By Rene Madrigal

The cultural idea of the ghost is universal.

From the Mexican “La Llorona”, a grieving mother who steals children in a futile search to recover her own drowned young ones, to the Chinese “Zhou Yuling”, the souls of drowned mariners who sail the tumultuous waters that brought about their end even after death, all cultures have some form of people who linger after they are gone.

These stories have been with us since the beginning, whether it’s as a spectral white sheet floating through the air making sounds suspiciously similar to the howling wind, or as the sinister poltergeist which physically interacts with it's surroundings to bring harm to those it haunts.

I never believed in any of these supernatural phenomena, and I still don’t, but after a particular experience, the deep roots of this monster within the human psyche became evident.

On April 28th, 2024, my uncle was murdered on the streets of Los Angeles.

Death seemed like such a distant topic for me then.

I had spent long nights thinking about death, but always my own, fearing oblivion.

Death was contained to an album my ex-girlfriend adored, Mount Eerie's "A Crow Looked At Me", where Washington Based Indie artist Phil Elverum delivers a deeply personal and harrowing recounting of the months after his wife's death.

Yet here death was, walking up the front steps of my aunt's house, knocking on that rusted old metal door, the reverberations ringing like a church bell through the ancient home's weathered walls.

We couldn’t see the body yet, the corpse was held prisoner on the cold forensics table. Yet my uncle's presence was unmistakable, he manifested in my cousin's rage as he laid blows to the creaky floor, in my father's agony as he wailed his brother's name, and my aunt's love as she told tales of her and her brother's youthful escapades, unintentionally bringing my family to tears.

I don't believe in ghosts or spirits, but my uncle was there that day, or his absence was.

Ghosts are almost universally people who haven't finished living, their lives cut tragically short.

It is comfortable to imagine us dying in a bed at home, surrounded by those who love us, saying our last words, and finally closing our eyes for the final time,

Life generally isn’t this kind to us, people die unexpectedly, they don’t get a clean story book ending where they lay dying in their son's arms and repent for their sins.

Sometimes people die on a dirty street in Los Angeles, alone and cold.

It is humbling to imagine a neolithic human attempting to confront the finality of death, and thinking that their loved ones' bonds were so strong that it would tie them to the mortal plane, that we could love so much we outrun death.

It is comforting to imagine us doing the same thousands of years later, the mystery of death still ever elusive.

I still don’t believe in ghosts, but I know for certain that people stay long after they are gone.

Monster of the Week: The Spirit (Ghosts and How the Dead Linger)