If you’ve ever been startled by a ghost, you might assume their everyday existence to be one of chaos and randomness. This is not the case, though—there is organization to the spirit world just as there is to most any society.
My book The Coat Check Girl is about a young woman navigating the recent death of her beloved grandmother and figuring out her place in a world that still spins without her favorite person in it. One of the themes it explores is the idea that the living and the dead can occupy the same plane. To make this somewhat plausible, I adhered to certain rules of the spirit world. Some of these are widely accepted by believers, others are perhaps more esoteric and specific to my story. Of course, where there are rules there are always exceptions, but the ones I address here are the standards by which the no-longer-living operate.
To understand the spirit world, one must first realize the fundamental difference between a spirit and a ghost. A ghost is a spirit, but not all spirits are ghosts. Spirit is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “the immaterial or sentient element of a person.” In other words, it is our energy, and our energy is eternal, existing before, during, and after our time on earth.
The spirit of those we’ve loved who have successfully transitioned to the other side is a comforting and ubiquitous presence—if you sense the spirit of the departed, you can take solace in the notion that they are at peace and fully ensconced in the afterlife. A peacefully transitioned spirit will send signs to the living—you’re on the highway thinking about a friend who has crossed over and a car pulls in front of you bearing their initials on its license plate. You turn on the radio and your song is playing. There are also universal signs that indicate a loved one is present—they visit in dreams, they leave coins in your path, they send cardinals, or butterflies. While it might be easy to convince ourselves that these are coincidences, spirit can be persistent in proving its presence. A friend who lost her mother got married last summer and to honor their departed loved ones, the couple released butterflies after they said their vows. Most of the butterflies flew off but one fluttered straight to my friend’s maternal grandmother, settled onto her bouquet, and stayed for a while. After the death of her father, my cousin kept finding pairs of dimes in odd places. It dawned on her that her father was referencing his favorite antique clock, which is forever stuck at 10:10. Signs from spirit are warm and validating.
Ghosts are spirits who are not yet at peace, who haven’t made the transition to the afterlife. Instead, they are stuck in an in-between state, earthbound, either because they’ve yet to accept their death (this is often the case in sudden, senseless deaths) or because they have unfinished business. In those cases, ghosts remain on our plane because they need something from the living in order to fully cross over and settle into the spirit world. They will seek out people they know can help them, those who have the ability to communicate with spirit.
There are three main ways that living people can connect to the spirit world: through clairvoyance, the ability to see spirits; clairaudience, the ability to hear them; and clairsentience, the ability to sense their presence. For those who are clairsentient, one telltale sign that a ghost is present is temperature—people report sudden bursts of cold air when a ghost is trying to get their attention. For the clairaudient, one rule to remember is that a ghost won’t speak until spoken to, much as a vampire won’t enter a home unless invited in. A ghost will wait to communicate until a living person addresses them, either directly or through a medium. Today, clairvoyance is the trickiest of the three communication methods for one basic reason: electricity. Ever since the advent of the electric lightbulb, fewer people have reported seeing spirits because being visible in electric light requires a great deal of energy. Ghosts who are trapped on earth are already expending so much energy trying to complete their quests that there’s little left to help them break through the barrier of electricity. Those that do have put forth great effort to do so.
The Coat Check Girl takes place in the restaurant worlds of New York City and New Orleans and was inspired in part by Village, a restaurant in downtown New York that I frequented some years ago. The building that housed Village dates back to the 19th century and the space has been a series of restaurants and clubs over the years—as well as a Prohibition-era speakeasy. It has history, and with history comes ghosts. The impetus for my story came as I began to suspect that the restaurant’s ladies’ room was haunted. I half-jokingly mentioned this to the bartender one night and he responded, “A lot of people say that it is.” I recently returned to the site, which has been three different restaurants since Village closed its doors, and we asked some of the staff if they’d ever sensed anything paranormal. Our bartender said he refuses to close by himself because there is palpable spirit energy there, and our server looked ashen and said he’d prefer not to discuss it.
I’ve since heard and read about countless historic restaurants all over the world that are rumored to be haunted, which begs the question: what is it about restaurants that attracts spirits? The answer is the same thing that attracted me as an author to the restaurant setting: energy. Spirits—and writers—are drawn to energy, and if it is eternal, it would follow that historic buildings that house restaurants are teeming with it. I think of Village and how its very charged atmosphere is the culmination of the many thousands of people who’ve walked through its doors over the years, and the myriad reasons people visit restaurants: first dates, last dates, birthdays, reunions, to celebrate love, to toast the departed… the totality of the human social experience. When viewed through this lens, it makes perfect sense that the dead would want to gather in places that remind them what it was like to be alive. This is also the reason old theaters and hotels are known hangouts for the departed—locations that appeal to large crowds of the living will always draw those from the other side.
One of the things that’s surprised me the most in the course of writing and then releasing my book is just how many people believe in the spirit world—people of all demographics and professions. Many of those I’ve spoken with have anecdotal evidence that ghosts exist, others don’t but believe that there is probably more out there than what we can process with our five primary senses. I’ve encountered very few people who adamantly choose not to believe, and many of those who haven’t had experiences of their own would like to believe. Like me, they take comfort in the idea that death is not the end.
Wherever you fall in belief and experience, the next time you find yourself in a house or building with history, consider that it may very well be hallowed ground for the departed, and keep an open mind. You just might have an experience that will convince you that the living and dead can indeed share a singular plane.
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