Ghost Stories

An Excerpt from Justin Geoffrey's "Full Moon Reaction"

The following is an excerpt from the forthcoming FULL MOON REACTION, which was originally published by Terror House in January 2022. 1325 is proud to reprint this morbid collection of essays.

A still from the 1964 film, Onibaba

Nostalgia is a form spiritualism. It is the worshipping of ghosts. When we think or talk about our past, we are telling ghost stories.

Allow me the egocentric privilege of telling mine.

Ever since adolescence, I have had a preternatural connection with the seasons. Not only can I feel the coming of winter in my lungs, but I feel the heat of summer as it coagulates at the top of my head. Each season has a special memory and resonance within me. They have their own ghosts, too. And if you have ghosts, a prophet once said, then you have everything.

Winter has two distinct flavors. The first flavor is the sweetest. December and January are high winter just like the genius of Europe was the High Middle Ages. December is when the world turns green, red, and white. The snow that falls is the purest. December is when the air is the crispiest and most refreshing. Of course, December is the Yuletide—the season of Christ and families snuggled around the tree. There is darkness to be sure, as Europeans have long held Christmastide as the season of ghost stories and wandering Krampus, abuser of bad boys and girls. Still, this darkness is neither dour nor cosmic. Nothing truly evil can penetrate the inherit goodness of December.

January has a similar feel. The good cheer and positivity of each new year radiates throughout January, which always seems to be the coldest month. I am still happy to be cozy and warm inside in January, wrapped up in a sweater and gripping a warm mug of coffee or tea. January, like December, is a month of doing as little as possible. There is sleep to be had, books to be read, and marathons to watch when or if you finally breakdown and turn on the normie mindwashing machine.

For me, December and January have the added bonus of being party season. The best I can figure is that I used to go to a lot of houses parties, especially between Christmas and New Years’. During my university days, the early darkness was a natural invitation to trip the light fantastic. The brisk and icy air that would invade my lungs was like a signal—a signal to get blotto on cheap beer with the boys. I did it so much, even when I realized the futility of doing the same thing over and over again. It was my ritual: get out of class, go home and wash up, and then go to my best friend’s house or apartment and play drinking games until the early morning hours. The next morning, I would go to the bookstore or library, followed by a run to my favorite café. If the next day was Saturday I would do it all over again. If it was Sunday, then all would end at home in my warm bed. Even today, long removed from the dispensations of my youth, I still get the itch and urge whenever the December night air descends, and I can see the fog from my breathing making little clouds along the wind. Good times.

February and March are different beasts. These are the depression months—the days when you’re sick of being inside, sick of the mud, and sick of the sleet. With apologies to Mr. Eliot, but February is the cruelest month. Its brevity hides its vileness. It is the month of wet slush and candy hearts. It is the month that reminds you that you are eternally alone. I spent one good Valentine’s Day in a relationship (a long-term one). I remember getting dressed up for a nice and expensive dinner. That ghostly memory is now sour owing to how it all ended. One good Valentine’s Day is not enough. As for March, like the occasional sunny snap in February, it lulls you into thinking that bright and shiny afternoons are right around the corner, and then it dumps buckets of rain on your head. Saint Patrick’s Day is a forgettable holiday anyway, so there’s not much to recommend at all about March.

April is the month of Walpurgisnacht, the most blasphemous holiday. April is also the month of the rites of spring, which were once brilliantly captured by the genius Stravinsky. Our ancestors formerly celebrated the blessed coming of spring with blood rituals and sacrifices. The eons of gore have never left April. It is a supernatural month. Thus, Jesus’s resurrection and its celebration was specifically put in April to counteract its evil. I for one experienced a disturbing supernatural event in April. It occurred one night while I slept in the same bedroom as my girlfriend. Believe it or not, but this was strange behavior for us. We kept separate most nights due to our conflicting schedules. However, on that April night in question, we had a guest over. The guest was a beautiful young woman who had grown up with my girlfriend. I am loathe to admit it now, but the temptation of a new soul in my house (and it was my house) sat on my shoulders like an imperious imp. The flush of lust was particularly strong that afternoon. I had come home early from work. Our guest was asleep in my bed. She wore a loose-fitting tank top. She shifted under the covers, and as I walked from the kitchen to my girlfriend’s room, I saw the entirety of her left breast. That same night, while trying to sleep, a strange yellow glow forced my eyes to open. I at first thought the light came from the outside window, which was street-level. Ergo, my initial opinion was it was the light from a passing car. Except, as I tried to go back to sleep, I saw the light change shape. The once ambient and formless color twisted to provide an outline of a skull-face. I watched as the giallo specter floated from halfway across the room to the window. The specter disappeared beyond the glass. Somehow, I managed to go back to sleep.

