A Head Full of Ghosts

by Paul Tremblay

Passage of time as a prop to the story, the story that has been told and retold so often it has lost its meaning, even to those of us who lived through it.

In a way, my personal history not being my own, being literally and figuratively haunted by outside forces, is almost as horrible as what actually happened. Almost.

Mom made spaghetti and sighed loudly in the general direction of my father because he was still in the living room, sitting in front of the computer.

My only memories were of boredom, wooden benches, and the big hill out behind the church on which we used to go sledding. So heaven was this vague, uneasy, almost cartoonish concept, a confusing cultural mashup of puffy clouds, harps, winged angels, golden sunlight, a giant hand that may or may not belong to a giant man with a flowing white beard named God. It was this exotic place kids at school would sometimes talk about, telling me their dead grandparents or pets were there. I didn’t understand it, what it was, why it was, and I didn’t really want to.

I relate to this so hard. 🤍

It was so dark it was like nothing was there in the room with us. Only the nothing was actually something because it filled my eyes and lungs and it sat on my shoulders.

It sounded like the saddest of sad songs with notes floating down the staircase and into the foyer like dead leaves; red, brown, and purple.

“Gloomy Sunday,” originally composed by Hungarian pianist Rezsõ Seress in 1933.

I like to imagine her as being possessed by the vast, awesome and awful monster that is popular culture. Possessed by the collective of ideas!)

Come Closer by Sara Gran; Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory; Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin. For nonfiction I point out The Exorcist: Studies in the Horror Film; American Exorcism: Expelling Demons in the Land of Plenty; God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything; and even the laughably bad Pigs in the Parlor: The Practical Guide to Deliverance.

Need to check out the ones on here I haven’t read 🙂

These men all blamed the breakdown of their once-ideal family on something outside their control, something outside themselves.