you have them on these TV shows, there are always subtitles to tell you what to hear and it’s nearly always something like ‘Get out of here!’ or ‘Die you whore!’ Without the prompt, what you’d actually hear is something more like ‘Smoke my grapes’. Or ‘Is it time for some more gravel’. People hear what they are told to hear or want to hear; either that or they spend a few more pointless hours back home in their bedrooms, creating silly little hoaxes while mum heats up the TV dinner.’
‘Come on,’ insisted Gabby, ‘that can’t explain all of them.’
‘Why not? Think about it. If a spirit really wanted to say something of importance, why not really clearly get that message across? You can’t shut living people up for God’s sake, so why are the dead so bloody reserved? Nah, if they wanted to say something then they would.’
‘Maybe they can’t?’
‘OK. But, why should it be hard? Living human beings go to huge efforts to communicate – we have radio, print, emails, semaphore, smoke signals, gossip, graffiti, post-it notes, whispering, shouting. Why should a dead person, in spirit form, be so content with sending garbled messages via Dictaphones, Ouija boards and mediums?’
‘Maybe they aren’t allowed to? Maybe it’s forbidden,’ she said, shrugging.
‘Forbidden by who,’ laughed Newton, ‘God?’
‘Sure, God.’
‘Well he can’t be all-powerful then, can he, because he still lets the odd one through if you believe the TV shows – there’s one on Most Haunted every week.’ Newton savoured his own observation. ‘OK, let’s turn this round, let me ask you something. Why do you believe in ghosts.’
Gabby looked from side to side for inspiration then settled for a shrug. ‘I dunno, I just like them. There are just so many stories. They can’t all be lies or illusions.’
‘Well have you seen any ghosts?’ he asked.
‘Dunno, I think I might have done, when I was little. At the old house.’
‘OK then, describe it to me,’ said Newton.
‘I can’t, you’ll laugh.’
‘Honest, I won’t.’
‘OK, just a vague shape. A woman, in my room,’ Gabby said eventually. ‘She was just kind of there, then she went. Sort of a shadow.’
‘Clothes?’
‘Well sort of olden-days stuff.’
‘Describe.’
‘Black, long dress. She had a bun I think.’
‘Time of day?’
‘Night time, I woke up,’ said Gabby, trying to decide herself whether it had actually happened or not.
‘A dream.’
‘No it wasn’t!’ she protested.
‘Probably was.’
‘I was wide awake!’
‘You may have thought you were awake, but you were probably half asleep. It’s known as a hypnopompic state.’
‘I know what I saw,’ she said angrily.
‘OK, sorry’ said Newton. ‘Look, all I’m saying is that it could easily have been something that seemed real, but wasn’t.’
‘How do you know what happened, you weren’t there.’
‘It’s all to do with probability.’
‘That’s what you say. OK then, well what would you think if you actually saw a ghost yourself?’
‘Well that’s not going to happen is it?’
‘No really, imagine it. Hypothetic, or whatever you call it. You are sitting here, eating your pizza and out of that window you see a ghost. What would you think?’
‘How would I know it was a ghost?’
‘I dunno, old clothes?’
‘Fancy dress.’
‘OK then, it’s someone you know. Someone ... dead.’
Newton mulled this for a second then looked idly out towards the late-night crowds passing through the streets outside. A distant figure triggered some recognition, his size and stature not unlike his old mentor, the sadly late Dr Sixsmith. ‘He’ll do,’ thought Newton. ‘Do I see this person clearly or do I just see them far away, say like that guy over there in the distance?’
‘Which guy?’ asked Gabby, craning her head to look out through the glass. ‘I can’t see who you mean.’
‘OK not that one then, what about this guy here?’ He singled out a tall, jug-eared chap in black with a priestly dog collar who was scrutinising the restaurant. As Newton unsubtly pointed him out, the man realised he was being observed and he began edging awkwardly behind a kiosk.
‘Yeah, that vicar. But what if you saw someone you actually know, that close, but you knew for certain that they were dead?’
‘Well I’d say I was having a hallucination.’
‘Well what if it wasn’t.’
‘But it would be,’ said Newton. ‘It couldn’t possibly be real.’
‘Oh for gawd’s sake. What would have to happen to make it real for you?’ Gabby asked, flustered.
‘You’d have to see it too, I guess.’
‘OK then, what if I saw it too?’
‘We’d both be hallucinating.’
‘Oh you are soooo annoying.’ Gabby balled her fists up in frustration.
‘Sorry,’ he winced apologetically.
‘How could we possibly both have the same hallucination?’
‘Suggestion,’ said Newton.
‘Suggestion? How would that work?’
‘We could both be reacting to the same stimuli, something that creates the same delusion in us both.’ Gabby shook her head doubtfully.
‘That doesn’t happen,’ she said.
‘Oh yes it does,’ said Newton. ‘I could give you hundreds of examples. Mass hysteria where crowds see the same impossible things. Mostly they’re religious, of course, but there are also things like the Angel of Mons during the First World War. There you have hundreds of soldiers all swearing blind they saw angels protecting them from the attacking Germans. You also regularly have people interpreting lights and balloons as UFOs, sometimes in huge numbers. The planet Venus is a good example. Because it can often be very, very bright, it can look really artificial. As a result, it gets interpreted as a flying saucer all the time. Needless to say, along the way it picks up all sorts of embellishments, from aliens waving out of portholes to the odd anal probe. But all the time it was still just plain-old planet Venus.’
‘So you’re also saying that we see what we want to see?’
‘I am,’ said Newton, laying down his cutlery.