May is the first month to break the horrors of February, March, and April. May is the month of gentle breezes, consistent warmth and sunshine, and celebrations. Millions like me associate May with the beginning of summer and the end of socially acceptable incarceration known as mandatory schooling. My May days were ones of running outside, playing touch football or pick-up basketball games with other after-school kids, and hitting the pool or lake. May is also the month when I lost my virginity, and it is the month when I published my first piece of writing. So many great memories of May.

June, July, and August are a blob. There is nothing to distinguish them beyond the heat and humidity index. For most of my life I loved summer. Summer ghosts are like Casper—friendly, friendly, friendly. Summer is the time for sunbathing, reading books on the beach, and drinking comfortably all day long. Summer is the time of freshly cut grass and barbecues. Summer is also the time of clear night skies and full moons beaming down on you as you spend as much time as possible outside. My only negative memory with summer concerns one rough patch in my life when I oscillated between being homeless and almost homeless. The almost homeless days were the worst. I was all alone in the town without a friend in the world. I had little savings and few job prospects. I was forced to live off scraps and walk endless streets just to keep the suicide wolves at bay. Thankfully, these days have passed, and now each summer sees me smiling on the open road or sweaty, stinky, and proud on some trail or track.

September is a transition month. It is neither fully summer nor fully autumn. It is a little of both. September is a forgettable month like March, but I have no venom nor invective for September. I just don’t think about it. The lone memory is one that I share with the whole world—September 11, 2001. I was in high school at the time. We spent the whole day watching the news. I can recall seeing the towers fall while ensconced in our computer studies classroom. The teacher tried desperately to keep us focused on work, but she gave up the ghost after five minutes and joined us in watching the horror. We traded theories in the lunchroom. Some joked that it was the Japanese and Germans. One weirdo dropped knowledge about an esoteric plot by the Turks, which actually turned out to be closer to the truth than we knew at the time. When the day ended, I went home and watched more TV. I watched a life’s worth of death in eight hours, and then repeated it for the following weeks. A whole generation of people went through this ritual. The ramifications have still not been fully realized.

It should not surprise you that October is my favorite month. October is the month of Halloween and horror movies. It is the month when I used to dress up like Count Dracula and make a haunted house out of my mother’s apartment. It is the month of leaf piles in the suburbs. It is the month when I first watched Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” at a friend’s house and became a lifelong devotee of the bizarre. It is the month when, as a young lad of seven or eight, I looked out my window one night and saw a black shape in a cape running away. I never figured out where it went, and nobody else in the neighborhood said a word about. I could have imagined it, but that would mean that my imagination has flesh, blood, and movement, and that my imagination can last for unbroken minutes of direct contact with realities like lawns and light posts. Seems doubtful, no?

November is bittersweet in so many ways. It is arguably a better month than October when it comes to autumnal values. The leaves are brighter, the air colder, and the skies are grayer in November. The month also benefits from Thanksgiving, a holiday of incredible cheer and comfort. Thanksgiving is for families to swap wine and memories. Thanksgiving is for remembering the unique beauty of being American, and it is for sharing in the bounty of good food and people. I have never understood the myriad of articles decrying the burden of talking to family members on Thanksgiving; only small-souled cretins find such a holiday taxing.

November’s sadness stems from my own ghosts. November was when my ex and I broke it off following an Italian supper. She had cried. I stayed stoic and walked home for miles in the cold. The following morning, I packed a bag and left for an eight-hour drive. I wound up in familiar grounds where I hoped to recover. Almost a decade on and I still think there’s a part of me that died and turned to dust in the midnight air. I think that is not just a good analysis of life, but also of autumn—the continual shedding of life turning to dust only to be recalled in lonely hours. I seem to have had many lonely hours in November, from being forced to spend Thanksgiving alone one year owing to onerous job obligations, to that one night far out on the country road. I was the sole car driving. I turned a corner and my headlights flashed on something larger, black, and made of fur. I did not see eyes, nor did I see sharp teeth gleaming in the moonlight. All I saw was a large shape blacker than the night around it. The shape took off into the trees. I looked and looked but could not follow it. This is my first time talking about the occurrence. Maybe something similar happened to you before?

These are my ghost stories. There are many like them, but they are mine. Each turn of the calendar is a séance. I pray that the ghosts never flee, even though pain and anguish accompany their every conjuration.