The Theory of the Ghostly Gumballs
by Martin Mundt
Some ghost-hunters have put forth a theory, which proposes that sometimes the afterlife, for some unknown reason, simply accumulates too many ghosts (or technically, according to the theory, ‘proto-ghosts’), and accumulates them too quickly in order to be able to accommodate them all in the afterlife all at the same time.
This theory, it will be noted by the astute reader, runs counter to any other theory of the afterlife which incorporates the concept of ‘infinity’. But only a very few ghost-hunters espouse this theory, notably the theory’s originator himself: Marcus Schrann-Kooms, dean of the Swiss ghost-hunting community, and his followers.
He calls his theory the Ghostly Confection Theory. More on the name later.
He theorizes that when the afterlife accumulates too many of his ‘proto-ghosts’, defined by Mr. Schrann-Kooms as ghosts who have not yet fully become ghosts because of their inability to properly ‘ghostify’, then a sort of ‘spillway’ opens up which deposits the not-quite ‘ghostified’ ‘proto-ghosts’ back onto Earth for a time to await a more propitious return to the afterlife for complete ‘ghostification.’.
(For technical definitions of the terms ‘ghostification’, ‘ghostify’, ‘proto-ghost’, and ‘spillway’, according to Mr. Schrann-Kooms’ theory, this author refers the interested reader to the complete writings of Mr. Schrann-Kooms himself, best read in the original Swiss. The warned reader, however, will understand that these terms are not defined to every ghost-hunter’s satisfaction even in the totality of Mr. Schrann-Kooms’ extensive writings, which number between 250 and 280 books, at last count, depending on which aliases and pseudonyms are accepted as canon.)
The theoretical method by which the ‘non-ghostified’ souls are temporarily re-located to Earth is called by Mr. Schrann-Kooms the ‘Ghost Spillway’, by way of analogy to water-overflow devices used at hydroelectric dams. Mr. Schrann-Kooms has, by way of scientific verification, proposed a test for his theory: specifically, that an immediate worldwide watch be mounted for any ‘proto-ghost’ cascades that he theorizes might pour into the world at random times and places. He suggests these cascades will appear as ectoplasmic waterfalls, larger or smaller, Niagaras or trickles, depending on the prevailing conditions in the afterlife.
He believes they will be blue, or, less likely, purple.
Mr. Schrann-Kooms claims to have experienced just such a supernatural cataract in the dark heart of the Black Forest one moonless, cloudless night in the summer of 1965. He also disavows any ability to predict times or locations for future events. One must, he writes, simply trust to luck.
This author has long held to an agnostic position on both the Ghostly Confection Theory, as well as the predictive abilities of luck. In other words, this author never expected to verify the existence of Mr. Schrann-Kooms’ Spillways; until just such an event occurred in the air over the old, abandoned Brach’s Candy Factory above this author’s very head on the moonless, cloudless night of May 22, 2006.
A pale, purplish-bluish flash in the sky preceded the event, a flash that seemed, for just a moment, to pull the smell out of everything within a hundred yard radius. This statement may perhaps seem unbelievable, perhaps even flat-out unverifiable, yet this author can state categorically that it is without a doubt, somehow, true. And even more unbelievable, unverifiable, categorical, and true is the fact that everything within a hundred yards also, for just a moment, also lost its taste.
But this all happened quickly, almost subliminally, and then the souls, the ‘proto-ghosts’, came rolling, tumbling, rushing, crashing out of the sky, hundreds, thousands of them, all mixed together with one another, one soul wound around another ‘proto-ghost’, the both of them interwoven with two other souls, all of these ‘proto-ghosts’ insinuated into the very fabric of five others, until all tens of thousands of them were joined in a single mass that flowed as one like a massive supernatural taffy pull.
This author stood at the bottom of that viscous flow as it struck, and felt all the emotions of the recently deceased passing through his own soul: confusion in profusion until the emotion set up a horrible contrast of vibrations that threatened to tear this author’s own soul to pieces; stupid confusion and terrified confusion and sinful confusion and angry confusion and ignorant confusion and simple, straightforward confused confusion; and my soul shivered with revenge as well, and joy, but specifically joy in gleeful anticipation at seeing revenge finally meted out upon non-believers in the afterlife, and then some more confusion, and some more anger, etc, etc, etc. In other words, the typical emotions to be expected from the recently unhappily deceased, and therefore from ‘proto-ghosts’, and therefore from ghosts, as traditionally understood.
All those emotions jumbled themselves together in an unpleasant hash in what this author recognized as a classic Spillover Event as described by Mr. Schrann-Kooms, as overwhelming in its raw power as its hydroelectric namesake. The rushing, crushing cataract of furious, astonished, uncomprehending ‘proto-ghosts’ hammered this author to his knees on the sidewalk; no resistance was possible.
