I was riding the bus that passes Trinity East. That dormitory has been closed for a decade; I was one of the last to live there. I’d been off campus and not thought about the ghost ever since, not even when I visited the doctor in that eerie old building.
I heard the bus driver talking to another driver on the walkie, as we rounded the bend past the parking garage.
“I remember it. It must have been thirty years ago. Happened in the garage. Some patient broke out of the mental hospital. He thought he could fly, and he jumped off the top floor. They found him at the bottom of the ravine.”
My Lord and my God. My Lord and my God. My Lord and my God.
I wonder how they knew that the man had believed he could fly when he jumped. How could they have known? Did they assume, because he was a mental patient? Did they think all mental patients believed they could fly?
What if he hadn’t believed he could fly? What if he had no illusions of what would happen when he jumped? It could be that he was so depressed, so afraid, so traumatized, the withdrawls or the DTs were so bad– whatever had landed him in the psych ward in the first place was so severe that the fall and the sudden stop seemed preferable.
I wonder if he tried to pray an act of contrition as he fell.
Maybe it didn’t hurt when he landed. Maybe it felt like waking up, stomach in his mouth, heart pounding, to find himself before the Throne, with Mercy Himself granting clemency– or maybe not. But I don’t despair of anyone who jumps from a place like that. If anyone ought to be shown mercy, it’s a soul in so much agony that that terrible sudden stop seems like it would be waking from a nightmare.
Of course, it could be that there are no hauntings at all, only imaginative people in spooky-looking buildings who tell each other stories for fun. I don’t know anyone who saw that man’s ghost, only people who talked about others who had seen him. It could be there was nothing to it.
It seems silly to say that I don’t believe in ghosts. I’m a Catholic. I believe in all kinds of ghosts. I believe in the Holy Ghost. I believe that every person gives up the ghost when they die. That ghost will go to hell if they truly want to, or to Heaven, or to sort themselves out in Purgatory if they’re not yet ready to accept clemency from Mercy Himself. I don’t know what purgatory looks like. I’ve sometimes wondered if hauntings are just souls in purgatory, trying to find a friend who will intercede and help them receive Mercy. I believe that there are billions and billions of ghosts, ghosts embodied here on earth like me, ghosts in purgatory hoping for an intercessor, ghosts in Heaven awaiting the resurrection of the body– those last are called saints, and if you’re haunted by one you call it having a patron saint.
Whoever that man was, I pray for his soul and ask you to pray with me.
Sometimes I think we’re all just plummeting ghosts.
Our life begins with the closed-eyed dark of the womb and the cliff’s edge of that ordeal we call birth. Maybe we all cry for our Father to come and save us, then. Next thing you know we’re tumbling with no control, plummeting to a sudden stop we know is coming but can’t say when. We can’t direct what happens next, not really; we can’t control whether we land on our head or our feet. Our only choice is whether we will cry “My Lord and my God” and leave the whole matter up to Him before it’s too late.
Next thing we know, it’s over, and we wake up before the Throne of Mercy.
My Lord and my God.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In