‘Oh come on, why would anyone in their right mind actually want to see a headless horseman?’
‘Good question,’ said Newton, as he gestured for the bill. ‘And that’s another good example of why ghosts make no sense whatsoever.’
‘Which is?’ asked Gabby reluctantly, beginning to wane.
‘Well, why does the horse haunt in unison with the horseman? Surely the horse has an entirely different set of agendas for haunting. What if the horse wanted to haunt its old paddock? Would the horseman have to join in? And, for that matter, if you get ghost horses, why are there not ghost animals everywhere? Ghost cod, dinosaurs, bacteria, wasps. And what about plants? Help, I’m being possessed by a courgette!’ Gabby let the joke pass.
‘Maybe it’s the human connection that makes it happen?’
‘Oh come on! Why should human beings be so special? Why not ghost rabbits, parrots and gerbils?’
‘Maybe there are, but you just can’t see them.’
‘You couldn’t miss a Diplodocus though, could you, a ten-tonne ghost dinosaur? And what about whales? Anyway, here’s another one for you – clothes.’
‘Clothes? What are you talking about?’ said Gabby.
‘Please explain to me why ghosts aren’t naked?’ asked Newton smugly.
‘Naked ...? Why would they be naked?’ said Gabby, laughing.
‘OK,’ Newton elaborated, ‘why should they be dressed ? I mean right now you’re wearing that hooded top – if you were to suddenly choke to death on that garlic bread, would you wear that same top forever in the afterlife?’
‘Maybe over time we kind of impregnate our clothes with our spirit in some way?’
‘Following that hypothesis, what would happen if you’d just put on a brand-new pair of jeans then walked out into Oxford Street feeling so cool that you failed to spot a bus, which then pancaked you all over the road? Would you then haunt the world in everything but your trousers? And what about your old clothes at home? Would they haunt the world all on their own?’
‘Yeah, OK, fair enough,’ Gabby conceded wearily, as her chin came to rest on her folded arms.
‘I could go on,’ said Newton.
‘I bet you could,’ said Gabby, letting out a massive teenage yawn that threatened to sever her head in two.
‘Come on, Gabby, I’m keeping you up late. Your mother is going to make me into a ghost if I don’t get you to bed. And if I don’t get you home for tomorrow lunchtime, I’ll be doomed to wander the earth for eternity with no head.’
Cold rain was falling as they left the pizza house and they were glad to get into the car, even if the heater was ineffectual and the wipers smeared rather than wiped. As they pulled away, Newton caught sight of the old guy resembling Sixsmith, wandering side by side with the vicar he had pointed out earlier. They both turned to watch the Citroën as it rattled past. Newton thought about the people he’d lost and left behind him, and he felt a brief twinge of regret.
‘Poor old Alex,’ thought Newton, and he sighed sadly to himself as they drove on in silence, the darkness behind them swallowing up the figures in the rear-view mirror.
CHAPTER 12 – A scientific metho d
Back at home after the ghost walk, father and daughter laughed together into the early hours, Newton regaling her with some of the celebrity tales he’d amassed while he’d been in the ascendant. It was outright fun, and Newton felt he was regaining something important he had lost – something he’d had stolen from him. When Gabby eventually yawned herself unconscious at 2am, he draped a sleeping bag over her and took his laptop to bed.
After sending a few emails, he took a deep breath before he took a nervous look at his bank account. What he found made him sit up in bed with a mix of surprise, alarm and unbridled joy.
There was £5,000 in his account.
He logged off and then back on again, but it was still there. He checked all the usual payments – Rowena’s savage maintenance handouts, utility bills. They’d all gone out. Nope, there was no doubt about it – someone, God knows who, had made a deposit. There was no obvious clue and Newton, though delighted at the extra funds, was in something of a quandary. If he chased down the source of the payment, then he’d probably have to pay it back. Right now, that was simply beyond the laws of physics. Too tired to pursue the matter, he resolved to leave the money alone for a few days and wait to see if it was recalled.
Yawning, he was mulling this over when he finally drifted away into sleep.
Abruptly, the light was streaming through the window in unison with the 10am chime of the clock tower. Disorientated, fumbling for his glasses, he looked at the dead screen of the battery-drained laptop and then to the clock, threatening him unfocused from the side table. He hoped the fuzzy numerals on the clock were wrong. They weren’t.
‘Gabby ... Gabby! Wake up!’ shrieked Newton, sensing his ex-wife’s kinetic rage readying itself in distant Cambridge. Had he a normal car, Newton lamented, he could have made it easily, but the Citroën’s tugboat inefficiency and constant mechanical eccentricity made being late a certainty even if Newton had access to a wormhole. ‘ Gabby, quick! I’m a dead man!’ His daughter pulled the sleeping bag over her head.
‘Go away!’ she groaned.
‘We gotta go!’ Newton said breathlessly, flinching in anticipation of the tongue-whipping to come. He whisked the sleeping bag away from his dozing daughter and was lucky to avoid a well-aimed boot. Unsubtly, he threw Gabby her jacket and hooded top.
She clumsily prised herself up, wobbling like an inflatable, and stumbled towards the kitchen. ‘Coooooooorrrrrffeeeeeeee ...’ she moaned.
‘No time!’ yelled Newton, steering her back towards the door. He urged her down the steep stairs to the street and then urgently over to the old Citroën. He heaved his daughter into the back seat where, with eyes drooping, she instantly curled up and went back to sleep. Newton jumped behind the wheel, kissed the key in desperation and rammed it into the ignition. ‘Please,’ he muttered, praying to whatever law of physics was going to make the car start first go, and then, with eyes closed, he turned the key.