And then, as suddenly as they had appeared from the sky, they disappeared through the concrete fabric of the sidewalk and were gone.
This author wobbled to his feet on weakened legs. The world seemed exactly as it had seemed before; except for an odd, uncanny feeling of stickiness in the air, like a cloud of atomized gumballs that coated my nostrils and mouth and throat for days afterwards with a cloying layer of all-encompassing sweetness.
This author emailed Mr. Schrann-Kooms, now nearing 90 years of age, after this Event, both for verification purposes and clarification of certain details. Here is the unedited text of the email Mr. Schrann-Kooms sent in return. This author thinks that it speaks for itself.
#
Dear Author,
So, you understand now the ghostification process is true, yes? AND THEY ALL SAID THAT I WAS MAD! BUT I AM NOT MAD! You have experienced the proto-ghosts and the Spillover Event and you have even tasted the newest portion of my Theory – the nature of the afterlife. You have tasted the soul just starting to become sweet in the afterlife, yes. It is the reason so many ghosts here in this world are so unpleasant, you understand. Because they are left behind and they do not sweeten completely in the afterlife. They do not ghostify. The afterlife is like one gigantic candy factory producing marzipan, caramel, chocolate, cherries, sugar, and all the good things the children in us love. Is that not a wonderful afterlife? And we all are made into candy there. AND THEY ALL SAY I AM MAD! I ASK YOU, IS A CANDY AFTERLIFE MAD? You, Author, smelled gumballs during your experience. Even tasted them. DO NOT DENY IT! What a fortunate man you are! This means without a doubt you will fully ghostify and become a gumball in the afterlife, though of course I cannot say what flavor! I am not omniscient. Some knowledge is hidden from men! But what a vision you have been given! I myself welcome DEATH, for I know that I will become CHOCOLATE -- deep, rich, creamy, milk CHOCOLATE!
Sincerely, Marcus Schrann-Kooms
PS I AM NOT MAD; THOUGH I KNOW YOU HAVE SPOKEN TO HANS!
#
Is Marcus Schrann-Kooms mad?
Is a candy afterlife mad?
On the face of it, yes, of course, a candy afterlife is nothing but the barking mad delusion of a strait-jacketed madman.
And perhaps the ‘Spillway Event’ this author experienced was nothing more than a simple hallucination or a waking dream brought on by too much work or too much obsessive focus on the theories of Marcus Schrann-Kooms. After all, this author had recently finished reading all 280 of his works in twenty-eight days in the original Swiss, and Swiss is a notoriously obscure and intractable language.
But …
Yes, but … this author reminds himself that the taste of ghostly gumballs still lingers in the memory.
And this author also reminds himself that he has heard madder beliefs than a candy afterlife.
- The End -
Showing posts with label ghosts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ghosts. Show all posts
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Totally Bogus Ghost Stories
Introduction:
The Vilest Pack of Degenerate Scum in the Afterlife
by Martin Mundt
This author heard the unmistakable sounds of typing from the front room of the cheap apartment.
The scene: 2 a.m. Damen Avenue on the North Side of the city of Chicago. This author had entered a brand-new, luxury condominium in search of an elusive ghost. The condominium was unoccupied, spacious and with wood flooring; the door had to be jimmied open.
Ghost-hunting often demands bold action and bolder skills.
Unfortunately, a search of the condo had turned up no sign of the expected ghost, and then the sounds of typing began, and the scene changed. The luxury condo faded, and a cheap, two-room apartment took its place. The typing emerged from the front room, in addition to another sound. This author heard a mumbling, a low rumbling of voices, a rustling and whispering that sounded something like gossip, but more like the noise of a crowd heard at a distance, but most like the rising anger of two opposing mobs meeting, but always in that gray area not quite beyond the edge of hearing, but still beyond the boundary of understanding.
In other words, this author heard not the sigh of a single, elusive, expected ghost to record and play backwards on a computer to see if it might be saying “Get out!” to unwary condominium occupants, but a whole mother-lode of ghosts, apparently having a heated discussion.
This author entered the front room of the ghost apartment, lowlight video-camera and voltmeter switched on.
The scene: still 2 a.m., but in some other realm where 2 a.m. never changes. Still Damen Avenue on the North Side of the city, but removed in time and space to some earlier time and space, some amalgam of the turn-of-the-century, hard-boiled Roaring Twenties, and counter-culture, clout-ridden 70s ghost-realm.
In other words, a room that contained a ghost Chicago inhabited by ten ghost writers, all huddled around a table, their pale white backs facing this author. One of their number sat in a hard-backed wooden chair at a typewriter.
