Prompt: Write about a ghost

Whether it is one you met last night, the household haunt, or a memory from your past, write about them.

Dear diary,

I never had a diary before, so I did the usual password-and-encrypt, only a different one than my hard drive. Not that my dads are likely to read this, but it just sounds stupid. See, last time a ghost appeared in my bedroom: all translucent in a suit and tie, probably some Christmas-future idea gone bad.

“Jeremiah,” the ghost said. Everyone calls me Jeremy, but there you go.

“I’m busy,” I said. And I was: I’d just downloaded the latest Bioshock game and I wasn’t about to ruin it for anyone. I’d locked my door, put a sign on it and everything. So I was going a night without sleep and a lot of red bull. Still felt real.

“Jeremiah,” he said again, even louder. Cut right through the headphones I had on and everything.

I turned and looked up. The ghost stood, floating a few inches above the carpet, blood dropping from his fingers.

“Oh, real original,” I said.

The ghost paused. “I have come from beyond the grave to speak to you.”

“Yeah? Houdini never did. His wife waited years on him. Also,” I said, ticking items off on my fingers, “Atmospheric interference, hallucinations and sleep-deprivation. Have you ever heard of electromagnetic interference?”

“What?” the ghost said.

“A lot of ghosts result from that, also infrasound. That’s low-frequency sound, like how a tiger roars at 18 hertz and that’s why it shakes us. If I said I saw a ghost, my dads would probably convince themselves they had as well: collective hallucinations and hysteria, to say nothing of half-glimpsed shadows and how humans are pattern-forming —”

“I am right in front of you,” the ghost said, but had at least stopped the blood.

“And? Even if you were real, I have real things to be worried about. My GCSEs, which college I’m going into and whether Jennifer is ever going to want to go on a date.”

The ghost stared at me with an expression that reminded me of a few of my teachers and then vanished. I got back to my game, but when I got up this morning there were small red stains on the carpet where he’d been.

I figure I spilled something and made the ghost up to explain it.

Gotta get to school. Might add more to this file later. Probably not.