How to Sell a Haunted House

by Grady Hendrix

“So how do we know if Mom and Dad’s souls move on tonight?” Louise asked. “What’s our metric for success?” Mark picked barbecued chicken strips off his piece of pizza. “A haunting doesn’t necessarily indicate the survival of the human soul after bodily death,” he said, chewing. “There’s the stone tape theory of hauntings, which says that powerful emotional experiences leave permanent traces behind. There’s basic thermodynamics: energy cannot be created or destroyed. So what happens to the energy generated by intense emotional experiences? It has to go somewhere. That’s just science.” Louise couldn’t help it. When people used the words science and magic interchangeably, her skin bristled. “What kind of energy is that?” Louise asked. “Magnetic, electric, kinetic? Or some other kind of California energy that no one’s ever seen in a lab but it’s inside us and the redwoods and every form of life on Mother Earth?” “You’re very threatened by new ideas,” Mark said, taking a slug of his beer. “But people leave behind traces of themselves after they die: art collections, junk you’ve got to clean out of their houses, emotional problems they inflict on their kids. Why can’t they also leave behind energy? We grew up here, Mom grew up here, this house has been a repository for our family’s emotional energy for decades.”