They argued in their unintelligible voices, as if air escaping from tires were arguing with air escaping from balloons.
One pointed at whatever it was they were writing on the typewriter, then another stabbed a ghostly finger at it as well. They shouted. Accusations and recriminations flowed, all in the hissing, ghostly, unintelligible whispers like dry sand blowing across the Indiana Dunes. A third shook his pale, thin fist, trailing streamers of ghostly blue ectoplasm. Spielberg had done the effect better, more realistically; this looked like something out of a low-budget movie done in 1981, and yet this author had to remind himself that it was real and not a movie. A fourth waved translucent hands above his head, while the cigarette between his equally translucent fingers cast its ashes over their heads. More blue-screen ectoplasm trailed from their fingers and cigarettes.
They pushed and shoved one another, staggering under the blows as their ghost fists landed. Their blows and bodies bled into one another. They screamed, but the screams still rose no higher than secret, almost silent whispers.
One here, then one there would bellow more loudly, more forcefully than the rest, and the writer at the typewriter would type some new line, some phrase, some word, but that would only spur the others to scratch out the new addition with a pencil, and even sometimes two or three would race each other to eradicate the line first in their extreme distaste for what had been written, either in style or substance, or perhaps both.
This author recognized at once, of course, the writer’s basic impulse in their actions; recognized their writers’ egos, and even recognized the hidden editorial drive inherent in each writer, at least when it comes to editing all writing other than their own.
Each one knew he knew best.
Each one attempted to impose his own will on the piece.
And so, each reached in, with a stubby pencil, at the same moment that all the others reached in with their stubby pencils, their arms all intertwining with each other, and formed one huge, thick, pale, ectoplasmic mass, like a ten-car pile-up on the Dan Ryan Expressway.
Writers.
This author knew the type from long, personal experience: short-tempered, argumentative, violent. They drank ghostly whiskey in vast quantities, most of them direct from the ghostly bottles. They smoked ghostly cigarettes in profusion, so that a supernatural haze of smoke overhung their heads. Several dangled hypodermic needles of ghostly morphine from their veins. And all of them, of course, tried to denigrate each other’s opinions.
A viler pack of degenerate scum this author had rarely seen outside of a literary convention.
From left to right, it was a motley collection of scribblers with connections to Chicago: Charles Beaumont and Mike Royko, Robert Bloch and Carl Sandburg and Frank Norris and James T. Farrell, John Dos Passos and Theodore Dreiser and Ernest Hemingway, and at the typewriter, Nelson Algren.
And then they noticed this author.
At which point, predictably, their disagreements ceased, and they wanted only one thing; the one thing, of course, that all writers want – to be read.
This author stepped forward and walked through the ghosts, a sensation akin to passing through a gauntlet of spit-takes. They had begun to fade, by which this author guessed that they had completed their manuscript. For when a writer has finished writing, of what further use is even his very existence?
The ghostly typewriter was visible on the ghostly table through their fading bodies, so transparent, so unnecessary, had they become.
The single piece of onion-skin typing paper on which they had been laboring had almost been wound completely out of the roller.
Every paragraph, line, sentence and phrase had been lined through on the page with thick, black, pencil slashes except for two words, a distillation of insight from some of the finest writers ever to have absorbed any of Chicago’s wisdom; or possibly it was the shortest story of disillusionment they could craft, or both.
Two words, but more than that. Two Chicago words.
DYING STINKS.
They all looked at me. The anticipation in their eyes revved like twenty upturned lawn-mowers.
This author could not argue. They had done what all writers strive to do; they had written what they knew. This author nodded and gave the work a thumbs-up.
They smiled. Then they faded away entirely, and the typewriter, with its paper, faded with them.
But the words remained: DYING STINKS.
And this author knew: the ghosts were out there, just waiting to be found.
- The End -
The Vilest Pack of Degenerate Scum in the Afterlife
by Martin Mundt
This author heard the unmistakable sounds of typing from the front room of the cheap apartment.
The scene: 2 a.m. Damen Avenue on the North Side of the city of Chicago. This author had entered a brand-new, luxury condominium in search of an elusive ghost. The condominium was unoccupied, spacious and with wood flooring; the door had to be jimmied open.
Ghost-hunting often demands bold action and bolder skills.
Unfortunately, a search of the condo had turned up no sign of the expected ghost, and then the sounds of typing began, and the scene changed. The luxury condo faded, and a cheap, two-room apartment took its place. The typing emerged from the front room, in addition to another sound. This author heard a mumbling, a low rumbling of voices, a rustling and whispering that sounded something like gossip, but more like the noise of a crowd heard at a distance, but most like the rising anger of two opposing mobs meeting, but always in that gray area not quite beyond the edge of hearing, but still beyond the boundary of understanding.
