Ever since childhood I’d always imagined ghosts. Like if I stare at a window long and hard enough, a sinister face would appear in all its pale glory. A glance at a darker corner in the house would bring a shadow floating by.

It’s almost like I want to see them. But I don’t. I really, really don’t. I have no idea of how I would react if I would to see a ghost face to face. Scared shitless, probably. And actually I don’t really want to. But I can’t help thinking about them, especially when I am alone. And that’s hardly an unavoidable situation.

Then there are dreams. I hardly have happy dreams, unless I make up scenarios to myself before going to bed, slowly fantasizing being ridiculously rich and beautiful and having the world at my feet, then slowly drifting into unconsciousness. Sometimes the good dreams stay on. More often than not, they morph into something utterly horrible that I would wake up suddenly, half expecting to see something at the end of my bed looking at me.

When my paternal grandmother passed away in my early teens, I had the most surreal dream — she was just beside me. Then she suddenly grabbed hold of me. The feeling was so real and quite unpleasant, but I don’t think I can call that a nightmare because she is family and she loved me greatly. Ever since then, I’d been afraid to go past a section in our house where a framed photo of her was placed. Even now, when I am home and awake in the middle of the night, I would sneak a peak at her photograph, almost daring her still image to smile at me. Most probably I would be fucking scared and stunned, but there’s just… something that I can’t quite describe.

Perhaps it is because that photograph was used for her funeral. I don’t get the same feeling when I see other photographs with her in it. Funeral photographs are always so… direct. The dead looking at you with open eyes.

And dreams of falling. And being in a burning car, unable to get out, melting away with it. Scenes that make me cry so hard in my dreams that when I wake up it was almost unfair that it was not real.

I wish my dead and unknown would leave me forever. They are after all, dead and unknown. If I had the choice, I would not return to cause my loved ones such stress. Not that they are gone forever. Shared memories will linger. But spiritual presence is another matter. The living has enough personal demons to fight. No need to add to it.