Dreams and Shadows

chapter FORTY-SEVEN

ON GHOSTS AND THINGS OF THE PAST

An essay by Dr. Thaddeus Ray, Ph.D., from his book The Everything You Cannot See

There are no such things as ghosts. Every place has a memory. Just as a rock may carry a scar from a scratch, so too can a field of energy. When powerful enough energies or emotions affect a field, it can warp or distort those of the surrounding area for years, even decades. If, however, those scars are fueled by dreamstuff, especially the dreamstuff of the thing that caused that scar, the result is a shadow.

This shadow is nothing more than energy reflected through warped space. It is a hologram. It can interact with other energy fields around it, but it does not think or feel. Shadows cannot be reasoned with or express themselves in any way outside of the emotions that created them. If they were born of malice, they will be cruel. If they were born of love, they will be joyful. While they can share the information stored on the scar, they cannot collect anything new or possess any memory outside of that which made them.

Haunted houses are often the result of space warped by emotion over time. Sometimes this can occur from sudden, massive damage, like a traumatic event or even a particularly joyful one, but more often than not it occurs naturally, like water eroding rock to form a riverbed. The energy left behind will often express itself by passing through the cracks and fissures in the field. Scars found in particularly dreamstuff-rich areas will often see more activity as additional energy flows through them, keeping a shadow active far longer than it ordinarily might be.

But ghosts as untethered souls unable to find rest? They don’t exist. The Devil catches every crumb that spills off Heaven’s plate.