In other words, this author heard not the sigh of a single, elusive, expected ghost to record and play backwards on a computer to see if it might be saying “Get out!” to unwary condominium occupants, but a whole mother-lode of ghosts, apparently having a heated discussion.
This author entered the front room of the ghost apartment, lowlight video-camera and voltmeter switched on.
The scene: still 2 a.m., but in some other realm where 2 a.m. never changes. Still Damen Avenue on the North Side of the city, but removed in time and space to some earlier time and space, some amalgam of the turn-of-the-century, hard-boiled Roaring Twenties, and counter-culture, clout-ridden 70s ghost-realm.
In other words, a room that contained a ghost Chicago inhabited by ten ghost writers, all huddled around a table, their pale white backs facing this author. One of their number sat in a hard-backed wooden chair at a typewriter.
They argued in their unintelligible voices, as if air escaping from tires were arguing with air escaping from balloons.
One pointed at whatever it was they were writing on the typewriter, then another stabbed a ghostly finger at it as well. They shouted. Accusations and recriminations flowed, all in the hissing, ghostly, unintelligible whispers like dry sand blowing across the Indiana Dunes. A third shook his pale, thin fist, trailing streamers of ghostly blue ectoplasm. Spielberg had done the effect better, more realistically; this looked like something out of a low-budget movie done in 1981, and yet this author had to remind himself that it was real and not a movie. A fourth waved translucent hands above his head, while the cigarette between his equally translucent fingers cast its ashes over their heads. More blue-screen ectoplasm trailed from their fingers and cigarettes.
They pushed and shoved one another, staggering under the blows as their ghost fists landed. Their blows and bodies bled into one another. They screamed, but the screams still rose no higher than secret, almost silent whispers.
One here, then one there would bellow more loudly, more forcefully than the rest, and the writer at the typewriter would type some new line, some phrase, some word, but that would only spur the others to scratch out the new addition with a pencil, and even sometimes two or three would race each other to eradicate the line first in their extreme distaste for what had been written, either in style or substance, or perhaps both.
This author recognized at once, of course, the writer’s basic impulse in their actions; recognized their writers’ egos, and even recognized the hidden editorial drive inherent in each writer, at least when it comes to editing all writing other than their own.
Each one knew he knew best.
Each one attempted to impose his own will on the piece.
And so, each reached in, with a stubby pencil, at the same moment that all the others reached in with their stubby pencils, their arms all intertwining with each other, and formed one huge, thick, pale, ectoplasmic mass, like a ten-car pile-up on the Dan Ryan Expressway.
Writers.
This author knew the type from long, personal experience: short-tempered, argumentative, violent. They drank ghostly whiskey in vast quantities, most of them direct from the ghostly bottles. They smoked ghostly cigarettes in profusion, so that a supernatural haze of smoke overhung their heads. Several dangled hypodermic needles of ghostly morphine from their veins. And all of them, of course, tried to denigrate each other’s opinions.
A viler pack of degenerate scum this author had rarely seen outside of a literary convention.
From left to right, it was a motley collection of scribblers with connections to Chicago: Charles Beaumont and Mike Royko, Robert Bloch and Carl Sandburg and Frank Norris and James T. Farrell, John Dos Passos and Theodore Dreiser and Ernest Hemingway, and at the typewriter, Nelson Algren.
And then they noticed this author.
At which point, predictably, their disagreements ceased, and they wanted only one thing; the one thing, of course, that all writers want – to be read.
This author stepped forward and walked through the ghosts, a sensation akin to passing through a gauntlet of spit-takes. They had begun to fade, by which this author guessed that they had completed their manuscript. For when a writer has finished writing, of what further use is even his very existence?
The ghostly typewriter was visible on the ghostly table through their fading bodies, so transparent, so unnecessary, had they become.
The single piece of onion-skin typing paper on which they had been laboring had almost been wound completely out of the roller.
Every paragraph, line, sentence and phrase had been lined through on the page with thick, black, pencil slashes except for two words, a distillation of insight from some of the finest writers ever to have absorbed any of Chicago’s wisdom; or possibly it was the shortest story of disillusionment they could craft, or both.
Two words, but more than that. Two Chicago words.
DYING STINKS.
They all looked at me. The anticipation in their eyes revved like twenty upturned lawn-mowers.
This author could not argue. They had done what all writers strive to do; they had written what they knew. This author nodded and gave the work a thumbs-up.
They smiled. Then they faded away entirely, and the typewriter, with its paper, faded with them.
But the words remained: DYING STINKS.
And this author knew: the ghosts were out there, just waiting to be found.
- The End -
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