Imogene Duckworthy has a problem in her third adventure, contained in
the mystery novel called BROKE. She's rented a house for her, her daughter
Drew, and Drew's pet potbelly pig. The leasing agent, Jersey Shorr, tells her
there's a rumor that the house is haunted. But Immy is not deterred, since she
doesn't believe in ghosts.
If she wanted to exorcise the ghost from the house, could she? Not
really. In Western thought, an exorcism can only be performed by a Catholic priest.
Even then, it's more to rid a person of demons than to get rid of a ghost.
There are measures she could take, though. Ideally, you want to send the
ghost to "the other side" or into The Light. This
web page stresses that
you should be sober when attempting to persuade a ghost to leave.
Burning sage is the accepted method of cleansing your house. This page thinks that ghosts don't need to be gotten rid of, rather they need to be
rescued. They just need to be talked into going into The Light. Some ghosts,
apparently, are afraid of leaving because they don't think that's exactly where
they will end up.
However, I've recently learned (through a short story in Kevin Tipple's
collection,
Mind Slices) (which is a very nice bunch of stories) that the concept of that other place
wasn't always what it is today. Earlier religions and cultures, pre-Judaism,
had a cyclical view of life. For these people, hell was a place to either rest
between incarnations, or a neutral zone for dead souls. Early Judaism had no
concept of hell, but later developed one that consisted of a place where you go
to be purified of your earthly sins so you can ascend to a form of what
Christianity now calls heaven.
Anyway, wherever the ghost goes, the important thing for the people in
the house is that is goes.
Immy found there were quite a few cultural views of ghosts. The book she
bought, The Moron's Compleat Guide to Ghosts,
lists these: doppelgänger, a duplicate of a living person; poltergeist,
mischief maker but not connected with an actual person; vardøger, a Norse ghost
who does things immediately before a real person does them (that would be handy
for a fortune teller, she thought); gjenganger, a Scandinavian spirit of
someone risen from the grave, but not really ghostlike, more human like; and
wraith, a bad omen with a cloak and no face.
Immy didn't think her ghost was any of these! She valiantly plunged
ahead, regardless, trying to get rid of the ghost.
