ghosts

“They Are a Ghost” — Advent Ghosts 2023

/ Elizabeth Gaucher / 7 Comments

At the end what does it all mean,

learning that what they call grief

Is simply, or not so simply, fear;

that building a story against terror is the last almost impossible thing you can try;

that God Themself is a Holy Ghost.

Do you believe?

And I say,

I believe God is a Ghost.

I believe that Ghost is also

Earth’s memory of love and life,

Earth’s reckoning with loss,

Earth’s pain over wrongdoing and betrayal.

That this Ghost walks in our presence,

Sits by our side, rests Their arm over us in fitful dreams.

At Advent.

And always.

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This is an exactly 100-word flash fiction piece for a tradition of writing ghost stories on Christmas Eve. We acknowledge a sinful and hopeless world, and welcome the dawn in full awareness that Christmas day brings us light.

Advent Ghosts 100 Word Storytelling is put on by Loren Eaton at I Saw Lightning Fall. Read the 2023 stories now, with some new stories appearing through December 22. There is still time to submit your story. Unintentionally, I wrote this story as part 3 of a trilogy: Presence; Midnight, Christian; and They Are a Ghost.

Search tag “Advent Ghosts” to read all of my 100-word stories for this project over the years on Esse Diem. Then join us!

UPDATE: My 100-Word Story links:

2011 The Escape
2012  For Later and Unwanted
2013 Vacancy
2014 The Last
2016 It's Not Mama
2018 Rattle
2019 Slide
2020 Listen
2021 Presence
2022 Midnight, Christian
2023 They Are a Ghost

“Slide”– Advent Ghosts 2019

/ Elizabeth Gaucher / 18 Comments

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He liked closing doors, the repetitive clang of chain-link boxes secured. The vibration satisfied him, made him feel safe. “You shouldn’t have come here, you know you brought this on yourself.” No matter their eyes, no matter the tears, he stood firm.

He’d just fallen asleep when he heard it. Same metal latch, but it slid, slowly. It opened.

Eyes wide in the dim light of his bedroom, he saw nothing. No one was there. That first night stretched into years.

The unwavering voice always whispered the same thing: “Come on, ese. We both know. You brought this on yourself.”

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This is an exactly 100-word flash fiction piece for a tradition of writing ghost stories on Christmas Eve. We acknowledge a sinful and hopeless world, and welcome the dawn in full awareness that Christmas day brings us light.

“It was well once a year, if not oftener, to remind men by parable of the old, simple truths; to teach them that forgiveness, and charity, and the endeavor for life better and purer than each has lived, are the principles upon which alone the world holds together and gets forward. It was well for the comfortable and the refined to be put in mind of the savagery and suffering all round them, and to be taught, as Dickens was always teaching, that certain feelings which grace human nature, as tenderness for the sick and helpless, self-sacrifice and generosity, self-respect and manliness and womanliness, are the common heritage of the race, the direct gift of Heaven, shared equally by the rich and poor.” — William Dean Howells

Advent Ghosts 100 Word Storytelling is put on by Loren Eaton at I Saw Lightning Fall. You can read this year’s entries there. Visit back here throughout the day for a growing crop of spooky stories from a range of writers! Loren posts them all day today, the darkest day of the year.